Hundreds of thousands of American prisoners are forced to work in “degrading conditions” that would cause scandal in any other environment, deplore the authors of a new report denouncing the “exploitation” of the prison population of the United States.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes in a comprehensive study produced with researchers from the University of Chicago that the federal government and many states are taking advantage of a constitutional exemption to abuse this “captive labor force”. “.
13e amendment, introduced in 1865 to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, provides an exemption for the “punishment” of criminals, thereby depriving them of effective legal protection.
“Most people aren’t particularly shocked by the idea of detainees being forced to work. But they don’t realize the conditions associated with it,” says Mariana Olaizola, co-author of the study, in an interview.
Low pay
Inmates working in federal or state prisons generally earn very little money, their hourly wages rarely exceeding $1 — even for risky jobs like those of California inmates mobilized to fight wildfires.
Based in part on a series of access to information requests and a long series of interviews, the authors calculated that the average hourly wage was 13 cents per hour.
They identified seven states that simply do not pay any inmates forced to work.
Those who earn a little money also have to deal with the fact that prisons deduct up to 80% of their income to cover costs of various kinds.
Nearly 70% of those who worked in detention said they did not earn enough money to cover the cost of basic items, such as hygiene products, medicine or warm clothes, charged by prisons.
Families faced with the loss of income resulting from a person’s incarceration are forced to intervene to support them financially, often by going into debt, the report notes.
Hypocrisy
While earning paltry sums, inmates produce goods and services worth an estimated $2 billion a year and provide maintenance services estimated at $9 billion to the institutions that supervise them.
Nearly 80% of inmates who work are assigned to maintenance. Another 10% is allocated to public works, such as the maintenance of roads or parks. A tiny fraction is employed by private companies that pay the prisons.
“The financial benefits for governments are enormous,” notes Ms.me Olaizola.
The co-author of the study considers it “hypocritical” to see the United States denouncing the use of forced labor in foreign countries while benefiting from abusive practices within the American prison system.
Nearly two-thirds of inmates surveyed indicated that they had worked in prison, which represents about 800,000 people nationwide.
Among those who worked, no less than 75% indicated that they risked being sanctioned in the event of refusal. Solitary confinement and loss of family visitation rights are some of the penalties reported.
Jobs at risk
Detainees also claim to have been forced into high-risk jobs without having received training or appropriate equipment.
The study authors note that many of them faced such a scenario during the COVID-19 pandemic by being given tasks where they were likely to be exposed to the virus.
Detainees were instructed to produce hand sanitizer, masks, medical suits, face shields which they were then prohibited from using for their own protection.
Excerpt from the study of the American Civil Liberties Union
Often, work programs are justified by the fact that they allow prisoners to develop skills that will facilitate their social reintegration.
“But the majority provide maintenance activities which do not provide any particular skills even if this is what the prisoners would like to obtain”, notes Ms.me Olaizola.
The authors of the report note that there is an urgent need to ensure that prisoners work on a voluntary basis and are not threatened if they refuse to do so.
They demand that the Constitution be revised and that prisoners have access to the same legal protections as all American workers, rather than being left defenseless against state institutions acting as both “jailers and bosses”.