The incarcerated workforce represents a multi-billion dollar market, with prisoners put to work producing a wide range of goods and services in return for their pennies per hour “salary”. What’s more, the work undertaken is seldom accompanied by training or development to help prepare them for a career upon their release.

That’s the finding of a recent report from the University of Chicago and the American Civil Liberties Union, which explores the prison labor situation across the United States.

“As our report describes in detail, the labor conditions of incarcerated workers in many U.S. prisons violate the most fundamental human rights to life and dignity,” the authors explain. “In any other workplace, these conditions would be shocking and plainly unlawful. The many incarcerated workers we interviewed told us story after story of inadequate equipment and training, punishments doled out if workers refused to labor, and an overall helplessness to a government institution functioning as both jailer and boss.”

Exceptional circumstances

The roots of prison labor are found in the “exception clause” to the 13th Amendment, which says that slavery is banned except for convicted criminals. This permits prisoners to be underpaid and generally excluded from workplace safety laws. Indeed, with the prison population highly racialized, the process disproportionately indentures Black people to this day.

The report explains that around 65% of the prison population is working, which amounts to around 800,000 people. Indeed, 76% of the prison population said that they faced punishment, ranging from solitary confinement to a loss of family visitation, if they refused to work.

The prison workers also have no control over the work they do and are excluded from any of the protections, such as minimum wages or overtime protections, that are the norm on the outside. They also don’t get adequate training or even equipment, which can make their work extremely unsafe. This results in 64% of incarcerated workers saying that they are worried about their safety during work.

This market is big business for the prison service, with the report highlighting how around $2 billion in goods are produced each year, with $9 billion worth of prison maintenance services performed per year. Despite the huge figures, the authors believe the likely figures are much higher due to the difficulties in tracking prison work.

“The United States has a long, problematic history of using incarcerated workers as a source of cheap labor and to subsidize the costs of our bloated prison system,” the authors say. “Incarcerated workers are stripped of even the most minimal protections against labor exploitation and abuse. They are paid pennies for their work even as they produce billions of dollars for states and the federal government. It’s past time we treat incarcerated workers with dignity. If states and the federal government can afford to incarcerate 1.2 million people, they can afford to pay them fairly for their work.”

Stopping exploitation

The report makes a number of recommendations to reduce the exploitation of prison workers, including:

• Ensure that all work in prisons is fully voluntary by eliminating any laws and policies that punish incarcerated people who are unable or unwilling to work.
• Allow incarcerated workers the same labor protections afforded to other workers in the United States, including minimum wage, health and safety standards, unionization, protection from discrimination, and speedy access to redress when their rights are violated.
• Institute comprehensive safety and training programs for all work assignments in correctional institutions.
• Invest in prison work programs that provide incarcerated workers with marketable skills and training that will help them to find employment after release and eliminate barriers to employment after release.
• Amend the US Constitution to abolish the 13th Amendment’s exclusion that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.

“The U.S. prison system claims to offer rehabilitation to its population, but prison labor programs do just the opposite: they degrade, dehumanize and further cripple incarcerated workers,” the authors conclude. “The many incarcerated workers we interviewed voiced a strong desire to engage productively in society under dignified conditions. It’s time for the U.S. government and prison authorities to give them this chance, not merely rhetorically but in practice.”