Prisoners as cheap labor

Tyler Bowman, Dollars & Sense - A criminal justice system in which money and punishment are intertwined is naturally teeming with moral pitfalls. In the United States, ever since the earliest modern prisons of the 1800s, when prison administrators started to use inmate labor to reduce the cost of running prisons, blood was in the water and the sharks swarmed. U.S. lawmakers have now had generations to perfect the narrative that prisoners performing labor as punishment is conducive to their rehabilitation. The name of the game: keep prisoners busy while simultaneously generating revenue, a process that is detrimental to all but those profiting, for the state, or for outside companies. Unfortunately, history has shown us that the effects of this revenue-focused culture has resulted in questionable living and working conditions, a lack of adequate skills training, and an unbelievable amount of disregard for rehabilitation.

I’ve been incarcerated since 2015. I’ve held a variety of jobs in prison since 2017, with some work assignments being more personally fulfilling than others, but each with similar issues at their core. My prisoner résumé includes separating and counting dirty clothes—yes, unfortunately boxers, too—in the warehouse where I also helped prepare the clean clothes to be passed out. I’ve worked in the kitchen where I started out as a cook whose biggest responsibility was to not clump the grits and make sure to add enough sugar to the oatmeal.

I moved up the ladder, so to speak, with my next job when I became a maintenance worker. In that assignment I was actually taught the basics of a few trades such as HVAC and electrical, and even learned a good bit about welding. As far as a prison work assignment goes, I’d say it’s one of the better ones to prepare an inmate to return back to society, though it’s of those situations where you get out what you put in, which is how I think all prison jobs should be designed. My last job I worked as the guy who keeps the commissary stocked, ordering junk food and hygiene items. It was my favorite job and I didn’t want to lose it, but I got promoted to medium custody and transferred to another facility, which offers more recreational options. Because I’m new, I’m now at the bottom of the list for any job.

So those are just some of the regular duties that prisoners are tasked with doing. But no matter which job you’re assigned to, except under certain circumstances, in North Carolina a laborer gets paid only $1 a day. This law can be found in North Carolina General Statute 148-18 entitled, “Wages, Allowances, and Loans,” which reads:

...no prisoner so paid shall receive more than one dollar ($1.00) per day, unless the Secretary determines that the work assignment requires special skills or training. Upon approval of the Secretary, inmates working in job assignments requiring special skills or training may be paid up to five dollars ($5.00) per day.

To some members of the public that may sound absolutely ridiculous, while others may believe that we shouldn’t be getting paid anything at all, and I’d be willing to bet that that’s the more popular opinion. For those in the latter group, you’ll be happy to know that there are at least six states where prisoners are paid nothing at all for their labors. And even though nationally prisoners produce roughly $2 billion annually in goods, and around $9 billion annually in services, according to a recent American Civil Liberties Union estimate, the nationwide average for prisoner wages maxes out at 52 cents per hour.