The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
retained the right to enslave within the confines of prison.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.” Dec. 6, 1865.
Even before the abolition of chattel
slavery, America’s
history of prison labor had already begun in New
York’s State Prison at Auburn
soon after it opened in 1817. Auburn
became the first prison that contracted with a private
business to operate a factory within its walls. Later,
in the post Civil War period, the “contract and lease”
system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ
prisoners and sell their products for profit.
Today, such prisons are referred
to as “Factories with Fences.”
The Convict-Lease System
In Southern states, Slave Codes
were rewritten as Black Codes, a series of laws criminalizing
the law-abiding activities of Black people, such as standing
around, “loitering,” or walking at night, “breaking curfew.”
The enforcement of these Codes dramatically increased
the number of Blacks in Southern prisons. In 1878, Georgia
leased out 1,239 convicts, 1,124 of whom were Black.
The lease system provided slave
labor for plantation owners or private industries as well
as revenue for the state, since incarcerated workers were
entirely in the custody of the contractors who paid a
set annual fee to the state (about $25,000). Entire prisons
were leased out to private contractors who literally worked
hundreds of prisoners to death. Prisons became the new
plantations; Angola State Prison in Louisiana was a literal plantation, and still is except the slaves
are now called convicts and the prison is known as “The
Farm.” (A documentary of that title is available on DVD.)
The inherent brutality and cruelty
of the lease system and the loss of outside jobs sparked
resistance that eventually brought about its demise.
One of the most famous battles was
the Coal Creek Rebellion of 1891. When the Tennessee coal, Iron and Railroad locked out their
workers and replaced them with convicts, the miners stormed
the prison and freed 400 captives; and when the company
continued to contract prisoners, the miners burned the
prison down. The Tennessee leasing system was disbanded shortly thereafter. But it remained
in many states until the rise of resistance in the 1930s.
Strikes by prisoners and union workers
together were organized by then radical CIO and other
labor unions. They pressured Congress to pass the 1935
Ashurst-Sumners Act making it illegal to transport prison-made
goods across state lines. But under President Jimmy Carter,
Congress granted exemptions to the Act by passing the
Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, which produced
the Prison Industries Enhancement program, or PIE, that
eventually spread to all 50 states. This lifted the ban
on interstate transportation and sale of prison-made products,
permitting a for-profit relationship between prisons and
the private sector, and prompting a dramatic increase
in prison labor which continues to escalate.
As the leasing system phased out,
a new, even more brutal exploitation emerged - the chain
gang. An extremely dehumanizing cruelty that chained men,
and later women, together in groups of five, it was originated
to build extensive roads and highways. The first state
to institute chain gangs was Alabama,
followed by Arizona, Florida,
Iowa, Indiana,
Illinois, Wisconsin,
Montana, and Oklahoma.
Arizona’s first female chain gang was instituted
in 1996. Complete with striped uniforms, the women of
a Phoenix jail
(to this day) spend four to six hours a day chained together
in groups of 30, clearing roadsides of weeds and burying
the indigent.
Georgia’s chain-gang conditions were particularly
brutal. Men were put out to work swinging 12 lb. sledge
hammers for 16 hours a day, malnourished and shackled
together, unable to move their legs a full stride. Wounds
from metal shackles often became infected, leading to
illness and death. Prisoners who could not keep up with
the grueling pace were whipped or shut in a sweatbox or
tied to a hitching post, a stationary metal rail. Chained
to the post with hands raised high over his head, the
prisoner remained tethered in that position in the Alabama heat for many hours without water or bathroom
breaks. (Human Rights Watch World Report 1998).
Thanks to a lawsuit settled by the
Southern Poverty Law Center, Alabama’s Department of Corrections
agreed in 1996 to stop chaining prisoners together. A
few years later, the Center won a Court ruling that ended
use of the hitching post as a violation of the 8th Amendment’s
ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
In response to the demands of World
War II, the number of both free and captive road workers
declined significantly. In 1941, there were 1,750 prisoners
slaving in 28 active road camps for all types of construction
and maintenance. The numbers bottomed out by war’s end
at 540 captives in 17 camps.
The Proliferation of Prisons, Jails, and Camps
In the 1940s, California Governor
Earl Warren conducted secret investigations into the State’s
only prisons, San Quentin and Folsom. The depravity, squalor,
sadism, and torture he found led the governor to initiate
the building of Soledad Prison in 1951.
Prisoners were put to work in educational
and vocational programs that taught basic courses in English
and math, and provided training in trades ranging from
gardening to meat cutting. At wages of 7 to 25 cents an
hour, California prisoners used their acquired skills to turn out institutional
clothing and furniture, license plates and stickers, seed
new crops, slaughter pigs, produce and sell dairy products
to a nearby mental institution.
Within a decade this “model prison”
at Soledad had become another torture chamber of filthy
dungeons, literal “holes,” virulently racist guards, officially
sanctioned brutality, torture, and murder. Though prison
jobs were supposed to be voluntary, if prisoners refuse
to work they were often given longer sentences, denied
privileges, or thrown into solitary confinement. Forced
to work long hours under miserable conditions, in the
1960s, “Soledad Brother,” George Jackson, organized a
work strike that turned into a riot after white strikebreakers
tried to lynch one of the Black strikers.
The Black Movement’s resistance,
led by George Jackson, W. L. Nolen, and Hugo “Yogi” Pinell,
eventually brought Congressional oversight and overhaul
of California’s prison system. (The
Melancholy History of Soledad Prison,
by Minh S. Yee.).
California’s prison system rose
exponentially to approximately 174,000 prisoners crammed
into 90 penitentiaries, prisons and camps stretched across
900 miles of the fifth-largest economy in the world, as
Ruth Gilmore’s book, Golden
Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing
California)
reports. That number can be doubled or tripled by
those on other forms of penal control, probation, parole,
or house arrest.
Since 1984, the California
has erected 43 prisons (and only one university) making
it a global leader in prison construction. Most of the
new prisons have been built in rural areas far from family
and friends, and most captives are Black or Brown men,
although the incarceration of women has skyrocketed. Suicide
and recidivism rates approach twice the national average,
and the State spends more on prisons than on higher education.
(The seeming contradiction between the official figure
of 33 prisons relates to the additional buildings constructed
at a given prison complex, and the various camps and county
jails.)
Between 1998 and 2009, the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) budget
grew from $3.5 billion to $10.3 billion (the latest figures
available). At its peak in
August 2007, the department had 72 gyms and 125 dayrooms
jammed with 19,618 inmate beds.
“They provided an accurate and extremely
graphic example of the crowding and inhumanity that engulfed
the entire system,” said Don Specter, director of the
nonprofit Prison Law Office in Berkeley,
which sued to force the state to ease crowding as a way
to improve the treatment of sick and mentally ill inmates.
The Privatizing of Federal and State Prisons
Under court order to reduce overcrowding,
by 2009, the CDCR had transferred 8,000 prisoners to private
prisons in four states – Tennessee,
Mississippi, Oklahoma,
and Arizona, among the most virulently racist states in the country. The
rest of the prisoners were transferred to county jails.
Currently, the inmate population is about 142,000 and
the CDCR must remove another 17,000 prisoners to reach
the June 2013 court deadline.
In 1985, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Warren Burger lauded China’s prison labor program:
“1,000 inmates in one prison I visited comprised a complete
factory unit producing hosiery and what we would call
casual or sport shoes... Indeed it had been a factory
and was taken over to make a prison.” Burger called for
the conversion of prisons into factories, the repeal of
laws limiting prison industry production and sales, and
the active participation of business and organized labor.
Heeding the judge’s call, California
voters passed Prop 139 in 1990, establishing the Joint
Venture Program, allowing California businesses to cash in on prison labor.
“This is the new jobs program for California,
so we can compete on a Third World basis with countries
like Bangladesh,” observed Richard
Holober with the Consumer Federation of California.
Currently, California’s
Prison Industrial Authority (CALPIA) employs, 7000 captives
assigned to 5039 positions in manufacturing, agricultural
service enterprises, and selling and administration at
22 prisons throughout the state. It produces goods and
services such as office furniture, clothing, food products,
shoes, printing services, signs, binders, gloves, license
plates, cell equipment, and much more. Wages are $.30
to $.95 per hour before deductions.
For the State’s highest wage, $1
hour, prisoners provide the “backbone of the state’s wild
land fire fighting crews,” according to an unpublished
CDC report. The State Department of Forestry saves more
than $80 million annually using prison labor. California’s
Department of Forestry has 200 Fire Crews comprised of
CDC and CYA (California Youth Authority) minimum-security
captives housed in 46 Conservation Camps throughout the
state. These prisoners average 10 million work hours per
year according to the CDCR.
“Their primary function is to construct
fire lines by hand in areas where heavy machinery cannot
be used because of steep topography, rocky terrain, or
areas that may be considered environmentally sensitive.”
(i.e., the most dangerous fire lines).
Now at least 37 states have similar
programs wherein prisoners manufacture everything from
blue jeans to auto parts, electronics and toys. Clothing
made in Oregon and California
is exported to other countries, competing successfully
with apparel made in Asia and Latin
America.
One of the newest forms of slave
labor is the U.S. Army’s “Civilian Inmate Labor Program”
to “benefit both the Army and corrections systems” by
providing “a convenient source of labor at no direct cost
to Army installations,” additional space to alleviate
prison overcrowding, and cost-effective use of land and
facilities otherwise not being utilized.
“With a few exceptions,” this program
is currently limited to prisoners under the Federal Bureau
of Prisons (FBOP) that allows the Attorney General to
provide the services of federal prisoners to other federal
agencies, defining the types of services they can perform.
The Program stipulates that the “Army is not interested
in, nor can afford, any relationship with a corrections
facility if that relationship stipulates payment for civilian
inmate labor. Installation civilian inmate labor program
operating costs must not exceed the cost avoidance generated
from using inmate labor.” In other words the prison labor
must be free of charge.
The three “exceptions” to exclusive
Federal contracting are as follows: (1) “a demonstration
project” providing “prerelease employment training to
nonviolent offenders in a State correctional facility”
[CF]. (2) Army National Guard units “may use inmates from
an off-post State and/or local CF.” (3) Civil Works projects.
Services provided might include constructing or repairing
roads, maintaining or reforesting public land, building
levees, landscaping, painting, carpentry, trash pickup,
etc.
This Civilian Inmate Labor Program
document includes in its countless specifications such
caveats as “Inmates must not be referred to as employees.”
A prisoner would not qualify if he/she is a “person in
whom there is a significant public interest,” who has
been a “significant management problem,” “a principal
organized crime figure,” any “inmate convicted of a violent
crime,” a sex offense, involvement with drugs within the
last three years, an escape risk, “a threat to the general
public.” Makes one wonder why such a prisoner isn’t just
released or paroled. In fact, the “hiring qualifications”
makes me suspect the “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” is
a backdoor draft, especially in lieu of a military already
stretched to its limit.
Note: When I tried to find an updated web page on the Civilian Inmate
Labor Program, there was none. The date remains 2005 for
its latest report. Could the latest data be classified?
The Federal Prison Industries (FPI),
a nonprofit Justice Department subsidiary, that does business
as UNICOR, was created in 1935, and began supplying the
Pentagon on a broad scale in the 1980s. The prison privatization
boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald
Reagan and George Bush Sr., but reached its height in
1990 under Bill Clinton when the Wall Street stocks were
selling like hotcakes. In fact, President Clinton accomplished
a record $10 billion prison building boom in the 1990s.
His program for cutting the federal workforce resulted
in the Justice Department’s contracting of private prison
corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers
and high-security inmates. (Global Research, 2008)
By 2003, there were 100 FPI factories
working 20,274 prisoners with sales totaling $666.8 million.
And currently FPI employs about 19,000 captives, slightly
less than 20 percent of the federal prison population,
in 106 prison factories around the country. Profits totaled
at least $40 million!
In 2005, FPI sold more than $750,000,000
worth of goods to the federal government. Sales to the
Army alone put UNICOR on the Army’s list of top 50 suppliers,
ahead of well-known corporations like Dell Computer, according
to Wayne Woolley, Newhouse News Service.
In 2011, the Justice Policy Institute
(JPI) released a report that exposes how private prison companies are
“working to make money through harsh policies and longer
sentences.” The report notes that while the total number
of prisoners increased less than 16 percent, the number
of people held in private federal and state facilities
increased by 120 and 33 percent, respectively.
Government spending on so-called
corrections rose to $74 billion in 2007. And last year
(2011) the two largest private prison companies - Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group - made over
$2.9 billion in profits. These corporations use three
strategies to influence public policy: lobbying, direct
campaign contributions and networking. They succeeded
in getting Arizona’s harsh new immigration
laws passed, and came close to winning the privatization
of all of Florida’s
prisons.
A relatively new ordering
tool used by BOP (Bureau of Prisons) is GSA Advantage!, the federal government’s premier online ordering
system that provides 24-hour access to over 17 million
products and services, solutions available from over 16,000
GSA Multiple Award Schedules contractors, as well as all
products available from GSA Global Supply.
Since the beginning of the war in
Afghanistan
in 2001, the Army’s Communication and Electronics Command
at Fort Monmouth, N.J., has shipped more than 200,000
radios to combat zones, most with at least some components
manufactured by federal inmates working in 11 prison electronics
factories around the country. Under current law, UNICOR
enjoys a contracting preference known as “mandatory source,”
which obligates government agencies to try to buy certain
goods from the prisons before allowing private companies
to bid on the work. This same contracting restriction
applies to state agencies.
The demand for defense products
from FPI became so great that “national exigency” provisions
were invoked so the 20 percent limit on goods provided
in each category could be exceeded. The rules were waived
during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Private manufacturers
say they’ve been hurt by such practice, as they are unable
to bid on various products.
According to the Left Business Observer,
the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military
helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof 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.
By 2007, the overall sales figures
and profits for federal and state prison industries had
skyrocketed into the billions. Apparently, the military
industrial complex (MIC) and the prison industrial complex
(PIC) have joined forces.
The PIC is a network of public and
private prisons, of military personnel, politicians, business
contacts, prison guard unions, contractors, subcontractors
and suppliers all making big profits at the expense of
poor people who comprise the overwhelming majority of
captives. The fastest growing industry in the country,
it has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites,
and mail-order / Internet catalogs and direct advertising
campaigns. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’
labor lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their
workforce.
Replacing the “contract and lease”
system of the 19th Century, private companies that have
contracted prison labor include Microsoft, Boeing, Honeywell,
IBM, Revlon, Pierre Cardin, Compaq, Victoria Secret, Macy’s,
Target, Nordstrom, and countless others.
In 1995, there were only five private
prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates;
now, private companies operate 264 correctional facilities
housing some 99,000 adult prisoners. The two largest private
prison corporations in the US, GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut)
and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) are transnationals,
managing prisons and detention centers in 34 states, Australia,
Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.
A top performer on the New York
Stock Exchange, CCA called California its “new frontier,” and boasts of investors such as Wal-Mart,
Exxon, General Motors, Ford, Chevrolet, Texaco, Hewlett-Packard,
Verizon, and UPS. Currently, CCA has 80,000 beds in 65
facilities, and GEO Group operates 61 facilities with
49,000 beds, according to Wikipredia.
Employers (Read: slavers) don’t
have to pay health or unemployment insurance, vacation
time, sick leave or overtime. They can hire, fire or reassign
inmates as they so desire, and can pay the workers as
little as 21 cents an hour. The inmates cannot respond
with a strike, file a grievance, or threaten to leave
and get a better job.
On September 19, 2005,
UNICOR was commended for its outstanding support of the
nation’s military. Deputy Commander of the Defense Supply
Center Philadelphia (DSCP), presented the Bureau of Prisons
Director with a “Supporting the Warfighter” award. The
award recognized UNICOR for its tremendous support of
DSCP’s mission to provide equipment, materials, and supplies
to each branch of the armed forces. “We at DSCP are very
appreciative of UNICOR, especially with our critical need
items. With more than $200 million worth of orders during
Fiscal Years 2004 and 2005, UNICOR has not had a single
delinquency.”
Mass roundups of immigrants and
non-citizens, currently about half of all federal prisoners,
and dragnets in low-income “hoods” have increased the
prison population to unprecedented levels. Andrea Hornbein
points out in Profit Motive: “The majority of these arrests
are for low level offenses or outstanding warrants, and
impact the taxpayer far more than the offense. For example,
a $300 robbery resulting in a 5-year sentence, at the
Massachusetts average of $43,000 per year, will
cost $215,000. That doesn’t even include law enforcement
and court costs.”
Nearly 75% of all prisoners are
drug war captives. A criminal record today practically
forces an ex-con into illegal employment since they don’t
qualify for legitimate jobs or subsidized housing. Minor
parole violations, unaffordable bail, parole denials,
longer mandatory sentencing and three strikes laws, slashing
of welfare rolls, overburdened court systems, shortages
of public defenders, massive closings of mental hospitals,
and high unemployment (about 50% for Black men) - all
contribute to the high rates of incarceration and recidivism.
Thus, the slave labor pool continues to expand.
Among the most powerful unions today
are the guards’ unions. The California Corrections Peace
Officers Association (CCPOA) wields so much political
power it practically decides who governs the state. Moreover,
its members get the State’s biggest payouts, according
to the L.A. Times. “More than 1600 officers’ earnings
exceeded legislators’ 2007 salaries of $113,098.” Base
pay for 6,000 guards earning $100,000 or more totaled
$453 million, with overtime adding another $220 million
to wages. One lieutenant guard earned more than any other
state official, including the Governor, or $252,570.
California’s per prisoner cost has risen to
$49,000, and that figure doubles and triples for elderly
and high-security captives. That’s enough money to send
a person through Harvard!
The National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA) is an international nonprofit professional association, whose self-declared
mission is “to promote excellence and credibility in correctional
industries through professional development and innovative
business solutions.”
NCIA’s members include all 50 state
correctional industry agencies, Federal Prison Industries,
foreign correctional industry agencies, city and county
jail industry programs, and private sector companies working
in partnership with correctional industries.
Chattel slavery was ended following
prolonged guerrilla warfare between the slaves and the
slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to as
the “Underground Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary
General Harriet Tubman with support from her alliances
with abolitionists, Black and White. It only makes sense
that this new form of slavery must produce prison abolitionists.
As George Jackson noted in a KPFA
interview with Karen Wald (Spring 1971), “I’m saying that
it’s impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters....We
have to prove that this thing won’t work here. And the
only way to prove it is resistance...and then that resistance
has to be supported, of course, from the street....We
can fight, but the results are...not conducive to proving
our point...that this thing won’t work on us. From inside,
we fight and we die....the point is -- in the new face
of war -- to fight and win.”
Power to the people.
BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Kiilu Nyasha, is a San Francisco-based journalist
and former member of the Black Panther Party. Through
the end of 2009, Kiilu hosted a weekly TV program, “Freedom
Is A Constant Struggle,” on SF Live, and many shows are
archived on her website. Kiilu writes for several publications, including
the SF Bay View Newspaper, and is also an accomplished
radio programmer. She has worked for KPFA (Berkeley),
SF Liberation Radio, Free Radio Berkeley, and KPOO in
San Francisco.
Click here
to contact Ms. Nyasha.