CORPORATE USE
OF PRISON LABOR
Many prisoners have found an alternative to the long boring life of prison
life. Many inmates have begun to start to go to work. When you think of
prisoners at work you probably picture a chain gang digging with shovels
or sitting at a table making license plates, but could you picture a convicted
prisoner helping out at a school or a retirement home. Well this is happening
in prisons all over the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union is the countries biggest protector of
individual rights. The ACLUís goal is to litigate, legislate, and educate
the nation about all issues that contend with individual rights and our
freedom. Roger Baldwin founded the ACLU in 1920 to make sure that that
the government doesnít try to expand its authority at the expense of individual
rights. If the government tries to take our rights away, which they have,
the ACLU fights back. The ACLU have grown to 275,000 members and is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan public interest organization devoted only to protecting the
basic civil liberties of all Americans. The ACLU has been recognized globally
as the nations foremost advocate of individual rights.
So you are probably wondering what the ACLU has to do with prison labor.
Well, prisoners are people and they have rights just like everyone else.
So it is the obligation of the ACLU to protect those rights not just from
the government, but from the prisons of which they are incarcerated in.
Another reason why the ACLU got involved in prison labor is to protect
our rights. Prison labor is a very cheap and popular way of producing goods
and services at a low cost to a company. The ACLU wants to make sure that
prison labor doesnít take jobs away from honest Americans who need them.
Congress created the Prison Industry Enhancement (PIE) Program in 1979
to encourage state and local governments to establish employment opportunities
for prisoners. The program is designed to place inmates in a working environment,
and allow them to develop skills to give them more potential for rehabilitation
and employment upon their release. The PIE Program allows private companies
to institute joint ventures with state and local prisons to produce goods
and services using prison labor. The PIE Program has two primary objectives.
Their first is to make products and services that allow inmates to contribute
to society, help pay for the cost of their incarceration, compensate crime
victims, and provide support to their families. Their second objective
is to lower the amount of time an inmate waists, increase job skills, and
improve the transition from when an inmate is released and let out into
the community.
About one hundred companies out there today are employing thousands of
inmates. The inmates do anything from making cars to shampoo bottles to
telemarketing. Prison labor is very poplar and there is a long waiting
list of inmates waiting to get on it. In the state of California there
is something called the Prison Industry Authority. The PIA is an inmate
work program that provides jobs for inmates in California. The PIA provides
work for over seven thousand inmates in seventy different industries in
twenty-three prisons. The inmates make all kinds of different products
like clothing, signs, furniture, coffee and much more. Inmates working
receive anywhere form $.30 to $.90 cents per hour.
Prison labor has a huge impact on the nation's economy. The Unites States
spends about thirty billion dollars each year to house the rapidly growing
1.2 million people behind bars. Our taxes will keep growing higher as long
as the amount of prisoners keeps growing. This is where prison labor can
help pay for all of this. The number of prisoners working is going down
though. In 1994 forty-six prisons were surveyed and found that only 7.75
percent of men and 9 percent of women were doing productive labor. The
nationís goal is about at twenty-five percent. 80 percent of the money
that the prisoners make is put toward incarceration costs, restitution
payments to crime victims, support payments to the inmateís family, and
state and local income tax withholding. The other 20 percent of the money
they make is set aside for the inmate to receive upon release. Proposition
139 also allows an inmate to receive unemployment benefits when they are
released just as if they had just lost a job.
The biggest controversy is prison labor is the use of chain gangs. The
ACLU is against chain gangs and they say that it is slave labor. The 13th
amendment states that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except
as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
So the prisons have a right to use chain gangs, but are they moral? According
to the presidentís secretary of labor, Robert Reich, prison labor should
put the U.S. ìoutside the community of civilized nationsî. The idea of
chain gangs is to serve as a form of punishment for usually non-violent
offenders. The ACLU feels that chain gangs are a form of slavery. They
are very stressful and unsanitary and have a lack of medical treatment.
There is no limit to how much work a guard can give an inmate. In Maryland
there is a prison working to reduce the dangers of chain gangs by giving
the workers stun belts. This will lower the amount of supervisors and tension
on the workers, but is causing uproar about the cruelty of chain gangs.
In California, there is something called the computer-refurbishing program.
This is a program that has a group of trained prisoners fixing computers
and redistributing them. They have provided over 35,500 computer to schools
since it was founded in 1994. Private companies donate computers, and the
prisoners fix and update them as nonprofit groups distribute them to K-12
grade schools. Companies like Microsoft and Intel also donate computer
programs and parts thinking that the students at the schools will see their
name. The prisoners donít get paid for this work, but it is a much better
use of prisoners than chain gangs. Some of the prisoners get skills that
could let them earn up to 25,000 dollars as computer technicians. A great
way of rehabilitating prisoners says the ACLU. Other companies in Minnesota
and Hawaii have followed their lead.
There is a huge question about forced prison labor. The answer is yes.
In some prisons, like in Monterey, California, inmates are put at sewing
machines and made to make blue work shirts for $.45 cents an hour. If they
refuse, they have their canteen privileges took and, most importantly,
they lose ìgood timeî credit that reduces prison time. "They put you on
a machine and expect you to put out for them", says convicted kidnapper
Dino Naverette. "Nobody wants to do that. These jobs are jokes to most
inmates here." California and Oregon was doing what the U.S. protested
at China for - exporting the prison-made goods to Asia. "You might just
as well call this slave labor, then," says Navarrete, "if they're selling
it overseas.î Federal law prohibits domestic commerce in prison-made goods
unless inmates are paid "prevailing wage". Because the law does not apply
to exports, the prisons can get away with paying the inmates $.45 cents
per hour.
While doing this research project I asked myself what I thought about prison
labor since my knowledge on the topic has grew. Prison labor can go both
ways. It is a good thing overall that prisoner are helping to pay for what
is costs to keep someone in jail for the years they are in. Also, it is
a good way of using up the time that most prisoners waist away in jail.
It does, though, take jobs away from the law-abiding citizen. It is good
that we have organization tike the ACLU and the AFL-CIO to make sure that
the prisoners at work are being paid and treaded fairly, to make sure that
they are working in sanitary and proper conditions, and to ensure the right
of all citizens are protected. Chain gangs are a form of slavery. Prisoners
are made to do painful work in extreme heat and cold while being chained
to other prisoners at gunpoint. The supervisor can determine the extent
of how long the prisoners will work for. They can extend the amount of
work at anytime if they wish. The prisoners work in unsanitary conditions
without any kind of medical treatment. How would you like to work in these
conditions?