As the COVID-19 virus spreads across the U.S., every state has suspended family visits in prisons among other restrictions to try to reduce the risk of infection... But North Carolina has continued to allow hundreds of prisoners to flow in and out of facilities across the state every day: people going to their work release jobs at chicken plants, construction sites, factories and offices. Critics say this practice puts prisoners at risk of contracting and spreading the virus, and increases the chances of bringing it inside when they return at the end of the workday.

... One large source of work release labor is Wilkes Correctional Center... Dozens of the facility’s 260 prisoners leave to work daily at Tyson Foods plants... In a statement... the company said it “employs only a few work release inmates directly,” and that most prisoners working at the “Wilkesboro plant locations” do so via outside contractors that sanitize the Tyson facilities."... The company also said it “will soon equip trained personnel with thermometers to take the temperature of every employee before each shift. Anyone with a fever won’t be permitted to work.”

... Mary Pollard, the director of North Carolina Prison Legal Services [said] “If we can trust them to go into a chicken plant every day, why not just release them?” Pollard asked. “Incarceration should not exist to provide workers for Tyson.”