Ezekiel Edwards

The Proliferation of Prison Labor

Imagine a large American company that generated over $500 million in sales but paid its workers as little as 12 cents an hour, that ignored federal health and safety standards, that did not have to provide its employees with vacation time or retirement packages, and thus which was able consistently to outbid its competitors (no, I am not talking about Wal-Mart). The federal government would shut down such a company before it had a chance to manufacture a single additional product, right? Wrong. In fact, not only is the federal government the company's number one customer, the company is government owned. The corporation's name is UNICOR, and all of its workers are prisoners.

Since 1934, the federal government has run a federal prison industries program (FPI), also known as UNICOR, which has placed inmates in various jobs with the stated goals of producing certain goods, increasing inmates' restitution payments, keeping inmates occupied, and providing prisoners with certain skills. Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Perhaps it was in 1934, but that was over 70 years ago, when our prison system looked much different, before the recklessly waged war on drugs and the explosion of the prison industrial complex. Today, prisons have become a primary source of cheap labor for both the government and a growing number of private companies, a development which has dangerous implications for our criminal justice system and society as a whole.

In 1960, FPI's sales totaled $29 million. By 1980, that number grew by more than 400% to $117 million. Five years later, sales doubled, totaling over $238.9 million by 1985, when there were 71 factories run by UNICOR "employing" 9,995 inmates. In 2003, there were 100 such factories generating $666.8 million in sales using 20,274 prisoners (sales actually peaked at $678.7 million in 2002). Today there are 22,560 prisoners working for UNICOR.

One of UNICOR's biggest customers is the Department of Defense, which purchased $388 million in goods from UNICOR in 2001. According Harper's Magazine, in 2003 FPI sold more than $400 million worth of products to the U.S. military, making it the federal government's 39th largest contractor. UNICOR itself proudly explains on its website that "soldiers have had their uniforms, bedding, shoes, dorm furniture, helmets, flak vests, and other items made by FPI … [which] has also produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War), [and] wiring harnesses for jets and tanks."

As the prison population has skyrocketed, so has UNICOR's sales, thereby increasing our government's reliance on it as a source of goods, particularly for the military. This union is troubling, even more so in light of the current trigger-happy, pre-emptive striking, militaristic foreign policy of the current administration. As prisons increasingly become a source of cheap labor, and as we continue to wage wars that require the constant output of soldiers' gear, "missile cables", and the like, there exists an incentive for our government to imprison as many people as possible, for as long as possible, to help us mass produce such items at very low costs.

Something is drastically wrong when criminal justice policies regarding incarceration are informed in part by the need for cheap labor and in order to support our military adventures (not to mention the redistribution of political power from one voting district to another --- see my entry "The Census Bureau Must Sharpen Its Senses").

In addition to the disturbing nexus with the military, UNICOR, in its current manifestation, is detrimental and counterproductive for both American businesses (against which it competes) and the prisoners in its programs (whose health and safety are often completely disregarded). I will discuss these issues in greater detail in my next entry.

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Posted at 9:50 AM, Apr 11, 2006 in Criminal Justice | Economy
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