Bronwyn is a current senior at Scripps College in California. She is majoring in Politics with a focus in International Relations and Americans Politics, and is minoring in Philosphy. During high school, Bronwyn became interested in social justice and began to educate herself about women’s issues and the effects of horrific labor practices on communities of color. At Scripps College, her classes have focused on how global development affects human rights and understanding how to use human rights to create positive change. Bronwyn studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark and took classes about gendered perspectives on human rights and humanitarian law and armed conflict. She is very adamant about continuing to educate herself on social justice issues and continuing to understand the intersection between different forms of oppression.
There is a popular myth in the United States that slavery was ended by President Lincoln with the Thirteenth Amendment. Supposedly, everyone celebrated and went about their lives ignoring a certain line in the newly ratified amendment. It said that slavery is illegal in the United States “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Slavery is not abolished in the United States but has evolved in forced labor in prisons.
The numbers show that the United States is home to 5% of the world’s population, but 21% of the world’s prisoner population. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and it is quickly growing with over-policing communities of color and low-income people. Today, the clause stated above in the Thirteenth Amendment is used as a justification of prison labor. After the Civil War, that clause was exploited to arrest African-Americans in mass to create the first prison population. Following the Civil War, the United States government has continuously passed legislation that produces larger prison populations. In 1970, the prison population of the United States was slightly under 200,000 people, but by 2009 the population grew to 1.6 million people. In 2008, a study showed that Black men were six-and-a-half times more likely to be sentenced to prison than white men. War on Drug policies passed by President Regan and The Three Strikes and You’re Out Crime Bill passed by President Clinton are both responsible for the rapid prison population growth. As the prison population grew, the government looked for ways to offload the cost of prisons from the taxpayer and decided to contract prison to outside corporations. These corporations specifically look to make money off of prisoners and their labor.
In prisons, incarcerated people can be paid as little as eight cents an hour for working a full time job. Legally, this work does not have to be compensated at all. Unfortunately, the Thirteenth Amendment did not outlaw slavery but transformed it into a system of punishment for incarcerated persons. Unless inmates have a medical condition that prevents them from working, all of them are required to work. If they refuse, an inmate can be put into solitary confinement or have family visitation revoked. This forced labor can be either in-house operations or convict leasing-partnerships with corporations. Prison labor is across various sectors of the economy including mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Despite the expansive amount of labor laws developed over the past 100 years, inmates do not benefit from these protections.
To benefit from employee protections, an individual must be considered an employee that is hired by the company. In theory, incarcerated persons are not excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA). However, when incarcerated workers have sued their prison-employers for minimum wage, courts have ruled in favor of the employers. In these cases, the courts decided that since the relationship of inmate to prison is not economic so the FLSA and the NLRA are not applicable. Since the relationship of incarcerated persons to prison is legally viewed as social or pedagogical, the court has continually reinforced the notion that the punishment for a crime is to be a slave.
Fortunately, buying products made with prison labor is avoidable. Below is a non-comprehensive list of popular businesses that use incarcerated persons:
- Starbucks
- Victoria’s Secret
- J.C. Penny
- Nordstrom
- Walmart
- Target
- Kmart
- Macy’s Department Store
- McDonald’s
- JCPenney
Featured image: Copyright Shutterstock.com
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177/
Netflix Documentary the 13th directed by Ava DuVernay
https://www.ranker.com/list/companies-in-the-united-states-that-use-prison-labor/genevieve-carlton
