Prison Labor:
Reasonable Labor or Slave Labor?
Prison labor:
Slave labor or a productive
means of paying for our ever growing prison system? This question
has caused many disputes over the past couple of decades as our American
prison system grows at an alarming rate. After researching the subject,
I cannot even decide what point to agree with. Not only do federal
and state prisons want prison labor, but privatized prisons do also.
The money generated helps pay for the prisons themselves, not to mention
profits for the private prison owners. The government also, for the
most part, pushes prisoners to work and pay for their own confinement.
On the other side, civil rights groups and many unions disagree with prison
labor. They consider it slave labor. Groups like the AFL-CIO
also are against prisoners doing this type of labor. To complicate
the matter, some inmates are for prison labor, and some are against it.
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) just
did a study recently on the benefits of prison employment programs.
The study, Factories Behind Bars, was led by Morgan Reynolds. The
study found that prison labor is highly productive and is a good means
of financing our prisons. In order to back up their study, the NCPA
showed surprising statistics about the growth of prisons and prisoners.
The study shows that the federal prison population has tripled since 1980,
with an additional 43 percent growth expected by the year 2002. It
now costs 25 billion dollars to operate our prisons and the cost will rise
(Grayson, 1997). It is for these reasons that the NCPA and many others
believe that a new method of paying for our prison system is needed.
Advocates for prison labor always seem to bring
up the topic of how much money is generated by the industries. From
one prisoner working 2,000 hours a year, 6,000 dollars can be generated
for the cost of his incarceration. Reynolds puts this fact another
way by saying, "If one in four prisoners could be put to work for private
enterprise over the next 5-10 years, their work would reduce taxpayer costs
by $2.4 billion per year, or somewhat less than 10 percent of the total
cost of prison support" (Grayson, 1997). When put this way, the use
of this labor just to save the taxpayers money is enough reason to follow
through with it. The work the prisoners do is controversial, but
the prison officials already have an answer to any critics. The work
that is done in prisons does not directly compete with the market outside
of the prison walls. The prisoners do work for companies that foreign
countries would usually do. So, instead of building factories in
Taiwan, Nike just sends its materials to certain security institutions
and the prisoners do the work instead. It is a win-win situation
for the company not having to leave the country to find cheap labor, and
also for the prisons generating money to support themselves instead of
depending on the taxpayers. Not only does prison labor benefit corporations
and prisons, but it also helps the prisoners themselves in certain ways.
A prime example of prison labor benefiting the prisoners
themselves is an ex-convict named Ron Humphrey. While in prison,
Humphrey worked eight hour days as a computer-systems manager, followed
by another four hours after dinner. He also worked on Saturdays.
This may sound like a lot, but as Humphrey and many other prisoners believe,
it is much better than being cooped up in a cell all day. Besides
that, it helped him do something that was critical to him and his family.
Outside of those prison walls Humphrey had a wife and four kids.
His wife was a nurse and most of her income went toward medical bills and
food for the family. The rest is where Humphrey stepped in.
By doing corporate labor while in prison, his six day work week allowed
him to generate enough money to pay the rent for his family. As Humphrey
states it, "My monthly check indicated to us that I was still a participating
member of the family" ("Christianity Today", 1998). Considering that
85 percent of the men that go into prison married are divorced by the time
of their release, this helped Humphrey beat the odds and save his family.
He has now been out of prison a decade and is a circulation manager for
the Prison Fellowship publication Inside journal.
Prisoners who do labor not only pay money to their
families, some even pay money to those that they victimized. Restitution
teaches the prisoners that the people that they harmed are human beings
and did not deserve what was done to them. In this case, it can be
said that the prisoners are paying their victims back, literally, for what
they did to them. Prison labor is not all about money, either though.
Badger State Industries (BSI), Wisconsin's state prison industries program,
did a study of their own. They found that recidivism rates after
three years were fifteen percent lower for inmates who worked than for
those who did not. BSI director Steve Kronzer said, "People who worked
for prison industries tended to do better than normal." The basic
idea behind this is that prisoners actually learn a certain skill while
in prison and work a full time job (Grayson, 1997). This makes it
easier to cope with the real world when they do finally get released.
It will be easier for the prisoners to find a job, and when they are employed,
they will not be overwhelmed by working full days because they will be
used to it. Reynolds added, "They get to earn money, they have less
idle time, and they get the rewards and satisfaction of doing work.
They feel better and they have something to look forward to, rather than
stare at the walls" (Grayson, 1997). Despite all of these good things
said about prison labor, their is a strong backing against it.
The Justice Department reported in August that there
are nearly 1.6 million prisoners in the United States. This is currently
the highest rate in the world. By the end of 1995, one out of every
167 Americans were in prison, compared to one out of 320 in 1985 (Overbeck,
1996). With all of these people being put in jail, prisons feel like
they have trouble finding things for the inmates to do. The answer
for them is prison labor. Not only do federal and state prisons do
this, but also private prisons participate in this activity. Many
people believe this practice is being taken too far, especially since the
prisoners often do work for corporations. Not only do they work for
private companies, but they are paid as low as 45 cents an hour.
Minimum wage laws do not include prison labor, and it is clear that prisons
and private corporations take advantage of this. The main reason
groups like the AFL-CIO believe this is slave labor is because of the low
pay. Also, the prisoners usually do not have an option to work or not.
The prisoners do not have to work in some prisons, but in others, if the
inmates refuse, they lose out on certain privileges. In California,
for example, prisoners who refuse to do this slave labor are often moved
to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges. Even more importantly,
they lose "good time" credit that reduces their sentences (Erlich, 1995).
The most surprising fact about prison made goods is that the United States
government exports them. The government is doing exactly what they
have been criticizing China for.
Advocates of prison labor claim that the purpose
of this labor is to keep the growing population of inmates busy and to
help pay for their own incarceration. This is partly true, but exploitation
of this captive labor pool is evident. For federal and state prisons,
inmates produce goods for sale to government and for the open market.
Private prisons and companies also use prison labor for private profit.
Critics also claim that prisoners in the private institutions were abused
by receiving small portions of food and other basics. This was done
to increase the profits for the prison. The Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) detention center found something similar to this when
dealing with captured illegal immigrants. For a long time, immigrants
that illegally entered the United States complained of inedible food, dirty
clothes, and insects in the beds at Esmor Correctional Services facility.
Their complaints were ignored, so they chose to rebel inside of the prison.
INS got involved and concluded that Esmor skimped on food, ignored building
repairs that needed to be done, and lowered guard salaries in order to
make greater profits (Erlich, 1995).
Another seemingly slave type institution is run
by a company already mentioned above, Badger State Industries.
They look over prisons in Wisconsin, including the Oakhill Correctional
Institute in Dane County. In this prison, a makeshift basement factory
was built to produce office chairs. Seventeen of the institutes inmates
crowd in here every day to make chairs, and by the end of the year, over
a million dollars worth of this product is made (Overbeck, 1996).
What do the prisoners get for it? Wages ranging from twenty cents
to $1.50 per hour. Office chairs are even a product that could conflict
with labor outside the prison walls. There are other instances of
this also. A local prison slipped prisoners into a Toys R Us store
in order to stock shelves in 1994. Union protests put a stop to it.
In Southern California, TWA has prisoners book flights for them.
In States such as Ohio and California, prisoners are hired to do data processing.
One company, Lockhart Technologies, Inc. (LTI), repairs circuit boards
for companies like IBM and Dell. The owner, Leonard Hill, moved the
company from a small town outside of Austin, Texas to a Lockhart prison.
In order to make the move, 150 workers had to be laid off in Austin.
Prisoners now do the work inside the prison walls. The Texas AFL-CIO
president, Joe Gunn, was outraged at this. He believed it should
never have been allowed to happen without consulting the AFL-CIO in the
city where the jobs were lost. Gunn describes the prisoners' labor
as "absolute indentured slavery" (Erlich, 1995). It is reasons like
this that labor unions are one of the most active groups against private
prisons and prison labor in general. The Weastec Corporation in Ohio
hired prisoners to assemble Honda auto parts. The prisoners were
paid only 35 cents an hour. The United Auto Workers union found out
about this practice and were outraged. Honda eventually backed off
because they did not believe the negative publicity was worth it.
Another point of view from a different prisoner
comes from convicted kidnapper Dino Navarrete. He works nine hour
days sitting in front of a sewing machine at Soledad prison, near Monterey,
California. They have a sprawling workshop where many other prisoners
work as well. Navarrete makes blue work shirts in this medium security
prison, earning himself about 45 cents an hour. That comes out to
about 60 dollars for a month's worth of work. This prison, like many
others, punishes the prisoners who refuse to work by taking away certain
privileges. When told that the United States was exporting these
goods to other countries, he responded like many other individuals do.
Navarrete simply stated, "You might as well call this slave labor, then"
(Erlich, 1995).
An argument against prison labor cannot be complete
without the mention of chain gangs. Chain gangs are literally a group
of men chained together at the feet who are brought out of prison to do
manual labor. Most often, the work is picking up trash along a roadside
or busting rocks. A strong case can even be made that chain gangs
are a means of cruel and unusual punishment to prisoners. Just last
year, Alabama added it's name to the list of states that have brought back
chain gangs. Using this type of prison labor is immoral for many
reasons. After the Civil War, newly emancipated blacks were punished
by being assigned to chain gangs. Bringing back these roadside workers
reminds us of discrimination against African Americans. Many times,
these men work ten hour days for months at a time. Once again, if
the prisoners refuse to work, they are punished. In Alabama, instances
have already occurred where men are handcuffed all day long, with their
arms above their head, for refusing to work in a chain gang (Brownstein,
1996). With all of this evidence against prison labor, only one conclusion
can be made. Simply put, it is slave labor, and it is accepted only
because it is prisoners who are suffering instead of free civilians.
The points and counterpoints on this subject are
both clear and excellent, but a decision on whether or not to consider
prison labor "slave labor" is not any easier. Major groups on both
sides of the issue have strong backing on all of their points and the issue
will probably go unresolved for a very long time. As of right now,
penitentiaries will use prisoners for labor, for whatever reason, whether
the inmates like it or not.