Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

For all the talk of lockdowns across the globe, some industries just have to keep operating.

But which ones?

There's a surprising variety in what different cultures call their key workers, for whom it's a blessing and a curse.

And while we non-key workers keep hanging around the house, what to do?

We ask around and find that our editors and correspondence are up to an interesting array of activities in these strange times.

First up though.

Prisons are notorious incubators of disease.

Most prisons around the world have two to three to ten to fifteen, in some cases even more prisoners can find in the same space.

Rafael Roe served twelve years for a crime he was eventually acquitted of.

He now presents the Netflix documentary series Inside the World's toughest prisons.

Take the Philippines for example, the most overcrowded prisons I've ever seen.

There is no space for those prisoners to sleep.

The spoon position, that's the only way I can describe it, it's like the spoon position, lay on the floor, side by side, disease among those prisoners is prolific.

This week the World Health Organization issued guidance on mitigating risks of COVID-19 in prisons, emphasizing the danger to the wider public.

Not only are the prisoners a threat from prison officers and prison officers are a threat from prisoners, but when those officers or members of staff move out of that prison they take it with them.

There is no way of controlling it.

On Wednesday the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, called on government to release some inmates to wait to stop prisons becoming hot spots for the disease.

How far is the shoot exam in ways to release those particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 such as older and sick detainees?

To drastically reduce prison populations, so physical distancing becomes possible, they should also consider releasing low risk offenders.

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