Prison labor, alternatively known as penal labor, is labor that is performed by incarcerated or detained individuals. While it is true that not all of prison labor is forced labor, much of it is. In June 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report entitled Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers. There are 1.2 million incarcerated individuals in the United States (ACLU). The World Prison Brief shows that United States as having a higher prison incarceration rate (505 per 100,000) than such authoritarian regimes as Russia (324), Saudi Arabia (207), Venezuela (199), and China (119).
65 percent of the 1.2 million incarcerated individuals (or 791,500 people) are compelled to work (ACLU). A lot of these individuals hold such positions as cooks, dishwashers, plumbers, or barbers. The labor accounts for $2 billion in goods produced and $9 billion worth of services rendered. The difference here is that incarcerated individuals are deprived of the right to refuse to work. You would think that after fighting a Civil War on slavery, we would not force U.S. citizens, even if charged with a crime, into involuntary servitude. Yet it is plainly permitted in the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
As of October 2022, there were 20 state constitutions that allowed for enslavement or indentured servitude as criminal punishment or a form of debt payment. In the recent midterm elections, five states proposed ballot initiatives to remove prison labor: Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont. Four out of five states succeeded. The reason why Louisiana did not pass its initiative was because of poorly worded ballot text. While these ballots will not immediately abolish compulsory prison labor in these states, it provides a pathway for future legal challenges on how to use prison labor. The fact that prison labor is still a practice in 2022 baffles me.
For one, there is a moral argument that slavery is wrong. To mandate that someone works for little to no money should be unconscionable, especially in a country that is called "The Land of the Free." The ACLU report mentioned earlier points out the many issues with such indentured servitude as is practiced. Individuals are stripped of basic rights. They work in unsafe working conditions. They make anywhere from 13-52¢ an hour, which is lower than the minimum wage in Afghanistan, Bolivia, or India. If incarcerated individuals do not comply, they are threatened with solitary confinement, loss of family visits, or denial of sentence reductions. None of this accounts the fact that because slavery is widely seen as ethically unacceptable, it can undermine the legitimacy of the criminal justice system.
Then there is the economic cost. It might seem like a cash cow to get prison labor at a fraction of the cost to help reduce taxpayer burden or that their contribution is recompense for the crime the individual committed. However, I have to wonder if this view is shortsighted and does not take the whole economy into account. After looking at this detailed report from the Prison Policy Initiative, I ponder about mass incarceration and how many people actually need to be in prison. For example, 81.3 percent of people in jail (as opposed to prison) are not convicted. Not only are 1 in 5 incarcerated locked up for drug charges, but there are also all the misdemeanors. Also, most youth are incarcerated for non-person offenses.
I could go on, but it brings up a bigger question surrounding cost, especially since the Prison Policy Initiative found that the annual cost of imprisonment is $182 billion in 2017 dollars. When accounting for such indirect costs as foregone wages, adverse health effects, and the effects of incarceration on families, a study led by Washington University of St. Louis found the annual cost of the prison system to be nearly $1.2 trillion in 2016 dollars (McLaughlin et al., 2016).
Let's make a back-of-the-envelope estimate and use generous assumptions for the pro-prison labor side to see if the labor savings are worth it. Let's assume that the effective average minimum wage is $11.80 per hour when factoring in state and local laws. Let's take the lowest estimate from ACLU of 13¢ per hour for prison labor. That is a savings of $11.67 per hour that each prisoner works. Let's also assume that the 791,500 prisoners are working a grueling 60-hour work week, which is higher than the national average of 40.5 hours a week; and that they are working every week of the year. When you do the math ($11.67 of hourly savings* 60 hours * 52 weeks * 791,500 prisoners), the aggregate savings of paying prisoners pithy wages comes out to $28.82 billion. The savings in paying prisoners pittance does not even balance out the direct costs of incarceration, never mind the indirect costs.
With this huge price tag of mass incarceration, I have to ask if is there a more cost-efficient way to punish or rehabilitate individuals than throwing them in prison or jail. How much money would we save if we imprisoned fewer people and focused on the more serious crimes?
I also ask this in the context of how imprisonment affects earnings. A study from the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank shows how incarceration reduces lifetime earnings for black men by 33 percent and 43 percent for white men (Gordon and Neelakantan, 2021). The Brennan Center found that being imprisoned reduces annual earnings by 52 percent (Craigie et al., 2020). In 2017, this translated to an aggregate annual earnings loss of $55.2 billion, which does not include the $317.1 billion loss for those convicted but not imprisoned (ibid.).
The Brookings Institution points out how there is some evidence to show that prison labor has a modest, but significant effect on recidivism (Duwe and Henry-Nickel, 2021). The National Institute of Justice found that the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) helped reduce recidivism (Moses and Smith, 2007). The catch with PIECP was that it was a voluntary program, as opposed to the forced labor we see in many U.S. prisons. I can see how the effects would be modest. On the one hand, prison labor gives the incarcerated work experience where there would otherwise be an employment gap. On the other hand, the truly menial wages makes it basically impossible to save up money for the the many immediate costs (e.g., housing, food, healthcare) that these individuals face once released from prison.
While it does not solve everything, I believe that eliminating forced prison labor is a step in the right direction for criminal justice reform. Not only do we stop dehumanizing people, but we also make our criminal justice system more economically efficient. I agree with the Brookings Institution that there needs to be an emphasis on better training for prisoners. Any prison work should be voluntary, including fair market value wages, and train them with transferable skills so that the incarcerated can make a smooth transition back to society after incarceration.
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