While much of California shut down this spring during the global pandemic, inmates at a sewing factory in a women's prison in Chino spent at least 12 hours a day stitching masks, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Prison factories in California were reported to keep running when rebab programs, religious services and educational classes were halted as the state's prison system has taken drastic measures to fight the coronavirus.

It was 'like a slave factory'

Robbie Hall, 58, has been in prison for 35 years. During the pandemic, she was one of thousands of incarcerated workers who stayed on the job in high-risk positions, such as walking from cell to cell delivering meals. And what they do helped them earn wages that ranged from eight cents to $1 an hour.

In the prison factories, the inmates made products including masks and hand sanitizers, which were sold to state agencies for millions of dollars, according to The Los Angeles Times.

However, Hall was quoted by paper as saying that the inmates were forbidden from wearing masks.

Amid the drive for production, factories reportedly continued to run even as infections increased inside prison walls. Some of them have increased production.

For example at the Chino prison, supervisors kept increasing the daily quotas, from 2,000 to 3,000 to 3,500 masks. So the women workers in the prison had to stitch masks until their bodies ached seven days a week.

"It was like a slave factory. The more you give them, the more they want," Hall was quoted as saying.

The factories even brought together inmates who were housed in different units, heightening the risk of spreading the virus inside prisons, according to The Los Angeles Times.

As for the workers who refused to work due to fear of COVID-19, they were threatened with discipline that could jeopardize their chances for release from prison.

What the representatives said

Admitting some essential critical enterprises including the manufacture of masks have continued operating during the pandemic, Michele Kane, a spokeswoman for the California Prison Industry Authority, was quoted by The Los Angeles Times as saying that the agency reduced inmate staffing at factories, imposed social distancing and decided when to close or reopen operations in consultation with the corrections department and the court-appointed federal receiver overseeing healthcare inside California's prisons.

Dana Simas, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in a statement that the agency follows isolation and quarantine protocols approved by the federal receiver, according to the paper. The statement said the agency has taken "extraordinary measures to address COVID-19" in prisons, such as providing staff and inmates with protective equipment.

But interviews with incarcerated workers paint a stark different picture of prison labor during the pandemic: questionable infection control and the threat of more time in prison looming over their heads.

Supporters of prison labor say the practice helps reduce costs of incarceration, provides job skills. But legal scholars and civil rights advocates have long criticized prison labor as exploitative and part of the historical legacy of slavery – a deep injustice, they say, only magnified by COVID-19.

(With input from agencies)