Prison Work

Forced Labor Continues in Colorado, Years After Vote to End Prison Slavery  – Bolts
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Forced Labor Continues in Colorado, Years After Vote to End Prison Slavery  – Bolts

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,…

Florida keeps using unpaid prison labor to prepare for hurricanes
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Florida keeps using unpaid prison labor to prepare for hurricanes

  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…

Celebrating Labor Day by Ending Slave Labor
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Celebrating Labor Day by Ending Slave Labor

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…

GHRC Prison Labor Report Cited as Montana Inmates Deployed to Fight Wildfire
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GHRC Prison Labor Report Cited as Montana Inmates Deployed to Fight Wildfire

Montana state officials praise fire crew with prison inmates; national report, ACLU question pay Keila SzpallerAugust 27, 2023 Daily Montanan (read original here) The Montana Department of Corrections deployed 15 inmates and three correctional officers to help fight a wildfire in the state earlier this month, the DOC said in a news release. The inmates…

Laundry soap made by prison labor selling for triple the price | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
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Laundry soap made by prison labor selling for triple the price | The Asahi Shimbun: Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis

A popular laundry soap made by prisoners is being sold online at more than three times the list price after production fell due to novel coronavirus restrictions on prison work. Officials believe that scalpers are buying the soap in bulk to make a killing through resale. The Blue Stick soap, billed as a “superstar stain…

Was that made by Arizona prison labor? Prisoners make many everyday items
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Was that made by Arizona prison labor? Prisoners make many everyday items

Your child is sleeping on a mattress made from prisoners’ clothes. At state universities, the bedding used in your kids’ dorm rooms comes from T-shirts and other clothing confiscated from prisoners during quarterly “contraband searches.” If a prisoner has too many T-shirts (they’re allowed just a few), or if the “D.O.C.” screenprint wears off, it’s…

Arizona changed how it sells prisoners to companies. The state raked in millions, but workers were neglected
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Arizona changed how it sells prisoners to companies. The state raked in millions, but workers were neglected

Clothed in orange with elbow-high rubber gloves and large black masks, a line of workers along a conveyor belt pull lead from cathode-ray tubes. At a construction warehouse, more workers in orange jumpsuits piece together wall frames for single-family homes until one shoots a nail into his knee with a nail gun. At a canning…

US prisoners have become modern slaves
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US prisoners have become modern slaves

Birds fly near the US Capitol at sunrise, on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, in this Feb 8, 2022 file photo. [Photo/Agencies] Americans tend to be indignant about “forced labor” in other countries but are unaware of the prevalence of forced labor in their own country. According to a report, “Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated…

Exploiting Prison Workers for Cheap Sheets
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Exploiting Prison Workers for Cheap Sheets

It took Johnny Perez over four years of making hundreds of bedsheets every day at a factory to reach the top pay tier: about 32 cents an hour, nearly double his starting wage. He was one of the highest-paid workers at Coxsackie Correctional Facility—a textile manufacturer run by the New York State prison system. When…

California lawmakers revive effort to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes
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California lawmakers revive effort to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes

Last year, voters in Vermont, Oregon, Tennessee and Alabama approved historic ballot measures that removed slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime from their state constitutions, which could lead to limitations on forced prison labor. They joined a growing list of states that passed similar initiatives in recent years, including Nebraska, Utah and Colorado….