Lara Makhlouf
Convicts leased to harvest timber in Florida, around 1915. Photographer unknown.
From early American colonial days to the present, prison labor has been a source of free and cheap labor. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, abolishing slavery “except as a punishment for a crime.” This exception enabled Southern states to enact “Black Codes” that forced formerly enslaved people to work. Those who refused were sentenced to hard labor.
There is historical continuity in the 300+ years that Europeans occupied American land and enslaved people of African descent. Slavery in the U.S. did not end after the Civil War. Rather, slavery took on the name “prison labor” and continues to exist, far from the gaze of average Americans.
The prison system today is disproportionately filled with people of color. It has evolved into a business, referred to as the prison industrial complex, and its economic success depends on keeping people incarcerated. In codifying the enslavement and commodification of people of color in the present day United States, the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex have become the primary means through which economic value is extracted from their labor.
It is a system that preys on the poorest and the most disenfranchised Americans.
American prisons in the colonial era
The origin of the American prison system can be traced to early colonial times. European settlers brought with them ideas of discipline taken from the Enlightenment. In time, this evolved towards ideas of labor as a punishment for transgressions.
In England during this time, punishment for crimes typically consisted of fines, whippings, or death. Out of British imperialism arose a new form of punishment for criminals: indentured servitude in the colonies. In 1656, England ordered “the apprehending of lewd and dangerous persons … who have no way of livelihood … and treating with merchants for transporting them to the English plantations in America.” The convicts would work the land in Virginia, and after a predetermined number of years had passed, their sentence would conclude and they would be free. Indentured servitude became the primary form of forced labor until the period of 1726–1788, when the enslavement of Africans began to take hold.
Crime and punishment for African slaves posed a new set of challenges to early white settlers. Although early penitentiaries were cropping up in the colonies, these were intended to hold poor white criminals and were not to be used for slave imprisonment. To jail an enslaved person was thought to deprive the master of their profits. In the burgeoning colonies, it was considered more harmful to remove a slave from his work due to crime than to allow their crime to remain unpunished.
At the same time that enslavement of Africans was taking hold in America, Italian Enlightenment thinker Cesare Beccaria was penning his treatise “On Crimes and Punishments“, published in 1764. Beccaria stated that “the strongest deterrent to crime … [would be] the long and painful example of a man deprived of his freedom … repaying with his toil the society he has offended.” He believed that laws should instill fear and respect in the people and that examples of punishment should be enough to discourage others from committing crimes. According to Beccaria, compulsory labor, rather than corporal punishment, was both an effective deterrent to crime and adequate compensation to society.
English thinkers’ approach to crime and punishment parallels that of Beccaria. Sir Thomas Moore, a 16th century Renaissance humanist, stated that, “it is unwise to execute offenders since their labor is more profitable than their death.” Thomas Jefferson later wrote that putting convicts to work at hard labor reformed the criminals while making them, “long continued spectacles to deter others from committing like offenses.” The convict’s economic contribution through labor was seen as the ideal way to restore their moral standing. From Moore and Beccaria to Jefferson, the concept of hard labor as repayment and deterrence had taken hold in western society.
Prison Convict Labor in Mississippi in 1911. Photographer unknown.
Prisons in the postbellum United States
In 1865, a year after the Civil War ended, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. This amendment outlawed slavery, except as punishment for a crime. Slavery in every Northern state had been abolished in 1804. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the South as well, forcing Southern states to seek alternative labor sources. As a result, formerly enslaved Blacks in the South became exploited in enslavement-like working conditions.
One of several actions undertaken by Southern states was the enactment of “Black Codes“, which criminalized previously legal activity. Examples of such infractions included standing in certain areas of town, or even walking at night. “Black Codes” in some states required Black people to sign labor contracts, lest they be arrested for vagrancy. As a result, the Black prison population grew exponentially, surpassing whites for the first time. Freed slaves were left with only two choices: sign a labor contract and “voluntarily” return to the same work they had done as slaves; or be thrown into prison and forced into labor.
Both Northern and Southern businessmen profited from prison labor. As in the pre-Civil War period, the output of Northern factories required raw materials from the South. The newly expanded prison system and its labor meant freedmen were back on plantations, supervised by guards with farm operations experience. Northern prisoners were forced into industrial work. This work was typically performed under contract, meaning the prison laborers were provided at low rates to brickyards, railroads, farms, plantations, and other private businesses. Payment was made to the state, not the prisoners.
A prison guard on horseback accompanies inmates returning from a farm work detail at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, LA in 2011. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP
From the 20th century through today
By the mid-20th century, the civil rights movement was underway, and discriminatory Jim Crow laws of the post-Civil War South were finally repealed. Prison labor reform, however, was not on the docket.
The federal government contributed to the injustices of prison labor. In 1981, Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren E. Burger gave a speech where he proposed turning America’s prisons into “factories with fences“. His proposal suggested compensating prisoners for their labor, while charging them for their room and board. Chief Justice Burger believed that the existing system failed to rehabilitate inmates and that his “factory” proposal was the radical change necessary to reform the system.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Reagan and Clinton administrations expanded the prison-industrial complex. Regan’s administration furthered “tough on crime” policies, which called for the extensive use of more, and longer, prison sentences. These policies in turn resulted in massive prison construction projects, becoming a boon for private industries. Similarly, the Clinton administration enacted the “three strikes and you’re out” crime bill, whereby recidivists were sentenced 25-years-to-life for their third felony, no matter the circumstances. The result was a soaring prison population. Political policies in the United States continue to focus on “solving” the problem of crime, rather than on reforming those imprisoned or protecting their rights. As a result, the United States today has one of the highest per-capita incarceration rates in the world.
Prison laborers doing fieldwork in Angola, Louisiana, 2015. The site is a former plantation. Photo: The Atlantic
Exploitation of prisoners in today’s prisons
The exploitation of prisoners continues in today’s public and private prisons. Jaron Browne makes the counterintuitive pronouncement that “as the number of people without jobs increases, the number of working people actually increases–they become prison laborers.”
In the prison system, subpar wages and misplaced incentives result in unfair punishments. Shane Bauer, an investigative reporter who worked as a prison guard and surreptitiously recorded his daily activities, recounts how an inmate was brought to an in-prison tribunal for sweeping the floor at the wrong time. The charge was being in an unauthorized area. He was found guilty and punished to 30 days of his “good time”, extending his prison stay by that amount. As a consequence, the private prison was able to bill the state for the prisoner’s additional time.
Labor can also serve as a system within the prison to control inmates. Jorge Renaud, a prison reform activist who spent 30 years behind bars, recounts how he began his sentence “pounding clods into dust until my hands blistered and bled.” After some time, he was awarded a more comfortable job as a hospital clerk. When he refused to falsify a report that an inmate had fallen down the stairs when they were in fact beaten, he was forced to return to the fields.
Some states exploit their prisoners financially, with or without labor. For states with paid labor, wages can be as low as $0.50 – $0.70 per hour. Prisoners can use these funds to buy marked-up items at the prison store. In Delaware, inmates work without pay, but their overtime allows for a credit towards a reduction of their sentence. In Florida, prisoners must report their assets before being released, so that the state can bill them based on their ability to pay. The examples demonstrate how prisoners are economically exploited through a system of arbitrary financial rules.
Prison inmates in a UNICOR program sew uniforms. Photo: Federal Bureau of Prisons
The consequences of incarceration
After completing a prison sentence, the American criminal justice system often outcasts former inmates who attempt to return to society. Prisoners often leave prison in debt and experience legal discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, and voting rights. With the prison system disproportionately affecting Black citizens, 1 out of every 13 black Americans over 18 is disenfranchised This rate is four times greater than for non-Blacks.
Understanding U.S. history helps us understand the present day. The abolition of slavery caused states to seek ways to lock Black people into the prison system as a way to exploit their labor. Despite the civil rights reforms of the twentieth century, conditions at U.S. prisons continue to be problematic. Discriminatory laws are still on the books and unequal enforcement remains a problem. Federal policies of the past decades have only contributed to, not halted, the crisis. The system of prison labor continues to be seen as modern-day slavery.
