[Issue 111] Let's talk about prison labor
Today we have a guest writer, Christine Hamann, who helped us document everything we think you need to know about prison labor, especially in context of COVID and the worst fire season yet in California. This is one of our most important newsletter issues yet.
Every year it seems we learn about yet another company, industry, or service that exploits the perverse incentives of prison labor.
2020 is no different (at this point, do you expect it to be?).
This summer's outbreak of wildfires in California has led to large-scale public awareness of Cal Fire’s dependence on prison labor in its hand crews—and mostly because many of those crews were unavailable to fight the hundreds of new fires.
Why’s that? We’ll get there.
Let’s back up...
Prison labor has existed at increasing scale since the “end” of slavery in 1865. Wardens and prison owners realized the quick economic gain: hiring out prison gangs, winning state and private contracts for manual labor like building roads, deeply undercutting competition, and paying prisoners nothing.
It has evolved since then.
Today, the federal government and every state except Alaska operate correctional factories. In total, 542 prisons employ 67,000 inmates and produce more than $1 billion in goods and services.
And the undercuts are the same—inmates are paid as little as 15 cents an hour. Inmate laborers in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and Texas are paid nothing. Competition cannot deliver at that level. And, state correctional factories can become “preferred source” providers, meaning state agencies can purchase goods without putting a contract out for bid.
These perverse incentives are repeatedly exploited—at a human cost.
We cannot expect benefactors of the current system—private companies producing goods, prisons winning contracts and receiving funding for their programs, federal and state governments maintaining trimmer budgets—to want to reform the US criminal justice system and end over-incarceration.
Proponents of the prison labor system argue for skills development and training inmates acquire for life back on the outside.
But if your economic incentives are to keep costs down, why retrain new inmates?
The Seattle Times found programs weren’t using inmate laborers who would be released, they were using inmates serving life terms, with no chance for using said skills on the outside. [Check out their incredible reporting here]
Inmates are not just producing things like dorm room furniture, staffing call centers, or recycling computer parts; we rely on inmate labor for essential goods and services.
Enter COVID-19. When New York faced a critical hand sanitizer shortage in response to the pandemic, Governor Guomo announced the state’s immediate production of 100,000 gallons per week. What he didn’t announce is that the people making the hand sanitizer were making 16 cents an hour. [USA Today covered the story]
We paid inmates pennies on the dollar to save our lives during a global pandemic, but did not race to protect them: in California, outbreaks spread from prison to prison through new inmates and transfers. Overcrowding, lack of PPE, and lack of clinical treatment was reported.
And then the fires started.
California has used prisoner labor to fight wildfires since WWII.
Today, Cal Fire operates 196 hand crews, consisting of a fire captain and 15 to 17 firefighting inmates. These inmates make $2.90 - $5.12 per day, plus additional $1 per day during active firefighting. Twelve of the 43 CA prison fire camps went on lockdown after they were exposed to covid, prohibiting inmates from firefighting duty. California, only due to its failure to prevent or respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, also granted early releases starting in July, including for some firefighting-trained inmates. Half of the total firefighter inmate force was unavailable for the response.
And the argument that we’re training valuable skills for life on the outside? Once released, inmate firefighters are prevented from becoming firefighters due to their records. Luckily, the 2020 fires seem to be the last straw: the bill AB 2147 to expunge records for inmate firefighters has passed the California State Assembly and is pending in the State Senate.
While the fires burn on, we have to ask ourselves: how did we get into a system where, without the inhumanly cheap labor of and risk to firefighting inmates, we cannot respond to growing fire seasons in the face of climate change?
The financial incentives always prevail.
By maintaining a cheaper wildfire fighting force, the state maintains a trimmer budget. It fits within the incentives in other industries: California, with the second-highest prisoner population in the US, has the largest state inmate labor program. In 2014, it produced $180.2M in revenue.
Unwinding system incentives is hard work. If inmates were paid minimum wage, received basic worker protections, and were allowed to unionize, the unwinding would continue.
As a consumer: know your power. Collective activism works, and you can apply that pressure to the prison labor market.
Know who makes what you are buying. Start by checking out and sharing this ABL resource with all the research we could find on companies using prison labor.
Christine is a systems thinker who believes in the power of justice-based solutions. With a background in global health delivery, indigenous and rural healthcare, and health tech, she now spends her days working on food access as preventative healthcare in the US. She's an avid wilderness lover and is keeping an eye out for the right dog to adopt this year.
