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Incarcerated people work for cents on the dollar or for free to make goods you use.
Brittany White, 37, was arrested for marijuana trafficking in Alabama in 2009. She went to trial to contest the charges — after all, just a year prior the United States president had admitted, cheekily, that inhaling was “the point.”
She was sentenced to 20 years. But her sentence was meted out in portions, based on good behavior, and she, posing no discernable public safety risk for selling a plant increasingly legal in states all across the U.S., was allowed to work on the outside.
She got a job at a Burger King.
But the state of Alabama took a significant portion of her paltry minimum wage. “They charged me $25 a week for transportation,” she tells Truthdig. “And they take away 40% of your check. It’s egregious to be making minimum wage, and then to have so much taken away by the state.”
Minimum wage in Alabama is $7.25.
Still, White considers herself lucky. Even her paltry earnings were better than nothing. She was able to purchase soap from the commissary. The prison-provided soap is full of lye, she says, which you definitely do not want near your private parts.
Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing. While corporate culprits are commonly blamed for exploiting the labor of incarcerated people, it’s actually primarily states and the federal government who take advantage, and make the public unwittingly complicit.
Got a car? Your license plate was likely made by inmates. In New York, inmates make the trash cans. High school desks are often made on the inside; so are glasses for Medicare patients.
Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing, for corporations, states and the federal government.
Companies like CorCraft in New York manage labor in the state’s prisons. They’re funded by the state’s budget, and boast they’re New York state’s preferred choice for “office chairs, desks, panel systems, classroom furniture, cleaning, vehicle, and personal care supplies, and more.”
“Summer Sizzles with Classroom Furniture from Corcraft,” their website declares.
They also claim to help in “the department’s overall mission to prepare incarcerated individuals for release through skill development, work ethic, respect and responsibility.”
The people behind the “sizzling” furniture beg to differ.
In the 12 years he was incarcerated in New York state, Dyjuan Tatro was forced to work a variety of jobs, from making desks to license plates. “At the end, I didn’t have a resume,” he tells Truthdig. “I didn’t get one thing to help me be successful on the outside from the prison. No resume, no job experience… Just $40 and a bus ticket — from 12 years of prison labor, I couldn’t use any of it to get a meaningfully paying job.”
Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, an organization devoted to eradicating unjust prison practices, goes further. “It’s slavery,” she tells Truthdig.
The 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, left an important exception: it’s still legal to garnish wages, or more commonly, refuse to pay incarcerated people for forced labor. “As a result, incarcerated people live in slavery-like conditions,” Tylek adds.
Of course, there are nuances. For example, trading community service, like, say, picking up trash, in exchange for not serving time, is one example of a noncarceral approach. But incarceration changes the equation. Tylek notes that it’s not just about the miniscule (or nonexistent) wages. It’s compelling people to work, with the alternative being a stint in solitary and other punishments, like refusing to let them see relatives, consequences that are meted out by guards. She also notes that they have to work in dangerous trades they may not be trained for, including industrial-sized laundries or ovens.
Despite what someone did or did not do, to end up behind bars, coercing them into performing free labor is wrong, Tylek notes. “I like to ask people the question, ‘Under what circumstances is slavery OK?” she tells Truthdig.
“If you can’t answer that question, the answer is, slavery is never OK.”
Just because it’s legal, doesn’t make it right.
I never understood why prisoners get paid so little. They are usually there because they don’t have financial stability in the first place. Wouldn’t a bit of savings help put them on better footing so not to turn back to crime?
Recidivism is the point, also known as it’s not a bug it’s a feature.
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But who would make cheap license plates then. Who would pay for the profits of the private prison owners or all the predatory companies providing “services” for the prisons and prisoners. I would bet, that most people in Alabama prisons are not white, so you really think Alabama law makers give a rats ass about their prospecs after prison?
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Perverse incentives at work. If you allow the inmates to build a saving and skills to break the recidivism cycle, you are also working to reduce the size of your labor force.
I was a corrections officer in a very liberal state with a lot of evergreen trees. It is all just $$$$ related. There is a distinct lack of wrap-around services for the incarcerated simply to keep the door revolving.
Sure, they’ll come up with these silly “action plans” and “goals to reduce x” x being recidivism, prison violence, PREA, etc. What that turns into is them moving the goalposts so it looks like they’re doing something when reality is they want to keep bodies in cells.
Examples of this include changes to what counts as recidivism. Got out of prison, but went back in on a different kind of charge? Not recidivism, according to my state. Gotta be the exact same charge to count. In some cases even a change in the degree of the charge exempts them from recidivism stats.
Regarding violence, they simply made sure to label one inmate in every altercation the aggressor. In doing so they cut prison violence stats in half, since every beating barring multiman fights are now a fighter and victim, not two fighters. Voila, looks good on paper, the prison industrial complex keeps churning.
Prison rape is apparently solved by spray painting a helpline by all the payphones that doesn’t do shit except make you look like a snitch for telling about being raped because they bungle every investigation so often that it’s impossible to report anything with any kind of anonymity, inmate or not.
Tl;dr it’s fucked, it’s not changing, private or state ran doesn’t matter.
So do you think that better halfway houses/better post-incarceration services would make a dent in our prison population? And I’m guessing that it shouldn’t be a private as that makes perverse incentives all the worse.
Are there issues at public prisons with the revolving door at the same scale as private ones? Why do state run prisons have perverse incentives if they’re not there to make a profit? I have a hunch that it’s about being funded like schools are (I don’t know how prisons are funded)
A lot of the violence seems to be a culture that’s hard to change. Is sexual assault training lacking in prisons? Do they not hire the right specialists to deal with these cases? Do you see any practices that might reduce violence in prisons or after prison?
I want to know how things can change if there’s the political capital to do so. I really appreciate your comment too!
I’ll go down your questions in order.
Yes. Better housing is a must, however I think the biggest impact could be made by pushing laws that gives incentive towards hiring people with a record. We need to break down the largest barrier which typically tends to return individuals back to crime and that’s establishing a good income.
What would likely help more than halfway houses would honestly be apartment vouchers for first/last/deposit in a regulated apartment rental system. Halfway houses are usually plagued by innumerable issues like being built in poorer neighborhoods farther away from where any good work can be found. They get NIMBY’d and there’s too much “take it or leave it” attitude. You got bunked up next to someone with schizophrenia that screams at all hours? Well sucks to be you, take it or leave it ex con. Once decent housing and income become more readily available, suddenly people aren’t turning to selling fentanyl or stealing shit to put food on the table.
Yes, other than how well compensated the staff are, they’re mostly the same shit present found in a different wrapping paper. While profit isn’t supposed to be the motive, they certainly rub shoulders with Correctional industries (likely called different things in different states, but mine called it this.) which sells things like those ambiguous looking office chairs you find in state offices that sell for 800-1200 dollars all built by incarcerated making 1.37 an hour (might be a bit more now, but that was near top dollar in 2021 when I quit.) The other part of it is that once you get to the level internally to make change as an admin, you’re usually too deep in the kool-aid and the primary focus for everyone is “rising tide raises all boats” so every administrator is incentivised to spend as little as possible on anything that benefits the incarcerated or the staff (which, by and large would likely lead to better treatment of individuals, as it just so happens miserable staff take out their bullshit on the easily accessible population in their care.) Not that spending on staff would eliminate these issues, but it couldn’t hurt. Nevertheless, spend the least amount possible and schmooze your way into the next position. Nepotism is a huge issue as well, and they will create loopholes for their chosen applicants to secure positions they otherwise wouldn’t be qualified for.
Violence is part of the culture. Hard to get away from it at all, even if you’re trying to. It’s impossible to prevent violence, but I will say that the immediate response does help mitigate the level of damage most times. Sexual assault training is the same in prison as it is everywhere in my state. You fill out a 3-5 question form that basically amounts to “Ya rape anyone?” “Been accused of raping anyone?” “Any plans to rape someone?” “If yes, please explain”. Followed by a PowerPoint you watch yearly online. That’s it. No. They do not hire the right people for the jobs needed most of the time. Not 100% the states fault simply because people don’t really like working in prison most of the time, and those that do usually aren’t qualified. They hire investigators from Gap loss prevention and Casino security, and expect them to be able to sus out organized gang crime. They hire fresh grads who really need real world experience before being slapped into a sex offender treatment program to sit there and listen to guys get off recalling their crimes. The people who do have experience know better.
I don’t really know what practices aside from common sense and just a smidgen of empathy might fix. Given that when you force two grown adults in a 6x12’ cell that don’t get along, and when they explain this the common response is “fight, fuck, or get along.” Which leads to things like This I was there that day, and this is the living unit I worked in at the time(different shift) but still. They absolutely had every tool available to prevent this, every warning possible. Goldsby literally told them what was happening prior to him going off, and even asked them to just look up Mungers crimes (any not half stupid officer knows how to do this, we have access to police records, statements, court reports, etc.) It would have taken 5 minutes to see Goldsby did in fact have a sister, who was in fact raped by his cell mate.
I don’t know what the solution is, but if any swamp needs to be drained, it’s state prison system administration.
They’re there because they commit crimes. Jail isn’t a hotel.
Could it possibly be, just possibly, that there is a step between paying prisoners far less than minimum wage and making prison like a hotel?
Again: They’re in prison for a reason. Why are they allowed to make money in first place? All of their salary should 100% go towards paying the expenses of their jail time to relieve the taxpayers.
The state has a legal duty to guarantee prisoners’ safety. Forcing them to labor risks that safety. Labor should be voluntary and include pay
Prison is for punishment not for making money.
OK but the state has a duty to protect you while in custody. Is forced labor upholding that duty?
I know you Americans do everything a bit different but here in Europe prison is for rehabilitation, at least on paper.
I’m not an American, but I still don’t believe in rehabilitation - at least for some crimes.
Prison as punishment (or deterrent) has been proven to not work.
Prison works as temporarily removing dangerous people from the population, and when used to rehabilitate and teach marketable skills. Especially paired with laws that forbid employers from discriminating against former convicts.
Why are they forced to work in the first place? And “because they’re in prison” is not an answer. Prisons are not work houses.
Exactly!
Traditionally, prison has not forced people to work. Why must they now? Explain it. Again, “because they’re in prison” is not an answer. Prison is for locking people away from society, not making them slaves.
…for the great majority of human history, forced labor and prison sentences have gone hand in hand.
Since I am not a criminal I actually don’t really care why inmates are “now forced” to work. But since I’m a taxpayer I’d prefer their salary is used to lower the amount taxpayers need to pay.
So everyone in prison is a criminal? No one is innocent? You could never be accidentally imprisoned? Or someone you care about? Or would that not matter?
What if you were a criminal?
In that case, it should be across the board. Charge them all to be housed or charge none of them. Otherwise, you’re disincentivizing work which is a terrible idea
Why are the taxpayers paying so much for prisoners when they have to work at burger king to afford soap?
Yeah, that’s the question. Let the inmates pay. And for being able to do so: offer them to work for it.
Once a criminal has served their time, then they need to be reintegrated with society or else they are going to fail. So what’s the realistic plan here? Currently we have a revolving door because the US doesn’t do rehabilitation. We do punishment. Both are warranted depending on the severity of the crime.
Do you think someone should lose their job and home over an unpaid parking ticket? One of the states in the south (it might be Alabama, can’t recall) is imprisoning people for unpaid medical bills from hospitals.
Therapy after jail time.
Sweet summer child…
Many of them are there because they’ve committed crimes of poverty (stealing necessities, passing bad checks for necessities, “trespassing” due to homelessness). Or because they did something that everyone does (like smoke weed) but only poor and/or people of color are incarcerated for. Poor people are much more likely to be arrested and being arrested makes people more likely to be poor:
https://www.masslegalservices.org/system/files/library/The_Relationship_between_Poverty_and_Mass_Incarceration.pdf
the choice always comes down to “do you want less crime?” or “do you want the same amount of crime but to punish people who aren’t white by continuing slavery?”
because the solution to the first is to stop doing the second
and you can argue about it, but unfortunately all scientific studies support that conclusion. So the question actually is “do you want less crime, as borne out by reality or do you want the same amount of crime but fantasize it is helping society somehow to punish people who are overwhelmingly not white with slavery?”
I hate crime too, but prison often just creates worse criminals. If we do t address the root cause of a lot of minor crime, then it just gets worse over time.