Re: Prison labor, free labor
Mark Ritchie (mritchie@iatp.org)
Tue, 16 Mar 1999 03:34:49 -0600
Greetings,
Great postings on the prison labor conversation. Thought I might put my two
cents worth in the pot on prison labor. First of all this is not the way
we build a sustainable society ... locking up young men who applied 100
times for a job at Company "X" on the street and was told he was not
qualified, instantly becomes qualified to work in prison for Company "X"
when he gets 25 years for possession of crack cocaine ... so much for free
enterprise.
A little history: Prison industries, using inmate labor to manufacture
goods was a booming business right after slavery up to the 1930's. Here in
Alabama a lot of the mining was done by contract prison labor (and a lot of
those prisoners were enslaves that were picked up on flaky vagrancy laws
for the express purpose of creating a prison labor pool). As a matter of
fact, entire prison facilities here in Alabama were leased out to private
manufactures and farmers so they could use the prisoners for cheap labor
(that is documented by a University of Alabama professor, I will have to
find the title of the book again... he has great stories and documentation
of prison labor practices and conditions during this time period). Any way
in in the 1930's the sale of "open market prison made products" was banned
by Congress. Labor was crying foul and the man on the street was out of
work do to the depression. Fast forward... in 1979 Congress quietly lifted
the ban on the interstate transportation and sale of prison made goods
providing that they passed the "Private Industry Enhancement Certification
Program". Basically this program certifies that inmate workers are paid
local prevailing wages(jive talk) and the local work forces is not
displaced by prison labor .
The largest player in the prison labor game is the mighty Federal Prison
Industries ($495.4 million in sales FY 1996) that is a half of billion
folks ... serious cash money . Please check out Occupational Training or
Slave Labor by David Martin: http://www.zolatimes.com/V2.13/FPI.html You
might also want to read "Workfare" And Prison Forced Labor: New Strategies
To Reduce Wages by Mark Cook:
http://metalab.unc.edu/prism/Nov96/forced.html
Tracy Huling, I do agree with you concerning the "bored and angry" phrase.
It is trash talking in its purest form. We need to look at the real social
and economic consequences of expanding the prison labor work force. We also
need to understand true implication when a state like California
corrections budget is larger than the entire state budget for higher
education. And of course every year more prisons are being build to
capitalize on ____________. You fill in the blank.
Stan Johnson
stanjj@mindspring.com
http://www.alarise.org
Mark Ritchie, President
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
2105 First Ave. South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55404 USA
612-870-3400 (phone) 612-870-4846 (fax)
mritchie@iatp.org www.iatp.org/iatp
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