Incarcerated people work for cents on the dollar or for free to make goods you use.


Brittany White, 37, was arrested for marijuana trafficking in Alabama in 2009. She went to trial to contest the charges — after all, just a year prior the United States president had admitted, cheekily, that inhaling was “the point.”

She was sentenced to 20 years. But her sentence was meted out in portions, based on good behavior, and she, posing no discernable public safety risk for selling a plant increasingly legal in states all across the U.S., was allowed to work on the outside.

She got a job at a Burger King.

But the state of Alabama took a significant portion of her paltry minimum wage. “They charged me $25 a week for transportation,” she tells Truthdig. “And they take away 40% of your check. It’s egregious to be making minimum wage, and then to have so much taken away by the state.”

Minimum wage in Alabama is $7.25.

Still, White considers herself lucky. Even her paltry earnings were better than nothing. She was able to purchase soap from the commissary. The prison-provided soap is full of lye, she says, which you definitely do not want near your private parts.

Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing. While corporate culprits are commonly blamed for exploiting the labor of incarcerated people, it’s actually primarily states and the federal government who take advantage, and make the public unwittingly complicit.

Got a car? Your license plate was likely made by inmates. In New York, inmates make the trash cans. High school desks are often made on the inside; so are glasses for Medicare patients.

Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing, for corporations, states and the federal government.

Companies like CorCraft in New York manage labor in the state’s prisons. They’re funded by the state’s budget, and boast they’re New York state’s preferred choice for “office chairs, desks, panel systems, classroom furniture, cleaning, vehicle, and personal care supplies, and more.”

“Summer Sizzles with Classroom Furniture from Corcraft,” their website declares.

They also claim to help in “the department’s overall mission to prepare incarcerated individuals for release through skill development, work ethic, respect and responsibility.”

The people behind the “sizzling” furniture beg to differ.

In the 12 years he was incarcerated in New York state, Dyjuan Tatro was forced to work a variety of jobs, from making desks to license plates. “At the end, I didn’t have a resume,” he tells Truthdig. “I didn’t get one thing to help me be successful on the outside from the prison. No resume, no job experience… Just $40 and a bus ticket — from 12 years of prison labor, I couldn’t use any of it to get a meaningfully paying job.”

Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, an organization devoted to eradicating unjust prison practices, goes further. “It’s slavery,” she tells Truthdig.

The 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, left an important exception: it’s still legal to garnish wages, or more commonly, refuse to pay incarcerated people for forced labor. “As a result, incarcerated people live in slavery-like conditions,” Tylek adds.

Of course, there are nuances. For example, trading community service, like, say, picking up trash, in exchange for not serving time, is one example of a noncarceral approach. But incarceration changes the equation. Tylek notes that it’s not just about the miniscule (or nonexistent) wages. It’s compelling people to work, with the alternative being a stint in solitary and other punishments, like refusing to let them see relatives, consequences that are meted out by guards. She also notes that they have to work in dangerous trades they may not be trained for, including industrial-sized laundries or ovens.

Despite what someone did or did not do, to end up behind bars, coercing them into performing free labor is wrong, Tylek notes. “I like to ask people the question, ‘Under what circumstances is slavery OK?” she tells Truthdig.

“If you can’t answer that question, the answer is, slavery is never OK.”


    • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Simple.

      We weren’t bombed out from WW2 and back then, we had factories. More than anyone else in fact. America’s ‘golden age’ had nothing to do with American exceptionalism (lols) and everything to do with no competition (but we still ran Keynesian capitalism, the New Deal, back then, so about a 10x bigger piece of the pie went to workers, affording them the American Dream, aka the middle class).

      Add to that, the Marshall plan, which paid for Europe’s reconstruction but attached to that money came the demand to end colonialism (at least overtly). So America was pretty liberal at the helm for a minute there.

      But then came Nixon and the conservatives in the late 60s, Henry Kissinger going on about there being an “excess of democracy” (seriously when I first found out about this in 9th grade it made me sick to my stomach) was saying the quiet part out loud. The rich wanted to scale back the New Deal and return to laissez-faire. Enter Milton Freidman. Cue up Pinochet, Reagan and Thatcher - all peas in a pod. Citizens United. Regulatory Capture. Which brings us to today. Profit over people, wealth caused sociopathy (seriously, the paranoia, greed, and inability to form relationships with any real depth unmoors the psyche from society, thus, empathy atrophies and moral/emotional growth cease. “Money is the root of all evil”. Hoarding money, withholding help, in the face of suffering will slowly chip away at you, until yr just as evil as well) and legislatures that are disgustingly cheap to buy. We’re seeing the world remade into a giant money extraction farm. And we are the tax chattle. All so the rich never have to work a day of their lives.

      Side note; Reagan slogan campaigning was “Make America Great Again”. Yep, Trump stole it (prob w/o paying royalties). Trump would go on to mimic Ronnie in another way, by ignoring, thereby exacerbating, a pandemic. Trump with Covid. Reagan with AIDS. Imo Trump’s leadership thru Covid resulted in the unnecessary deaths of more Americans than any other thing, ever, of which I hold him responsible. Donald Trump is/was/has been the deadliest thing to Americans, ever. Putin got his money’s worth, ffs.

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Just FYI, we actually still have the factories. We manufacture about 3 times more stuff here in the US today than we did in the 60s and 70s and about 6 to 7 times more than we were during WWII. We just do so with roughly 1/100th to 1/1000th the workforce, because we automated everything.

        Some of those manufacturing jobs moved overseas, but many many more were simply automated out of existence.

        • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Eisenhower, after leading the allies to Berlin in WW2 and then serving as president (used his general clout to get the national freeway system going) gave us the warning about the military-industrial complex. It was in entirely selfless, and he told no one about the content of the speech before delivering it live to the nation. Like that’s up there with Washington and Cincinnatus stepping down. He was in a unique position to know intimately what he was talking about and it appears we didn’t listen, which is super sad.

    • krakenx@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is actually probably a big reason why. The USA has tons of high quality natural resources, and the prisons (formerly slavery) provide the free labor. Syphoning 20-30% of everyone else’s paycheck for the military presents an image of strength as well.

        • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Well at least half of America is only liberal with their markets, some states moreso than others.

          Some states are downright repressive/regressive when it comes to social policy.

          The liberal, even the libertarian mindset is simple. Do whatever the fuck you want as long as it doesn’t hurt people now or leave a mess for future people. Pick your path and then mind your own business.

          Trying to legislate society into someone’s personal ideology (re: fascism), religious code (re: theocracy) or anachronistic local traditions is oppression. No ones forcing anyone to get an abortion, no one HAS to buy a gun. Factors might compel one too, but that’s a different discussion. At the federal, and probably state level as well, trying to homogenize a plural society is a recipe for failure. We are too big and too varied - and that’s a GOOD thing. Pass whatever city ordinance you want; as long as it isn’t legislating hatred, fear or violence.

          Simply put; people need to mind their own fucking business again. If someone wants to make their business fucking, then fucking let them and move on, holy shit. Who do these people think they are? They won’t believe a single thing said if it comes from a city, why would they think we’re gonna stop our menagie of drugged up costumed orgies? Like ladies for real, if you haven’t mixed a plan B into your morning cocaine anti hangover line, you just aren’t living. Don’t worry, there’s enough for everyone. Socialism ftw.