The unemployment rate stands at 4.9 percent, the lowest since the
Vietnam war. Employers looking for workers are finding that the supply
of labor, even unskilled labor, is tight. As a result, Federal Reserve
Board chief Alan Greenspan is worried about rising wages reigniting
inflation.
However, more than a million Americans who could work - in fact,
desperately need the skills that come only from real work - remain
unproductive. These are our nation's prisoners. When idle prisoners are
given the opportunity to engage in productive labor that pays a wage,
they line up for it. Such work saves taxpayers money and adds to the
economy. Unfortunately, too many state and federal laws stand in the
way.
The Growth in the Prison Population. The
cost of operating the nation's prisons is soaring, along with the number
of people in prisons.
- Since 1980 the state and federal prison population has increased
from 316,000 to 1.2 million, and by the year 2002 the inmate
population is expected to increase by another 400,000.
- Taxpayers are currently spending between $20,000 and $25,000 per
year to house each of these criminals.
- The expense has reached about $30 billion, or $300 a year for
every household in America.
The Decline of Prisoner Work. Yet,
despite a long-standing consensus in favor of gainful employment for
convicts, idleness remains the norm behind bars. Perhaps half of all
prisoners do some kind of work, counting housework (maintenance chores)
and vocational training programs in the prisons. However, most of these
jobs are part-time and produce no income for room and board, restitution
and other ends.
Things used to be different. In 1885
three-fourths of U.S. prison inmates were involved in productive labor,
with the majority working under prison contract and leasing arrangements
with private employers. However, as a result of the gradual adoption of
federal and state regulations promoted by prisoner rights groups,
organized labor and employers fearing competition, prison work declined
dramatically. A 1994 survey of 46 correctional systems in the United
States and seven in Canada found that only 9.4 percent of female and
7.75 percent of male inmates worked at jobs other than housekeeping and
maintenance.
How Many Prisoners Could Be Employed?
Skeptics of welfare reform argued that only a small percentage of
welfare recipients could be gainfully employed. But once states got the
welfare-to-work incentives right, welfare recipients went to work in
droves, cutting welfare caseloads by 60 percent in some states and up to
80 percent in some Wisconsin counties. Prison work can achieve similar
successes.
In a survey by the Prison Enterprise Institute, prison industry
managers frequently mentioned 25 percent of prisoners as a desired
target for employment. But putting a majority of prisoners - who are
generally young, healthy and able-bodied - to work is a reachable goal.
Since prisoners have relatively little else to do, what could we
reasonably expect under an aggressive expansion of private production by
prisoners?
- A full-time job means about 2,000 hours of work per year (40 hours
per week times 50 weeks).
- At an average wage of $7.00 an hour, inmates could average $14,000
in gross earnings per year.
The Impact of Prison Labor on Taxpayers.
One of the most promising proposals to reduce the cost of criminal
justice is to increase the amount of productive work performed by
prisoners. At present 80 percent of the income earned by prisoners who
work is customarily used to reduce the financial burden on taxpayers and
for victim compensation. Thus about $11,000 per prison worker would be
available. The remainder could help prisoners' families, pay personal
expenses and be set aside as savings for use after release.
Over the next five years, the prison population is projected to
increase to 1.6 million. If half of the prisoners could be employed by
private enterprise during that time, their work would reduce taxpayer
costs by almost $9 billion per year, or about 25 percent of the total
cost of prison support.
The Impact of Prison Labor on Recidivism.
One of the most important benefits of prisoner work is that it reduces
the recidivism rate. A federal Post-Release Employment Project (PREP)
study confirms that employed prisoners do better than those who do not
work.
After release to halfway houses, participants in the PREP study were
24 percent more likely to get a full-time or day labor job than those
who had not worked in prison. Those who had worked in prison also earned
more than those who had not and were more likely to move on to a
better-paying job.
- Only 6.6 percent of those who worked in prison had their parole
revoked or were charged with committing a new crime during their
first year of supervised release. [See
the figure.]
- This compares to 10.1 percent of the group who had not worked in
prison.
These findings hold up over a much longer period. Most participants
in a follow-up to the PREP study had been released for at least eight
years and some for as long as 12 years. Prison work and training
programs seem to have been especially effective in reducing the
likelihood of recidivism in the long term.
The Impact of Prison Labor on the Economy.
Besides the indirect benefits of reducing the cost to taxpayers of
housing prisoners and reducing the recidivism rate, prisoner work has
two direct economic benefits. First, prison industries must purchase
materials from businesses outside the prison, thus creating a demand for
the services of other workers. For example:
- Prisoners involved in information services such as travel
reservations, telemarketing and data entry need computers for their
jobs.
- Those involved in manufacturing require sheet metal, cloth and
other raw materials.
- Others involved in assembly jobs rely on manufactured goods such
as electronic circuit boards, cables and cable harnesses.
Second, prisoners have the potential to produce valuable goods and
services consumers want to buy. Prison industries produced more than $1
billion worth of goods and services in 1994, mostly for other government
agencies. However, since prison industry is usually state run rather
than privately run, the output is often shoddy, overpriced merchandise
that other state agencies must buy from the prison industry monopoly.
The largest prison supplier was the Federal Bureau of Prisons with $433
million in output for federal agencies, yet the system employed only
16,000 inmates out of 61,000 inmates eligible to work (i.e., those not
in solitary confinement, considered dangerous or being transferred) from
its total of 85,000 inmates.
Though any type of productive prison work is good, private enterprise
would make it even better, and given more latitude in creating prison
industry it could achieve dramatic results. For example, in 1923, when
the private sector still played a significant role in prisoner
employment, productivity was four times greater under private than under
public control, even when the same industries were compared.
Consider a prisoner who is earning $14,000 per year. His productivity
adds to the economy just as does that of a non-institutionalized person.
If 800,000 prisoners worked - a labor force equal to those of Wyoming,
Alaska and Vermont combined - their productivity would add more than $20
billion to the economy.
Wouldn't Prison Labor Steal Private-Sector
Jobs? Quite the contrary. Once at work, the prisoner is a job
creator, on balance, because prison production requires new purchases
from free-world businesses. That means jobs and higher real wages in the
rest of the economy.
Everyone recognizes that getting able-bodied adults off welfare and
into productive jobs is a social boon, and we have been willing to
subsidize that transition from welfare to work. The same thing should be
true for prison labor.
While some are concerned that wages in prison would be below market
wages, thereby robbing jobs from regular workers, in a competitive
marketplace wages reflect productivity. Prison wages are typically lower
because prison labor is less productive.
Conclusion. Prison work has many
opponents, as did proposals to put welfare recipients to work - and for
many of the same reasons. But states that have aggressively moved to
"workfare" have shown that the vast majority of welfare
recipients can become productive, benefit the economy and build new
lives. We should expect no less from the nation's prisoners.
This Brief Analysis was prepared by Morgan O. Reynolds, Director
of the Criminal Justice Center at the NCPA and professor of economics at
Texas A&M University.