What Do Prisoners Make for Victoria's Secret?
NEWS: From Starbucks to Microsoft: a sampling of what US inmates make, and for whom
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Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor. Here's a sampling of what they make, and for whom.
Eating in: Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens). Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup "entirely consistent with our mission statement."
Around the Big House: Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips. Bullwhips?
Windows dressing: In the mid-1990s, Washington prisoners shrink-wrapped software and up to 20,000 Microsoft mouses for subcontractor Exmark (other reported clients: Costco and JanSport). "We don't see this as a negative," a Microsoft spokesman said at the time. Dell used federal prisoners for PC recycling in 2003, but stopped after a watchdog group warned that it might expose inmates to toxins.
Back to school: Texas and California inmates make dorm furniture and lockers, diploma covers, binders, logbooks, library book carts, locker room benches, and juice boxes.
Patriotic duties: Federal Prison Industries, a.k.a. Unicor, says that in addition to soldiers' uniforms, bedding, shoes, helmets, and flak vests, inmates have "produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War)" and "wiring harnesses for jets and tanks." In 1997, according to Prison Legal News, Boeing subcontractor MicroJet had prisoners cutting airplane components, paying $7 an hour for work that paid union wages of $30 on the outside.
The law won: In Texas, prisoners make officers' duty belts, handcuff cases, and prison-cell accessories. California convicts make gun containers, creepers (to peek under vehicles), and human-silhouette targets.
A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria's Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace "Made in Honduras" labels on garments with "Made in the usa."
Open wide: At California's prison dental laboratory, inmates produce a complete prosthesis selection, including custom trays, try-ins, bite blocks, and dentures.
Constructive criticism: Prisoners in for burglary, battery, drug and gun charges, and escape helped build a Wal-Mart distribution center in Wisconsin in 2005, until community uproar halted the program. (Company policy says, "Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart.")
On call: Its inmate call centers are the "best kept secret in outsourcing," Unicor boasts. In 1994, a contractor for gop congressional hopeful Jack Metcalf hired Washington state prisoners to call and remind voters he was pro-death penalty. Metcalf, who prevailed, said he never knew.
Caroline Winter is an editorial intern at Mother Jones.
Things really need to change. You should read some of the other articles about prisoner rates of HIV, AIDS, Hep C. A lot of people do eventually get out and look what they're bringing with them. Another article talks about South Carolina entertaining the thought of inmates donating a body part for up to 180 days off.
Our prisons aren't for rehabilitating or really even punishment, they're for breaking people down and exploiting them in a slave-like fashion, the new plantation. It's what we get for not standing up as a nation and allowing the corporate manipulations of our government that go on.
we HAVE the highest prison population percentage of all "civiilzed" (and I use that term loosely) nations.
It strikes me that a serious flaw with the prison system in terms of economics is the message being sent from the system of justice is that work is punishment—while the truth is that having people in prison do labor is a form of social theft—one punishes the society by stealing jobs from society as a means to use slave labor (the demand for slave labor then becomes the system of justice, which is injustice)—thus both the state and those firms who use prison labor undermine the society (which functions as a means to expand the market for slave labor as more and more people become unemployed). Punishment in society (at least in pure economic terms) is the inability to participate in society—thus removing people from society and holding them in confinement is punishment, while using prisoners to do labor is in itself a crime, since it creates negative externalities in relation to the economy due to the inefficiencies it creates (there becomes two prices in the system—slave labor and market labor) but it means that the demand for prison labor is infinite, which means the demand for “criminals” is infinite. Looking at the US and its insanely high prison population it is obvious that this trend has already achieved a high level of social injustice.
It would seem that the Nobel Prize winner, Gary Becker offers an incomplete analysis of crime because he looks only at the alleged criminal whose rational expectation in relation to the question of whether it is worth it or not to commit a crime (whether the risk of getting caught and the punishment are greater than gain of committing the crime) fails to look at the rational expectations of those who do the judging—in other words the Prison System speculates on the demand for prison labor—which creates another kind of crime—systemic injustice where the system due to the demand for labor must maintain a constant or increasing supply of criminals which in turn means the policing of society becomes ever more fanatical. It also means that what determines crime is not crime but rather the demand for prison labor.
This is also the case with temporary labor (where labor is supplied by a firm such as manpower) because it steals income and security from the society by forcing labor to take work with less pay but in a way that the firm using temp labor is willing to pay a higher price for that labor for a short period of time so as to avoid having responsibility for those it employs. This in turn results in a lowering of the standard of living and it weakens the economic system because aggregate savings dwindle meaning that investment falls because savings falls—under the premise that savings equals investment. (Here the law enforces the right to be irresponsible but also it undermines the economics of the society) Today the US has negative household savings and consequently negative investment. Under a Keynesian system of economics the propensity to consume is around 87% meaning 13% goes to savings. To adjust for this it would mean that Manpower who I believe takes 30% of the wage from the labor it sells means that they ought not be allowed to take more than say 17%. Still the question remains that should employers have a responsibility to offer a living—because it is via the concept of a steady place of employment that the very concept of security is derived.
Society is actually better off if properly convicted criminals are made to give back through labor. If they make products more cheaply, socks for instance, then we save money when we buy those socks. We increase the standard of living for those who couldn't afford the socks prior to the prison labor. "But what about the sock maker who's being undercut due to prison labor?" What about him? He doesn't have a right to make a profit making socks. He doesn't have a right to keep the rest of us from buying cheap socks just because it will affect his income.
Prisoners working isn't a bad thing. More gets produced cheaply, plain and simple. We have a moral obligation not to wrongly send people to jail. If we let them work, we have a moral obligation to work them humanely. If those thresholds are met, then we should welcome prison workers.
What I wonder about while reading this is: Who makes the profits from this system? Does any of it offset the expenses, $40 thousand a year and up per prisoner, taxpayers pay for keeping these "workers" incarcerated.
How nicer can it be to have about 10,000,000 people working for free in this nations penal colonies.
What ever happened to the labor laws the predicate at least a minimum wage. It is just criminal.
And now Mukasey put out a press release last week that "Not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."
Well this is a good excuse to free the 10,000,000 prisoners and give them another second chance. It would also close down a wickedly abusive industry.
Well put! There's no possible objection to the idea that transgressors should help to pay for their punishment. If they can do it and learn a skill that will further their success in society after they have paid their debt, so much the better.
This contract work is better done in the US then sent out for children in China to do. The wages earned are based on production, a piece rate, with the costs of restitution, child support, etc. removed first. These "outside" jobs can be a source of pride for the prisoners and offers a chance to work on the outside after release.
As you might guess, I've worked with felons in the community. Try and get an apartment, or a job, or back with your family when FELON as the only thing seen by so-called good Christian people in the community.
What is the answer? How about intensive probation, which would cost more than prison, but the whole focus would be on preventing another offense and keeping them contributing members of society.
But that leaves the problem of American companies wanting to make the highest profit margin they can. There are hundreds of thousands of disabled people in the US who would love to do the assembly and packaging work. They too are an invisible group in our society that have not given a chance to contribute and earn a wage for work that they can do.
I will climb off my soap box now. But I think this capitolistic society needs a collective kick in the butt along with a lesson in compassion for major change to happen.
[To answer Frank's question: "Is anyone paying attention?" Yes, some of us are paying attention. But most of the country does not care enough about anyone but themself to change anything - especially if it will cost them one more penny.]
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
The problem is that we've been lied to by teachers who had also been lied to, and some of us have read the above version time and again. This is what the Thirteenth Amendment truly states:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (caps added)
We have an EXCEPTION for Slavery within the United States Constitution, "EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME..."
So, we have a nation that continues to officially practice "slavery...as a punishment for crime..." Within the United States, "or any place subject to their jurisdiction" prisoners have been and continue to be slaves. They are forced and/or coercied to labor whether they are paid or not.
The Thirteenth Amendment needs to be changed so as to remove this and all offensive Exceptions to slavery.
Both history and contemporary reality exposes the fact that many EXCEPTIONS have and continue to exist for slavery: slavery as an economic class status, slavery for black Afro Americans, slavery for women, slavery for poor whites, slavery for Hispanic immigrants, prostitution slavery, international child soldier slavery, war and poverty as slavery.
Black males in particular are profilied for arrest and imprisonment; and poor people of all races and genders are profilied in general. However, rich white men are not profilied for arrest, imprisonment and enslavement. They are protected with their millions. If being a rich white man became a crime, if rich white men were profilied, arrested, imprisoned and enslaved - then the Thirteenth Amendment would change just as fast as their money could make it happen.
Definately, the Thirteenth Amendment needs to be changed with the return of citizenship, labor, human and economic rights for all.
Isn't it about time you guys got up off your obese asses and started screaming out, "I'm angry, and I'm not going to take this anymore". What happened to the VeitNam Moratorium spirit.
Everything in the US is wrong, everything, it's totally messed up. Banks, invasions, lobbyists, oil cartels, monopolies, Bushes, Clintons, jails over crowdiing, drugs, gun deaths, road deaths, executions, probably more than China, homelessness, Gitmo Bay, radical feminists running the universities, biased media, MuckDonalds, Kentucky Fried Cruelty, Starschmucks, Burger Kink, Hollywood crap movies, lousy music, paranoia plus, 9/11 bulldust, greed, vanity, selfishness, ego, control freaks, outdated religious ideas, the See Eye A, teh Eff Bee Eye, brainwashing propaganda, lies, domination of poor countries and their trusting people. I don't think you want me to go on, but I'll leave you with, Paris Hilton, the ultimate symbol of the US, Lindsay Lohan, Gangster Rap, ghettos, Britney Spears....
Please, don't just sit there, do something.
For the prisoner's bring back the chain gang!
This almost sounds like you are trying to make a "free market" case of this, but when prison labor is paid below the market rate for labor, that is not free market. That is exploitation of taxpayer subsidized, incarcerated, labor at the expense of those of us competing in the labor market.
Longer, mandatory sentencing for what used to be considered minor transgressions have filled our prison system beyond capacity. Prisons are now operated by profit making, private corporations and they and other corporations are now exploiting this situation to make more money.
This process has nothing to do with justice, public safety, or rehabilitation. The Criminal Justice System is being subverted from a service to society to a service industry for profit. That indeed, is frightening; especially when viewed as a growth sector.