Today marks Day 3 of #PrisonStrike2018. I wrote about ending low-wage prison labor and investing in incarcerated people forbes.com/sites/angelaha…
First, the facts: about half of the 1.5 million people who are currently incarcerated work. Most work in "correctional industries," which are state-owned enterprises, and are compensated 86 cents per hour, on average. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 (which itself is very low)
Some of these jobs are mundane, but others are quite dangerous. For example, 58 youth, according to a @CACorrections tweet, are "fighting wildfire flames"
But regardless of what the job is, the larger point is that these are jobs. Human beings are doing productive labor and are being compensated at approximately 1/10th of the minimum wage
If this sounds awful but familiar, that's because exploitative prison labor has been around since slavery was abolished. It began with convict leasing, and was eventually replaced by chain gangs (which FL tried to revive in the 1990s) and was replaced by our modern system
This week, incarcerated people across the country went on strike for a number of reasons: to end racial discrimination in the justice system, restore voting rights, improve prison conditions, and to end "prison slavery"
It should go without saying that there is no justification for any form of slavery, but I'll say it anyway: THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR ANY FORM OF SLAVERY"
If you want to understand more of the legal and social underpinnings, @ava's 13th documentary and Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow are good places to start
But states use more than just legal underpinnings to justify low-wage prison labor. California has pointed to cost savings, and policymakers in the Iowa legislature recently used low-statewide unemployment to justify using prison workers to build affordable housing
Others have tried to justify it as workforce development. But if you're working for sub-minimum wage in an occupation you'll be barred from upon release (see again, CA firefighters) then that's not workforce development, it's exploitation
So what do we do? The answer is actually pretty simple. Meet strikers' demands to end prison slavery. That starts by paying people decent wages for their work, and ensuring that any programs are truly safe and voluntary
We can also do more for people who are incarcerated. One demand from incarcerated people is to reinstsate Pell grants. People who are incarcerated have lower levels of educational attainment (tl;dr but racism and inequality are to blame) so Pell would help
We can also ensure that prison education and training programs offer career pathways, which my colleagues @W_Taliaferro and @DPhamK have called for clasp.org/blog/reconnect…
We can also ensure that prison apprenticeships, which my colleague @AnnieMcGrew1 and I have written about pay good wages and lead to jobs upon release americanprogress.org/issues/economy…
While these changes alone won't solve our problem of mass incarceration and overcriminalization, especially of Black and Brown people, they will address the problems incarcerated people are drawing attention to
