Prison labourers are unable to afford basic necessities such as bath soap with their meagre wages, yet they produce at least $2 billion in goods and $9 billion worth of prison maintenance annually for the United States.
A new report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the University of Chicago Law School Global Human Rights Clinic details how prison labourers are “at the mercy of their employers,” often exploited, underpaid, and excluded from workplace safety protection laws.
It found that in exchange for their labour, prisoners receive between 15 and 52 cents per hour on average for non-industry jobs. Often up to 80 percent of this is withheld for taxes and other expenses such as court costs.
Even worse, seven state prison systems – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas – pay nothing at all for the majority of incarcerated labour.
“The US has a long, problematic history of using incarcerated workers as a source of cheap labour and to subsidise the costs of our bloated prison system,” said Jennifer Turner, researcher with the ACLU’s Human Rights Program and primary author of the report.
“Incarcerated workers are stripped of even the most minimal protections against labour exploitation and abuse,” said Turner.
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