Freedom Is Slavery

Tucson, Arizona. Using prison inmates as a source of labor dates back forever. In the 1800s the US had profit making prisons that made good money literally working their prisoners to death. As society progressed, the practice transformed into government run systems designed to accomplish several desirable outcomes at once. First, research has shown that giving inmates jobs reduces their problems while inside and enhances chances of success after release. At the Federal level, we have the US Government program, Federal Prison Industries, FPI, now called UNICOR.

A perusal of their 2006 Annual Report shows they are a $700 million dollar business serving the US government. Inmates at UNICOR make between twenty-one cents and $1.15 an hour. The company employs over 20,000 prisoners.

I don’t have an issue with UNICOR, a non-profit organization hiring inmates in a program designed to provide training and activity for inmates and products for the US government. Any reasonable taxpayer would likely approve of a non-profit company hiring inmates in a publicly funded prison to generate an additional revenue stream that reduces the prison’s need for public support. Almost every state has a flavor of this, and ours has Arizona Correctional Industries, a division of the Arizona Department of Corrections, which has an online catalog for a variety of products produced by those behind bars.

(Inmates reporting to work on a farm) We are talking about borderline slave labor, lucrative indeed. I'm not complaining about the systems where the state uses inmate labor to recover some of the costs of incarcerating them. If the proceeds return to the state, fine.

I have an issue with developments far more problematic and alarming. As part of our evolution from the USA to the UCA (United Corporations of America), we have created private FOR PROFIT prison systems that negotiate deals with private for profit corporations to force inmates to work real jobs for real companies for almost nothing, creating what is growing to be known as the Prison Industrial Complex, an expanding and malignant machine focused solely on profiting on the backs of an inmate population that has no ability to defend itself against essentially unbridled exploitation of its labor.

Prisoners manufacture clothing, auto parts, electronics, and furniture. Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for what would cost $20 to $30 an hour on the outside. Konica has used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour. Toys R Us used prisoners to restock shelves, and Microsoft (has since stopped) used them to pack and ship software. TWA used prisoners to handle reservations. AT&T has used prison labor for telemarketing. Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons is exported to other countries. Other jobs include desktop publishing, digital mapping and computer-aided design work.

Laws now permit the use of convict labor by commercial enterprises, and companies have responded to the availability of a workforce requiring minimal pay, no health or unemployment insurance, vacation time, sick leave, overtime, pension. They can hire, fire, and reassign workers at will.

Prisoners offer the ultimate in a flexible and dependable work force. "If I lay them off for a week," said Pierre Sleiman, owner of the T-shirt company CMT Blues that hires inmates at California's Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, "I don't have to worry about someone else coming and saying, 'Come work for me.'"

Inmates who fail to work as instructed face consequences such as denial of a reduced sentence for otherwise "good behavior." Those who object can be denied prison privileges (recreation, etc.) or even punished. Donovan put two inmates in solitary confinement for making a fuss about working. CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) and Wackenhut, for profit corporations running many prisons, commonly cut corners that can border on brutality as the executives minimize food and housing expenses to maximize profit.

It gets worse. Companies have used prison labor to replace real workers, resulting in layoffs. Lockhart Technologies, Inc. closed its plant in Austin, Texas, dismissing its 150 workers, and hired inmates at the state prison in Lockhart. IBM, Compaq and Dell get circuit boards from the same prison, thereby not using outside employees to make them. The companies pay the prison the federal minimum wage. The profit making prisons keep 80 percent for themselves.

Linen service workers have lost their jobs when their employer contracted with the prison laundry to do the work. Recycling plant workers lost their jobs when prisoners were brought in to sort through hazardous waste, often without proper protective gear.

The United States incarcerates more of its population than any nation. China, that beacon of civil rights and due process, has over three times the population of the US, yet it has less than three-fourths the number of inmates. Five percent of the planet, the US incarcerates 25% of those in prison across the world. In the United States, one is six times more likely to be behind bars than in the rest of the world. We spend $62 billion per year on corrections, and we've created a labor gold mine of defenseless cheap labor.

It gets worse. The story is not about the present, but the future. All trends point in the wrong direction. Forecasts not only predict a growth in inmate population, but an increase in the RATE of incarceration (details). What are we doing? The country based on freedom incarcerates its population at six times the rate of the rest of the planet. Attorneys can talk the legal stuff, but I fear we've shifted from a nation of individual freedom where organizations are kept in check to a nation where individuals are kept in check so organizations can be free to exploit them. Oh, wait. I'm just having a nightmare.

I will wake up any minute and find a country with a prosperous middle class, widespread support for well funded education and health care, and a fiscally responsible government that serves the interests of all of its citizens.

Of course our leaders recognize the importance of education. Our executive branch would never lie to invade a country and steal its assets. We would never implement tax cuts for the ultra rich, and suspend habeas corpus? Clearly these concepts are an illusion. I can wake up any time now.

I know it's a dream because the House passed a law to have a bunch of people craft language to identify criminal thinking that leads to domestic terrorism. The first WTC bombing was not domestic terrorism nor was 911. Dig into domestic terrorism actually occurring and you find an abortion fanatic, a screwed up white boy, some high school kids, and a psychopath in college.

Since I'm fantasizing, why not go whole hog including the postage and extend the trends of gutting education, increasing ignorance and poverty, and raising that incarceration rate dramatically by new laws that imprison individuals with a profile suggesting they're about to commit a terrorist act? What does that profile look like? Perhaps it's individuals with little education living in poverty and despair. Let's imprison half the country and force them into slavery for corporations.

We split the world into four segregated classes:

1. The ruling elite that own the planet
2. Sycophant suck ups that want to be class 1 that manage class 3.
3. Non-incarcerated workers (soldiers, prison guards, hotel maids, etc.)
4. The inmates

What a bunch of over dramatic nonsense. Never mind. What I've posted doesn't point to anything of substance. We're fine.