The
Prison Industry In The United States: Big Business Or A
New Form Of Slavery?
24 February 2010By Vicky Pelaez
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.”
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.
. 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.
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. The list of such companies contains the cream
of U.S. corporate society: 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, and many more. 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. 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.
[Former] 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
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
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-violent offenses. Sixteen
percent of the country’s 2 million prisoners suffer
from mental illness.
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