by A. Victoria Hunter
As the number of prisons and prisoners in the United States grows, so is the number of inmates who have found in jail what many could not buy in the free world: a job. But at what price?
Increasingly, prisoners are manufacturing products and providing services for private companies for wages as low as 28 cents an hour. The trend is so ripe for abuse that some argue it is reviving the institution of slavery in the United States. Prisoners make everything but money -- clothing, furniture, electronics, calls for telephone marketing concerns, jobs traditionally performed by union laborers.
UNICOR is the trade name of the Federal Prison Industries, (FPI). UNICOR is also the largest single employer of prisoners. Part of the Federal Bureau of Prisons within the U.S. Department of Justice, UNICOR has been selling prisoner-made goods and services to federal-government customers since 1934. Its web page boasts, "Its primary mission is the productive employment of inmates."
Companies in the government-supply business say that UNICOR’s rapid expansion has cost 2,000 jobs in furniture-making since the late 1980s.
Though furniture is a lucrative product, UNICOR’s inventory is diverse. Prisoners in its "employment" also make electronics, clothing and textiles, metals, graphics and services including medical products.
By federal law, private companies employing prisoners -- state or federal -- to make products sold across state lines must pay prevailing industry wages so that prisons will not be in competition for jobs with laborers in the general public. Nevertheless, prisons do compete with civilians jobs. And while the law requires employers to pay prisoners, it doesn’t require states to give prisoners those wages.
Some Oregon inmates sew jeans called "Prison Blues" for anywhere up to $8 an hour. However, about 80 percent of that wage is withheld for taxes and a host of other state obligations, according to Reese Erlich, co-produced the Public Broadcasting System-TV documentary, "Prison Labor/Prison Blues." Still, these jobs are coveted by inmates because the work helps pass time and some pay is better than none.
Prison Blues’ logo is catchy: "Made on the inside to be worn on the outside." The jeans marketed by the Array Corporation and sold on-line, in almost 500 U.S. stores and exported to France, Germany, Italy and Japan. What the logo doesn’t say is that this product puts prisoners into direct competition with civilian laborers.
Controversy
By law all prisoners who are physically able to work have to work, said Glenn Schmitt, counsel to Rep. Bill McCollum ( Fla.). Mr. McCollum serves on the Judiciary Committee on the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Crime, which oversees the federal prison system and all federal law enforcement agencies.
Federal Prison Industries (FPI) employs 20 percent of all federal prisoners. It’s a popular program with a waiting list, Mr. Schmitt said. The alternative for prisoners not working for FPI are menial jobs that maintain the institution, like mopping floors, working in the laundry or kitchen.
"There is a lower recidivism rate because prisoners are able to get jobs when they get out," Mr. Schmitt said of the prisoner employees, whose average wage is 90-95 cents an hour, though some make $1.15 an hour. The wages are structured by Congress.
"There would be a lot fewer workers if the prisoners were paid more," Mr. Schmitt said. "Prisons use people rather than machines. It might take five guys to make something as opposed to two guys to make it on the outside. But they’re learning work skills, they’re learning to meet schedules, show up on time."
No taxpayer dollars go into this program that gives the prisoners skills, Mr. Schmitt emphasized. He wants to see the FPI program expanded beyond the Federal government customer.
"We want to try to compete for those businesses that have gone overseas for labor," he said. "Those are union jobs that have already been lost. Jobs that aren’t already lost have to be negotiated since this is the lowest unemployment rate we’ve had in 20 years. We’re trying to get more work because there’s more people in prison."
When asked if the increase in prison population sounds an alarm, Mr. Schmitt said, "The rate doesn’t worry me. I think it’s a fair system."
On the other hand, a 1998 letter signed by Reps. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) among others on behalf of small businesses and labor urged Congress to limit the impact of prison enterprises like FPI. The letter noted that FPI operates a chain of almost 100 factories and employs more than 17,000 inmates around the country. UNICOR, FPI’s trade name, had sales aided by their status as a "mandatory supply source," requiring federal agencies to purchase from FPI. In 1996 federal agencies purchases from FPI totaled $489 million.
Mr. Hoekstra pointed out that UNICOR doesn’t have to deal with federal and state regulations concerning such issues as occupational safety and health, pollution, employment discrimination and the hiring of illegal aliens.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), testified to the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee in August 1997 that, "The AFL-CIO has commented that ‘the ever-growing federal prison industry program now operates as a nearly unrestrained unfair competitor to the private sector. Far too many private sector workers are losing their jobs to convict labor.’"
Pat Nolan, president of Justice Fellowship, the public policy affiliate of Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries, doesn’t think much of the skills prisoners learn laboring for FPI. Mr. Nolan appeared before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in August 1998.
An advocate for programs that really prepare inmates for a positive return to society, Mr. Nolan stated that the current FPI model lacks vocational training that teaches inmates useful skills and operates Aas a sham@ when products being sold by FPI are simply being assembled and boxed by the inmates from finished components produced outside the prison fences.
What’s the solution?
Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr., director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, Inc., believes prisoners should have an opportunity to work -- but not be exploited.
"To work prisoners for 23-cents an hour is even worse than U.S. companies going to Haiti to hire workers for 23-cents an hour," Mr. Walker said. "Prisoners have to be gainfully employed. They have to be responsible for participation in the economic life of the nation."
Mr. Walker plans to shed light on the plight of prisons and prison justice issues with a caravan that will go across the country stopping at urban and rural centers in the fall. He plans also to go to those communities that are economically dependent on prisons.
The last stop will be Washington, D.C. where the caravan members will call on Congress to change the prisons. His organization is reaching to other groups to try to build consensus and coalition. Mr. Walker sees the prison labor issue as another factor in the troubling "prison industrial complex."