While the 13th Amendment & pay for incarcerated people are a trending topic, it’s worth noting that most jobs performed by people incarcerated in Alabama’s state prisons pay exactly $0.00 per hour. This is not a well-known fact even in Alabama, but I have the receipts. THREAD 1/X
I’ll say that again, for emphasis and to make sure I’m being clear: in Alabama’s state prisons, incarcerated people aren’t paid at all for the majority of work they do, from scrubbing toilets & cooking food to acting as hospice workers & mopping floors. 2/X
An internal Alabama Department of Corrections document I obtained earlier this year showed that no standard jobs in multiple Alabama prisons paid a single cent as of June. 3/X
I asked the Alabama Dept. of Corrections and a spokesperson confirmed what I had found. She also noted that able-bodied people incarcerated in the state’s prisons are required to work - for free. The DOC’s full statement is at this link: reckonsouth.com/alabama-depart… 4/X
Justin Faircloth, who is incarcerated in Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility who can’t work because he has Stage IV colon cancer, also confirmed that most of his fellow incarcerated individuals are not paid for their labor. 5/X
Meanwhile, incarcerated people in Alabama’s state prisons have to have money if they hope to purchase a wide range of vital items, from toothpaste & shampoo to snacks & stationery 6/X
The Alabama DOC’s network of prison commissaries brings in more than $1 million in profit each month, all off of sales to incarcerated people. In May alone, the DOC’s commissaries made more than $1.2 million, according to internal records I obtained earlier this year.
This is just the tip of the iceberg re: the punitive economics of Alabama’s state prison system. There’s tons of great scholarship out there on this issue, by advocacy orgs like @southerncenter & @splcenter. 8/X
Or you can check out the app I created for @reckonsouth last month, which covers all the issues I touched on in this thread and more, in far greater detail. The TLDR of all this: Incarcerated people are vastly underpaid in prisons all across the U.S. 10/10 reckonsouth.com/commissary/
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.