Vidal Guzman worked as a mason, a porter, and a food server during his four years of incarceration. At Riverview Correctional Facility, a New York state prison near the Canadian border, he earned 16 cents per hour working in the cafeteria; his paycheck was around $3.50 per week. When he went to the prison’s commissary for the first time, he remembered scrounging together money to buy one stamp and two packs of ramen noodles.
“It’s a very embarrassing moment when you’re looking at commissary and you’re dividing pennies to see how much you have,” Guzman told New York Focus.
As part of her executive budget, Governor Kathy Hochul included a proposal that takes aim at low prison wages—not by paying them more in their current jobs, where they’re employed by the state, but by passing a constitutional amendment to overturn New York’s century-old ban on private employment of incarcerated people.
Hochul argues that private employers would pay higher wages—the same wages that would be offered for comparable work outside prison—and offer more job training. The measure is part of a broad agenda she has proposed, dubbed “Jails to Jobs,” to reform the state’s reentry system and help people secure jobs and housing after they’re released from prison or jail.
The proposal has led to something of a fissure in the criminal justice reform movement.
Many advocates for incarcerated people—including Guzman, who since his release in 2014 has worked on a campaign to raise the minimum prison wage...
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