People are questioning the ethics behind El Paso County prisoners being paid $2 to move bodies of deceased Covid-19 victims.
What We Know:
- According to Chris Acosta, the public affairs director at the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, there are currently nine “low-level offenders” moving the coronavirus victims’ bodies in prison. She also guarantees that they are “provided full PPE by the morgue/hospital.” Costa also claims that “The work is 100% voluntary,” and adds, “It’s great that these individuals are stepping up and volunteering to assist a community in dire need of help right now.”
- In El Paso County, there are currently 38,400 active cases of Covid-19, 1,052 hospitalizations, and a total of 802 deaths since the onset of the pandemic. As of September, Texas cases have been sky-rocketing, meaning several bodies have had to be kept in mobile morgues. Meanwhile, businesses in El Paso began reopening Friday, less than 24 hours after a court of appeals reversed a county judge’s decision to shut down.
- Although the use of prison labor is not unusual in the U.S., people are questioning the morality of what’s occurring in El Paso due to the dangerous nature of the job and the low pay given in compensation. One person on Twitter posted about the ongoing incident, writing, “Texas is one of only a handful of states left that allows unpaid labor in prisons. After at first refusing, these inmates are being compensated a whopping $2/hour for 8 hrs of work in El Paso’s morgues because of the surge in #COVID deaths… not ok.”
- Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists tweeted contempt to the ongoing labor. Along with a video of the inmates, he adds, “They’ve been doing this tough work since Monday, before El Paso increased to 10 mobile morgues. I cry for El Paso.”
- Chris Acosta states that El Paso County has requested help from the National Guard to move the bodies, meaning inmates will be told to stop working once they arrive.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the average wage for prisoners working for third party companies ranges from 14 cents to 63 cents an hour.
