When a jail becomes a sweatshop

Prisoners are forced into labor, for an average pay of $1.05 per day. They have no health insurance and no labor rights. Refusing to work is punishable by loss of privileges or even solitary confinement. These deplorable conditions are the norm for 36,000 inmates in New York State prisons.

ERIN LEWIS/YH

In December, 1999 when some inmates at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossin-ing, N.Y. and at the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, N.Y. threatened to strike, all 3,900 prisoners at the two facilities were placed in lockdown for almost three weeks. "[Strikers] would be separated, transferred, and disciplined," Linda Foglia, assistant public relations officer with the New York State Department of Corrections, said in an interview.

The treatment of prisoners in New York State prisons is by no means unique. More than two million Americans are in federal, state, or local prisons, and hundreds of thousands are forced into labor maintaining prisons and building new ones, some for even less pay than in New York.

So, it is not surprising that many in-mates choose to apply for the nearly 100,000 state-prison private-sector jobs that are available. These prisoners make products for many large U.S. corporations, either directly or through subcontractors. These private-sector jobs often pay more than the prison jobs. However, the companies still usually pay well below minimum wage, and the prisons sometimes supply rent-free workspaces to the companies. Furthermore, the companies put "Made in the U.S.A." labels on their products, and reap the resulting sales advantages. In 1994, state prisoners produced over $900 million worth of goods and services.

At colleges around the country, student activists have criticized the exploitative labor conditions at garment sweatshops of other countries. At Yale, Students Against Sweatshops (SAS) has been urging University President Richard Levin, GRD '74, to take steps to ensure that apparel with the Yale logo is produced without sweatshop labor. Simon Brandler, TC '01, an organizer with SAS, said the group has been focusing on the issue of foreign garment sweatshops because the majority of collegiate clothing is produced outside of the U.S.

Yet many of Yale's suppliers for other products, particularly computer-related, use U.S. prison labor. Labor-to-Industry (LTI) is a company that runs a prison factory in Lockhart, Texas. The 72 inmate-workers at the private prison are paid minimum wage to produce computer components, according to LTI accountant Que Banh. But after the government and Wackenhut (the private-prison company) take their cuts, the prisoners take home only 50 cents an hour. LTI supplies components to a company that makes motherboards for Dell Computers, and also supplies parts to IBM. Dell and IBM are two of the primary computer vendors for Yale, according to Director of Academic Media and Technology Philip Long.

In Washington state, prisoners have wrapped and shipped Microsoft products. According to an April/May 1996 article in North Coast Xpress, 90 prisoners at the Twin Rivers Correctional Center packed tens of thousands of Microsoft software products and computer mice. Exmark, the company that managed the prison labor at Twin Rivers, maximized efficiency by using the prison laborers only when there was extra work that needed to be done. At other times, the prisoners were sent to idle in their cells.

The increased use of prison labor in the U. S. in recent years has caused many Americans to lose their jobs. The apparel industry estimates that it has lost more than 8,000 jobs to federal prisoners, who are paid between 23 cents and $1.15 an hour to produce products for the government.

Some proponents of the use of prison labor argue that prisoners should work to pay for their stay in prison. This argument, assumes that all prisoners are being justly imprisoned for a fair amount of time. But the U. S. imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and the number of prisoners keeps rising even as crime rates fall. Using prisoners for government and private labor, added to the proliferation of private prisons in the U.S., has created a profit motive for increasing the number of prisoners and prisons. More than two-thirds of federal and state prisoners are in prison for nonviolent offenses (mostly drug crimes), and many prisoners in local prisons have not even been found guilty, but are merely awaiting trial.

Other prison-labor advocates promote the idea that prisoners will be rehabilitated by forced labor. But the inequalities of the prison system render it an unfair arena for rehabilitating criminals. According to the December 1998 issue of Atlantic Monthly, "Although the prevalence of illegal drug use among white men is approximately the same as that among black men, black men are five times as likely to be arrested for a drug offense." According to the same article, one out of 10 prisoners who need drug treatment receives it.

The bottom line, Brand-ler said, is that "you shouldn't exploit workers regardless of their station." But U.S. corporations are doing just that. Workers are paid, on average, far below minimum wage; they have no benefits or labor rights; and they are punished if they refuse to work or question their bosses. Two California prison laborers attempting to expose the sweatshop conditions in their garment factory to the media were placed in solitary confinement for over six weeks. These inmates were subsequently transferred to more restrictive facilities.

Thus far, SAS has neither taken a position on the use of prison labor in the U.S., nor on Yale's purchase of products from companies that use prison labor. "You need to pick your battles," Brandler said about SAS's strategy. "This [collegiate-apparel issue] seems like a fight that is reasonable to enter at this point." But U.S. corporations' growing use of prison labor demonstrates that a battle to end exploitation of workers in one place, if successful, may well lead to the increased exploitation of workers elsewhere.

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