This article is part of a five-part series on prison labor.
There is a common misconception that private corporations are the primary beneficiaries of forced prison labor due to viral exposés of corporate exploitation by brands like Burger King. However, while private corporations may be the most vile beneficiaries of prison labor given their for-profit interests, federal, state, and local governments are the primary beneficiaries.
Among the many vehicles that governments use to exploit prison labor are correctional industries, little known government-run businesses that use prison labor to manufacture products and provide services, generally sold to other government agencies. These cheap products and services subsidize state budgets by both generating revenue for the corrections department and saving costs for the other government agencies that would otherwise need to procure the products and services in the public market.
Correctional industries emerged over a century
While governments have been exploiting prison labor since the first prison was built, formal correctional industries emerged largely after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, in three distinct waves.
Taking advantage of the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception clause, which allows for slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishment, states immediately sought ways to generate revenue from the policing, criminalization, and incarceration of newly free Black people. Many leased incarcerated people to private businesses, like plantations, but a few put incarcerated people to work directly, selling their products and services instead. In doing so, the latter established the first correctional industries and included states like Minnesota (1875), Nebraska (1886), and New York (1893).
In the early to mid-20th century, the practice of leasing incarcerated people to private businesses fell out of public favor, primarily due to concerns about labor competition. Some states turned to chain gangs, but those too eventually would fall out of favor due to their brutality. Many of these states then shifted to the correctional industries model, which was and continues to be largely out of the public’s view. Between 1910 and 1970, the federal prison system (1934) and at least 20 states, from New Jersey (1918) to California (1947), opened correctional industries.
The third wave of states created correctional industries during the prison boom that started in 1970 and defined the rest of the 20th century. Recognizing an enrichment opportunity from their rapidly growing prison populations and taking cues from Congress, which created the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) in the late 1970s, at least ten states kicked off their formal correctional industries during this time, including states like Idaho (1974) and Washington (1983).
Incarcerated workers make more than license plates
Today, about 6.5% of incarcerated workers, of 52,000 people, have jobs in correctional industries manufacturing products or providing services. These products and services are primarily bought by other government agencies since PIECP prevents at least the products from entering interstate commerce without paying incarcerated workers prevailing wage.
In many states, for example, incarcerated workers manufacture license plates for the motor vehicle department, traffic signs for the transportation department, desks for the education department, dormitory furniture for state and city universities, Medicare glasses for the health department, and more. In terms of services, incarcerated workers staff call centers for various agencies, conduct asbestos abatement for government buildings, clean governors’ mansions, and again more. The products and services produced by incarcerated people have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives, not as consumers of unscrupulous brands but as taxpayers — and we do not even know it.
Government agencies pay less for these products and services than they would in the public market, where prices reflect minimum wage laws and other basic labor protections, creating a substantial cost saving for states overall. States win twice as corrections departments offset costs with the revenue and other state agencies save on their operating costs — to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually. New York’s correctional industries, for example, makes over $60 million each year, with the state’s motor vehicle department as its largest customer, based on records provided by the state.
Notably, with underpaid incarcerated workers who have few, if any, labor protections, correctional industries undercut protections won by the labor movement that governments are, in fact, supposed to uphold. Unlike other public workers, incarcerated workers do not have a recognized right to organize their workplace or to bargain with their employers to improve pay or work conditions, which are often dirty and dangerous. In fact, government-run correctional industries are not required to pay incarcerated workers for their labor at all, unlike private sector employers of incarcerated workers, which are required to pay incarcerated workers prevailing wages for many jobs under PIECP. As a result, wages for jobs in correctional industries range from nothing to $4.90 per hour, even as correctional industries return considerable economic value for their states.
Correctional industries are the preferred government vendor
Anchoring in the cost savings, many states require their state and local agencies to purchase products and services they would otherwise need to procure from their correctional industries first, as a preferred vendor or source. In other words, state or local agencies that want to opt out of purchasing these products and services simply cannot without violating state law. These state and local agencies can only purchase products and services from other vendors if the correctional industries cannot meet their needs.
State universities may provide the most notorious examples as students frequently protest their use of prison labor. In many states, public universities are required to purchase office, classroom, and dormitory furniture from their state correctional industries. For example, the University of Maryland, State University of New York, University of Virginia, and University of Wisconsin systems are all required to purchase products from their state’s correctional industries.
The tides are starting to shift, however, as public backlash is forcing changes to statutes and universities to reexamine their purchasing practices. The University of Colorado, for instance, reexamined its reliance on the state’s correctional industries after students and faculty raised concerns about the university’s purchase of furniture made by incarcerated people in light of a revision in state law that allowed the university to procure the furniture elsewhere.
Incarcerated workers rescue us in times of crisis
Governments also deploy incarcerated workers through their correctional industries in environmental, public health, and even fiscal emergencies. In these moments, incarcerated workers are tasked with saving the lives of taxpayers and rescuing them from budget deficits.
Perhaps one of the most covered examples of this practice in environmental crises is the use of incarcerated workers in fighting wildfires. In 2019, California state officials deployed 200 incarcerated firefighters to combat the deadliest forest fires in state history. They paid them just $2.90 to $5.12 per day, a sharp difference from the average $91,000 salary that non-incarcerated firefighters were paid to do the same job. Though incarcerated firefighters have died on the job, it remains highly coveted because the pay is significantly higher than for other prison jobs. But, as they risk their lives, incarcerated firefighters save the lives and homes of others and California taxpayers over $100 million each year.
States also use incarcerated workers to help respond to public health crises. In fact, nearly every state used incarcerated workers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Incarcerated workers produced personal protective equipment like masks and gowns for first responders, as well as hand sanitizer for the public. New York led the charge on this practice as former Governor Cuomo publicly bragged about the state’s mass production of hand sanitizer and joked about illegally selling it in the public market to compete with commercial brands. The very workers who made the hand sanitizer at less than $1 per hour not only had a heightened risk of contracting the virus given the factory conditions, but were also prohibited from having hand sanitizer due to its alcohol content.
These environmental and public health emergencies would otherwise require well-paid, highly-trained disaster relief teams, but instead incarcerated people working in correctional industries are tasked with risking their lives to provide disaster assistance for pennies, if anything. And it is not only these life threatening emergencies that cause states to turn to their captive workforce, but also the threat of fiscal downturns.
To fill budget deficits states often use correctional industries to generate revenue. In 2019, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a revenue plan that would require all drivers to purchase new license plates. The license plates would be produced by incarcerated workers making as little as $0.16 an hour for Corcraft, the state’s correctional industries. The plan was anticipated to make the state approximately $75 million in revenue but abandoned under public criticism.
It doesn’t start or stop in prison
While government-run correctional industries obviously generate returns for governments, their corporate suppliers also benefit. Corporations knowingly sell billions of dollars in equipment and raw materials that are used in manufacturing in correctional industries.
For example, nearly all license plates across the country are manufactured by incarcerated workers. 3M, the same corporation that makes Post-its, has a team dedicated to helping state correctional industries with the license plate manufacturing. They sell correctional industries the equipment, raw materials, and support services needed to run an efficient business — and they lobby to increase production in these factories. In Washington, for example, 3M lobbied elected officials to pass a law requiring drivers to replace their license plates every five years to ensure a continual need for their equipment and raw materials. And the corporation is notorious for pushing states to require front and back plates.
Some agencies go as far as to boast the benefit to the private sector of their correctional industries. For example, UNICOR, the federal prison system’s correctional industries, highlights that it spends 73% of UNICOR expenditures on raw materials, supplies, services, and equipment from the private sector. Notably, UNICOR allows the private sector access to its incarcerated workforce through multiple avenues, including its Repatriation Program, which encourages corporations to reshore jobs they previously sent abroad with prison labor. UNICOR has sales associates dedicated to building these public-private partnerships.
Finally, while PIECP prohibits the interstate sale of products manufactured by incarcerated workers who have not been paid prevailing wage, the lack of oversight of correctional industries and how their products move into commerce makes it nearly impossible to determine when the law has been violated and what corporations are benefiting. In fact, products made in correctional industries are often marketed to non-government buyers.
Correctional industries are often sold by governments as vocational training. Officials equate them to apprenticeships. But most of us would be hard pressed to name a job for which candidates are expected to apprentice without fair wages for years. The truth is that correctional industries are a cash cow for governments that have been ingrained in budgets for decades or even a century in some states. Government agencies should not be permitted to slash their costs by using this captive labor force. It is time we unravel our dependency on this exploitation as taxpayers, and to start we need to end the exception in the Thirteenth Amendment that set us down this path.