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American prison labor camps
'Prison slavery' in America
Prisons can force inmates to work for little or no wage per the 13th Amendment . Once you’ve been convicted of a crime, you are in essence a slave of the state .
Private prisons, corporations profiting from cheap prison labor and some politicians benefit at the expense of the poor. Lets follow the money to see how American ' prison slavery ' works.
Sell prison labor
"There are over 870,000 inmates working full-time in American prisons. Their median wage in state and federal prisons is around 20 and 31 cents an hour, respectively. In Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas prisoners are forced to work for free.
Inmate workers are not considered "employees" under the law. No disability or worker's compensation in the event of an injury. No Social Security withholdings, sick time, or overtime pay." - Prospect
Racism
"Targeted mass incarceration policies and racial bias, have led to more people of color in prisons and jails." - Talk Poverty
Private prisons
Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections) run for-profit firms. They've expanded across America based on info from 10-K reports.
Credit: Anna Gunderson
Click on this map for details on a facility and the State's policy on prison labor wages. Wage details table .
Use prison labor
"America spends over $80 billion annually to incarcerate 2.2 million people in deplorable facilities. The social costs of our failing criminal legal system are carried largely by low-income and minority communities.
Private and public actors financially exploit our criminal legal system. They make money of each segment of our punishment system. They have created a legal form of human trafficking that targets the poor." - Worth Rises
When is slavery acceptable?
"Incarcerated persons or, more specifically, the “duly convicted,” lack a constitutional right to be free of forced servitude. Further, this forced labor is not checked by many of the protections enjoyed by workers laboring in the exact same jobs on the other side of the 20-foot barbed-wire electric fence." - The Atlantic
" Starbucks holiday products , and McDonald’s uniforms have all been made (or are still made) with low-wage prison labor. 40% of the firefighters battling California’s outbreak of forest fires are prison inmates working for $2 an hour ." - Talk Poverty
"Tyson Foods uses labor from the Wilkes Correctional Center." - Marshall Project
" Fidelity Investments is a funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is deeply invested in supporting Corrections Corporation of American (CCA) and Geo Group (Geo)." - Daily Kos
Exploit prison labor
The $80 billion-a-year American incarceration industry has a vested interest in the fate of private prisons and donates heavily to politicians.
Geo Group and CoreCivic led spending on contributions and lobbying at $12.7 million and $7.9 million, respectively.
Prison service companies gave $395,599 to political parties, 76 percent of which went to the Republican Party." - Follow The Money
Marco Rubio has a history of close ties to GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest for-profit prison company. While Rubio was leading the Florida House of Representatives, GEO was awarded a state government contract for a $110 million prison. Over his career, Rubio has received nearly $40,000 in campaign donations from GEO, making him the Senate’s top career recipient of contributions from the company .
The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom, often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children, immigrants and the poor." Washington Post
ALEC and Prison Labor
ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in twenty-five states.
"Prison labor is part of a “confluence of similar interests” among politicians and corporations.” said Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News.
As decades of model legislation reveals, ALEC has been at the center of this confluence." - The Nation
What can be done
"Prisons have no incentive to pay inmates. Unlike workers in the free market, who can decide where to work, inmates do not have a choice between employers.
Bring prison jobs under the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which sets minimum standards for wages and working conditions." - Prospect
Mass Incarceration in the US
Federal courts have held that prison laborers are not “employees” under the meaning of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes wage and overtime pay standards.