PCLP Lunch Series Presents:
FESTER: Carceral Permeability and California's COVID-19 Correctional Disaster
Date/Time: Tuesday, September 13th, 12:00-1:15 PM
Location: Room 164 and via zoom
*Please note this event is on a TUESDAY, not the usual Wednesday*
Please join PCLP in welcoming professor and author Hadar Avarim of UC Hastings College of Law and our very own Professor Wendy Epstein. The two of them will discuss the impact of COVID-19 in California's prisons and Hadar's upcoming book regarding the following:
Even against the backdrop of pandemic mismanagement in the United States, the COVID-19 disaster in California's prisons stands out as the worst medical prison catastrophe in the state's history. Three-quarters of the state's prison population was infected; 255 incarcerated people and 50 staff members died. Socio-legal scholar Hadar Aviram and data scientist Chad Goerzen's forthcoming book FESTER exposes the COVID-19 correctional experience through hundreds of first-person accounts, months of courtroom observations, years of carefully collected quantitative COVID-19 data, and a wealth of policy documents. Against the backdrop of decades of systemic vulnerabilities of overcrowding and abysmal healthcare, the book recounts the suffering that COVID-19 and its mismanagement wrought behind bars--the fruit of neglect, incompetence, fearmongering, sabotage, and dehumanization. FESTER illuminates the lack of control over county jails; the uphill battle to prioritize prisons as vaccine sites, and the struggle to vaccinate the custodial staff; the harms of zero-sum thinking in light of the transmissivity between prisons and their surrounding communities; how efforts to litigate on behalf of incarcerated people are thwarted by judicial deference to disingenuous, responsibility-shirking behavior by the state; and how our fear of the optics of releasing people convicted of violent crimes--sometimes decades ago--endanger not only the oldest and most frail people behind bars, but also everyone in California. FESTER bears witness to the immense suffering we bring on ourselves and our fellow humans through dehumanization, fear, and ignorance, and stands as a monument for a brave coalition of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, family members and loved ones, advocates and activists, doctors and journalists, who worked to shed light on one of the Golden State's correctional system's darkest times.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://arizona.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpcu-gqT8iH9wJ6F5rkw51NG7wV2UVZ3wQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Lunch will be served in the Courtyard at 11:45. We hope to see you there!
Derek M Kilgore [email protected]
Cassidy Vernon [email protected]
Hannah Hays [email protected]
**CLE Events**
The State Bar of Arizona does not approve or accredit CLE activities for the Mandatory Continuing Legal Education requirement. This activity may qualify for up to 1.0 hours toward your annual CLE requirement for the State Bar of Arizona. CLE certificates are available at the presentation.