San Quentin

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

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….

Why unions can’t ignore incarcerated workers
| | | |

Why unions can’t ignore incarcerated workers

An estimated two thirds of the more than one million prisoners in the United States today are incarcerated workers. With many prisoners earning less than a dollar an hour, and those who refuse to work often facing vicious retaliation in the form of punitive solitary confinement, labor exploitation is an important part of what makes…

“Humanizing the Prisons” The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1911, issue. Vol. 108, No. 2 (p.170-179).
| |

“Humanizing the Prisons” The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1911, issue. Vol. 108, No. 2 (p.170-179).

August 1911Humanizing the Prisonsby Morrison I. Swift The State of Vermont contains a prison where the inmates are treated upon a novel plan. They are trusted and treated like other human beings; they come and go almost as freely as the members of the jailer’s own family; so far as possible whatever suggests punishment or…