The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?
by
Vicky Pelaez
Global Research
El Diario-La Prensa, New York
March 10, 2008
Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are
condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in
the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2
million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries
for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison
industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to
worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp
time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are
absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay
of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation
cells.
There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and
private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison
Focus, “no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its
own citizens.” The figures show that the United States has locked up
more people than any other country: a half million more than China,
which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics
reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison
population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000
inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000.
In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private
prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there
are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade,
the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.
What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?
“The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to
lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders
who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order
to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” says a study by the
Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being “an
imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and
concentration camps.”
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| Call center located in an Arizona prison. |
The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries
in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. “This
multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions,
websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct
advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies,
investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply
companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of
colors.”
According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry
produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof
vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war
supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment
assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove
assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of
headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane
parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising
seeing-eye dogs for blind people.
CRIME GOES DOWN, JAIL POPULATION GOES UP
According to reports by human rights organizations, these are the
factors that increase the profit potential for those who invest in the
prison industry complex:
Jailing persons convicted of non-violent crimes, and long prison
sentences for possession of microscopic quantities of illegal drugs.
Federal law stipulates five years’ imprisonment without possibility of
parole for possession of 5 grams of crack or 3.5 ounces of heroin, and
10 years for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack.
A
sentence of 5 years for cocaine powder requires possession of 500 grams
– 100 times more than the quantity of rock cocaine for the same
sentence. Most of those who use cocaine powder are white, middle-class
or rich people, while mostly Blacks and Latinos use rock cocaine. In
Texas, a person may be sentenced for up to two years’ imprisonment for
possessing 4 ounces of marijuana. Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson
Rockefeller anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison sentence of 15
years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.
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| Prisoners at work from the Gwinett County Jail |
The passage in 13 states of the “three strikes” laws (life in
prison after being convicted of three felonies), made it necessary to
build 20 new federal prisons. One of the most disturbing cases resulting
from this measure was that of a prisoner who for stealing a car and two
bicycles received three 25-year sentences.
- Longer sentences.
- The passage of laws that require minimum sentencing, without regard for circumstances.
- A large expansion of work by prisoners creating profits that
motivate the incarceration of more people for longer periods of time.
- More punishment of prisoners, so as to lengthen their sentences.
HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES
Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War,
a system of “hiring out prisoners” was introduced in order to continue
the slavery tradition.
Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out
their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else’s land in
exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery – which were almost
never proven – and were then “hired out” for cotton picking, working in
mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of
Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of
“hired-out” miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm
similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out
convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.
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| Florida is seeking bids from private companies to take over management
of 30 state prisons in an 18-country area in South Florida. The “fastest
privatization venture ever undertaken by the state of Florida” is an
effort by Gov. Rick Scott (R) to save the state money by outsourcing
prison oversight to the lowest bidder: |
During the post-Civil War period, Jim Crow racial segregation laws
were imposed on every state, with legal segregation in schools, housing,
marriages and many other aspects of daily life. “Today, a new set of
markedly racist laws is imposing slave labor and sweatshops on the
criminal justice system, now known as the prison industry complex,”
comments the Left Business Observer.
Who is investing? At least
37 states have legalized the contracting
of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations
inside state prisons. (I have added more to Palaez' compilation)
IBM
Boeing
Motorola
Microsoft
AT&T Wireless
Texas Instrument
Dell
Compaq
Honeywell
Hewlett-Packard
Nortel
Lucent Technologies
3Com
Intel
Northern Telecom
TWA
Nordstrom's
Revlon
Macy's
Pierre Cardin
Target Stores
Unigroup (maker of denim jeans)
MicroJet
Nike
Lockhart Technologies, Inc.
United Vision Group
Chatleff Controls
Eddie Bauer
Planet Hollywood
Redwood Outdoors
Wilson Sporting Goods
Union Bay
Elliot Bay
A&I Manufacturing
Washington Marketing Group
Omega Pacific
J.C. Penney
Victoria's Secret
Best Western Hotels
Honda
K-Mart
Kwalu, Inc.
McDonald's
Hawaiian Tropical Products
Forever 21
Burger King
"Prison Blues" jeans line
New York, New York Hotel/Casino
Impereal Palace Hotel/Casino
Starbucks
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| Guess who was cleaning up the Gulf spill? Prisoners. |
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| Don't hate BP hired them, while you were unemployed. |
Crisp Country Solid Waste Management Authority
"No Fear" Clothing Line
C.M.T. Blues
Konica
Allstate
Merrill Lynch
Shearson Lehman
Louisiana Pacific
Parke-Davis
Upjohn
Heinz-Wattie
Living Earth Co.
Gala Gardens
Layton's Linen Hire
Morro Holdings
Encore Tech.
Peek Displays
New Zealand Post
Ideal Print
Royal (NZ) Foundation for the Blind
Packaging Specialists
Taylor's Group
Cortex Group
Premier Bin and Pallet Supplies
Price McClaren
Stages
Larson's Concrete and Drainage
Calix Nursery
Garden City Composting
Southern Seeds Tech.
Christchurch City Council
Fresh Direct
Fergusson Services
All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom
generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up
from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries
generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in
Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in
privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a
maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month.
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| Inmates and documented Mexican workers packing melons in Cali. |
The
highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners
receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.”
At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal
prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work
eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300
per month.
Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive
location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor
markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in
Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated
to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its
150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the
private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for
companies like IBM and Compaq.
Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut
its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe
manufacturer that “there won’t be any transportation costs; we’re
offering you competitive prison labor (here).”
PRIVATE PRISONS
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| Women inmates work on computers |
The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the
governments of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but reached its height in
1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like
hotcakes. Clinton’s program for cutting the federal workforce resulted
in the Justice Departments contracting of private prison corporations
for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.
Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry
complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The
two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut,
which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount
of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain
each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in
Virginia, “the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number
of guards for the maximum number of prisoners.” The CCA has an
ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on
dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons,
inmates may get their sentences reduced for “good behavior,” but for any
infraction, they get 30 days added – which means more profits for CCA.
According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA
inmates lost “good behavior time” at a rate eight times higher than
those in state prisons.
IMPORTING AND EXPORTING INMATES
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| Reno sanctioned privatized 5 prisons |
Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing
inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals.
When a federal
judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual
punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to
build and run new jails and share the profits.
According to a December
1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by
investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and
Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That
state’s governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in
New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded,
cutting into private prison profits.
After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 – ending court supervision and
decisions – caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in
federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact
other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering “rent-a-cell”
services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The
commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed.
The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner.
STATISTICS
Ninety-seven percent of 125,000 federal inmates have been convicted
of non-violent crimes. It is believed that more than half of the 623,000
inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they
are accused of. Of these, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of
the one million state prisoners have committed non-viol
