Fester By Hadar Aviram

The mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic in California's prisons stands out as the state’s worst-ever medical catastrophe in a carceral setting. In Fester , socio-legal scholar Hadar Aviram and data scientist Chad Goerzen offer a cultural history of the COVID-19 correctional disaster through hundreds of first-person accounts, months of courtroom observations, years of carefully collected quantitative data, and a wealth of policy documents. Bearing witness to the immense suffering wrought on people behind bars through dehumanization, fear, and ignorance, Fester explains how the carceral system’s cruelty threatens the health and well-being not only of those caught in its grasp, but all Californians—and stands as a monument to the brave coalition of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, family members and loved ones, advocates and activists, doctors, journalists, and lawyers who fought to shed light on one of the Golden State's correctional system's darkest times.