Economic Policy Institute - From fighting wildfires to toiling in the kitchens of some of the country’s most popular food franchises, incarcerated workers perform vital functions across the United States and produce billions of dollars in value for the public and private sectors. Yet they are paid very little (between 13 and 52 cents an hour on average)—if at all— and are excluded from the basic rights and protections afforded to most workers.
These exploitative dynamics are rooted in slavery and are particularly extreme in the South, which incarcerates people—primarily Black men—at the highest rates in the world and is more likely than other regions to force incarcerated people to work for nothing at all. Forced prison labor is one aspect of the racist, anti-worker Southern economic development model, which relies on inhumane, regressive forms of revenue generation and masks the true costs of incarceration. More
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