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Prison labor is the use of incarcerated individuals to perform work or provide services. Prison labor can take many forms, including manufacturing, agriculture, construction, and services. In some cases, prison labor may be voluntary and the individuals may receive compensation for their work. In other cases, prison labor may be mandatory and the individuals may not receive any compensation. Prison labor has been a controversial topic, as some argue that it provides valuable work experience and skills for inmates, while others argue that it exploits incarcerated individuals and undermines the labor market. There are also concerns about the conditions of prison labor, including safety, wages, and working hours. Governments and organizations have different policies and regulations regarding prison labor.
Japan’s government plans to have prison inmates process scallops for export, in order to overcome a bottleneck arising from China’s ban on imported seafood from its neighbor, according to a Mainichi newspaper report. To meet the hygiene standards required for export to Europe and North America, the program will allow qualified inmates to commute to…
Missouri volunteer prison labor tends gardens that yield about 100 tons of fresh produce a year. For the most part, that food goes to local charities. The prisoners who grow it complain they get little fresh food. Instead, they get a lot of bologna. They say they’re served portions they consider too small and unappetizing….
A report published Thursday by United Nations human rights experts condemns systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system and policing, while describing “appalling” prison conditions and decrying forced unpaid convict labor as a “contemporary form of slavery.” The U.N. International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the Context of Law…
Photograph by Karen Almond / Courtesy Met Opera The epigraph to Sister Helen Prejean’s book “Dead Man Walking,” published in 1993, is from “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”: “I went right along, not fixing up any particular plan, but just trusting in Providence to put the right words in my mouth when the time come:…
by Dyjuan Tatro I was paid 10 cents an hour to do menial work that taught no skills or life lessons. Without a college-in-prison degree, I’d probably be back in prison today. Almost immediately after I was sent to prison, I was assigned to a “program”, the term American prison officials use for a job. I…
Photo by Christine Roy Twenty-first-century fascism is the dictatorship of big money. Finance, fossil fuels giants, other large corporations, and the military-industrial complex, have effectively merged with the state, calling the shots in Washington. An immense surveillance and propaganda machine is at their disposal. Narrative and information control is the first line of defense but the militarized…
Throughout Abron Arrington’s decades-long incarceration in Colorado, he often found himself in solitary confinement—not because he was causing trouble, but simply because he refused to work. He didn’t see the point given he was paid 13 cents an hour and figured his time could be better spent learning physics. Before Arrington was incarcerated in 1989,…
Across a sterile white table in a windowless room, I’m introduced to a woman in her forties. She has a square jaw and blonde hair that has been pulled back from her face with a baby-blue scrunchie. “The girls call me Marmalade,” she says, inviting me to use her prison nickname. Early on a Wednesday…
As Floridians prepared for Hurricane Idalia to make landfall on the upper central coast earlier this week, several counties deployed unpaid prison labor, as they have in the past, to fill the sandbags used to prevent flood damage. At least four counties — including Lake County, Polk County, Taylor County and Flagler County — relied on…
Slavery’s legacy — from its beginnings to today’s prison-industrial complex — has endured, and an end to slavery requires real reform. Reform has to be brought to our prison system, as many incarcerated individuals do seek out experiences and opportunities to build essential skills needed to find gainful employment after release. But rather than creating…
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