It took Johnny Perez over four years of making hundreds of bedsheets every day at a factory to reach the top pay tier: about 32 cents an hour, nearly double his starting wage. He was one of the highest-paid workers at Coxsackie Correctional Facility—a textile manufacturer run by the New York State prison system.
When he was released years later, Perez discovered that the sheets he had stitched for pennies an hour back in the late 2000s were being sold on the market for hundreds of times more. The bedding was part of a huge inventory of furniture, uniforms, and other products sold under the brand Corcraft, which markets prison-made goods to state agencies, schools, and other public institutions. A dozen Corcraft sheets currently goes for $73.
Perez, who was in his 20s when he worked in the upstate factory, thought about the market value of his daily production quota of about 360 sheets: “You do the math, and you’re like, I made these people millions of dollars,” he said. “Not only me. I was one of many who reached that quota. And when you peel back those layers, it really becomes insidious. You’re like, ‘Wow, well, wait a minute—this is really wrong.’”
Corcraft calls Perez’s job a form of rehabilitation. According to the company’s website: “We employ incarcerated individuals to produce goods while preparing them for release by teaching them work skills, work ethic, and responsibility.”
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