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A Report of Today’s
Prisons and Jails, Part 2:
SLAVERY ON THE NEW
PLANTATION
“Slavery 400 years
ago, slavery today. It’s the same, but with a new name. They’re practicing
slavery under color of law.” (Ruchell Cinque Magee)
One of the newest
forms of slave labor is the U.S. Army’s “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” to
“benefit both the Army and corrections systems” by providing “a convenient
source of labor at no direct cost to Army installations,” additional space
to alleviate prison overcrowding, and cost-effective use of land and
facilities otherwise not being utilized.
“With a few
exceptions,” this program is currently limited to prisoners under the
Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) which allows the Attorney General to
provide the services of federal prisoners to other federal agencies,
defining the types of services they can perform. The Program stipulates
that the “Army is not interested in, nor can afford, any relationship with
a corrections facility if that relationship stipulates payment for
civilian inmate labor. Installation civilian inmate labor program
operating costs must not exceed the cost avoidance generated from using
inmate labor.” In other words the prison labor must be free of charge.
The three
“exceptions” to exclusive Federal contracting are as follows: (1) “a
demonstration project” providing “prerelease employment training to
nonviolent offenders in a State correctional facility” [CF]. (2) Army
National Guard units “may use inmates from an off-post State and/or local
CF.” (3) Civil Works projects. Services provided might include
constructing or repairing roads, maintaining or reforesting public land;
building levees, landscaping, painting, carpentry, trash pickup, etc.
This Civilian Inmate
Labor Program document includes in its countless specifications such
caveats as “Inmates must not be referred to as employees.” A prisoner
would not qualify if he/she is a “person in whom there is a significant
public interest,” who has been a “significant management problem,” “a
principal organized crime figure,” any “inmate convicted of a violent
crime,” a sex offense, involvement with drugs within the last three years,
an escape risk, “a threat to the general public.” Makes one wonder why
such a prisoner isn’t just released or paroled. In fact, the “hiring
qualifications” -- makes me suspect the “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” is
a backdoor draft, especially in lieu of the Bush Administration’s plan to
increase troop levels in Iraq with a military already stretched to its
limit.
The 13th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution (It needed a lot of amending.) retained the right
to enslave within the confines of prison. Nearly 400 years of chattel
slavery was secured and perpetuated by Amendment XIII. Section 1. 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. Dec. 6, 1865
Even before the
so-called abolition of slavery, America’s history of prisoner labor had
already begun in New York’s State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in
1817. Auburn became the first prison that contracted with a private
business to operate a factory within its walls. Later, in the post Civil
War period, the “contract and lease” system proliferated, allowing private
companies to employ prisoners and sell their products for profit.
In Southern states,
Slave Codes were rewritten as Black Codes, a series of laws criminalizing
the law-abiding activities of Black people, such as standing around,
“loitering,” or walking at night, “breaking curfew.” The enforcement of
these Codes dramatically increased the number of Blacks in Southern
prisons. E.g., in 1878, Georgia leased out 1,239 convicts, 1,124 of whom
were Black.
The lease system
provided slave labor for plantation owners or private industries as well
as revenue for the state, since incarcerated workers were entirely in the
custody of the contractors who paid a set annual fee to the state (about
$25,000), Entire prisons were leased out to private contractors who
literally worked hundreds of prisoners to death. Prisons became the new
plantations; Angola State Prison in Louisiana actually was a plantation.
It still is except the slaves are now called convicts and the prison is
known as “The Farm.” (A documentary of that title is available on DVD.)
The loss of outside jobs and the inherent brutality and cruelty of the
lease system sparked resistance which eventually brought about its demise.
One of the most famous battles was the Coal Creek Rebellion of 1891. When
the Tennessee coal, Iron and Railroad locked out their workers and
replaced them with convicts, the miners stormed the prison and freed 400
captives; and when the company continued to contract prisoners, the miners
burned the prison down. The Tennessee leasing system was disbanded shortly
thereafter. But it remained in many states until the rise of resistance in
the 1930s.
Strikes by prisoners
and union workers together were organized by then radical CIO and other
labor unions. They pressured Congress to pass the 1935 Ashurst-Sumners Act
making it illegal to transport prison-made goods across state lines. But
under President Jimmy Carter, Congress granted exemptions to the Act by
passing the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, which produced the
Prison Industries Enhancement program, or PIE, that eventually spread to
all 50 states. This lifted the ban on interstate transportation and sale
of prison-made products, permitting a for-profit relationship between
prisons and the private sector, and prompting a dramatic increase in
prison labor which continues to escalate.
As the leasing
system phased out, a new, even more brutal exploitation emerged -- the
chain gang. An extremely dehumanizing cruelty that chained men, and later
women, together in groups of five, it was originated to build extensive
roads and highways. The first state to institute chain gangs was Alabama,
followed by Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana,
and Oklahoma.
Georgia’s chain-gang
conditions were particularly brutal. Men were put out to work swinging 12
lb. sledge hammers for 16 hours a day, malnourished and shackled together,
unable to move their legs a full stride. Wounds from metal shackles often
became infected, leading to illness and death. Prisoners who could not
keep up with the grueling pace were whipped or shut in a sweat box or tied
to a hitching post, a stationary metal rail. Chained to the post with
hands raised high over his head, the prisoner remained tethered in that
position in the Alabama heat for many hours without water or bathroom
breaks. (Human Rights Watch World Report 1998).
Thanks to a lawsuit
settled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Alabama’s Department of
Corrections agreed in 1996 to stop chaining prisoners together. A few
years later, the Center won a Court ruling that ended use of the hitching
post as a violation of the 8th Amendment’s ban on “cruel and
unusual punishment.”
A report by Timothy
Dodge in “Alabama Review” noted, When the convict-lease system was
abolished in 1928, most of the white convicts, who had been leased to coal
mines and lumber camps, were sent to the cotton mills and metal workshops
at Kilby and Speigner prisons, whereas most of the black convicts ended up
in chain gangs. In effect, the black chain gang was a continuation of
racist slave labor.
In response to the
demands of World War II, the number of both free and captive road workers
declined significantly. In 1941, there were 1,750 prisoners slaving in 28
active road camps for all types of construction and maintenance. The
numbers bottomed out by war's end at 540 captives in seventeen camps.
Although chain gangs
were phased out in1955, Alabama reinstituted chain gangs in 1995 followed
by Arizona, Florida, Iowa, and Maine. Arizona’s first female chain gang
was instituted in 1996. Complete with striped uniforms, the women of a
Phoenix jail (to this day) spend four to six hours a day chained together
in groups of 30, clearing roadsides of weeds.
In the 1940s,
California Governor Earl Warren conducted secret investigations into the
State’s only prisons, San Quentin and Folsom. The depravity, squalor,
sadism, and torture he found led the governor to initiate the building of
Soledad Prison in 1951.
Prisoners were put
to work in educational and vocational programs that taught basic courses
in English and math, and provided training in trades ranging from
gardening to meat cutting. At wages of 7 to 25 cents an hour, California
prisoners used their acquired skills to turn out institutional clothing
and furniture, license plates and stickers, seed new crops, slaughter
pigs, produce and sell dairy products to a nearby mental institution,
Within a decade this “model prison” at Soledad had become another torture
chamber of filthy dungeons, literal “holes,” virulently racist guards,
officially sanctioned brutality, torture, and murder.
Though prison jobs
are supposed to be voluntary, if prisoners refuse to work they’re often
given longer sentences, denied privileges, or thrown into solitary
confinement.
Prisoners were
brutalized and forced to work long hours under miserable conditions. In
the 1960s, “Soledad Brother,” George Jackson, organized a work strike that
turned into a riot after white strikebreakers tried to lynch one of the
Black strikers.
The Black Movement’s
resistance, led by Jackson, W. L. Nolen, and Hugo “Yogi” Pinell,
eventually brought Congressional oversight and overhaul of California’s
prison system. (The Melancholy History of Soledad Prison, by Min S. Yee.)
Yet, little has
changed except for an incredible expansion that now has the state system
bursting at the seams with 174,000 prisoners (The L.A. Times reported
12/23/06 a 1,000 prisoner increase in a matter of weeks!) crammed into 90
penitentiaries, small prisons and camps stretched across 900 miles of the
fifth-largest economy in the world, as Ruth Gilmore’s new book, “Golden
Gulag” reports. Since 1984, the state has erected 43 penal institutions,
making it a global leader in prison construction. Most of the new prisons
have been built in rural areas far from family and friends, and most
captives are Black or Brown men, unemployed or working poor. Suicide and
recidivism rates approach twice the national average, and the State spends
as much or more on prisons as on higher education.
In fact, Governor
Schwarzenazi ‘s solution to prison overcrowding is sending prisoners out
of state, and adding 78,000 more beds, spending $11 billion more of your
taxes on a failed prison system. For Fiscal Year 2005-2006, the California
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) was allocated a total
of $7,398,743,000 (“and Rehabilitation” was added to the CDC by the new
Governor sans rehab).
In 1985, U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger lauded China’s prison labor
program: “1,000 inmates in one prison I visited comprised a complete
factory unit producing hosiery and what we would call casual or sport
shoes... Indeed it had been a factory and was taken over to make a
prison.” Burger called for the conversion of prisons into factories, the
repeal of laws limiting prison industry production and sales, and the
active participation of business and organized labor.
Heeding the judge’s
call, California voters passed Prop 139 in 1990, establishing the Joint
Venture Program allowing California businesses to cash in on prison labor.
“This is the new jobs program for California, so we can compete on a Third
World basis with countries like Bangladesh,” observed Richard Holober with
the California Federation of Labor.
Businesses in Joint
Venture must pay at least minimum wage (although the State takes back 80
percent of prisoners’ pay checks) and promise they’re not taking jobs away
from people on the outside. But in reality. they have. For example,
Lockhard Technologies, Inc. closed its plant in Austin, Texas, laying off
150 employees, and reopened its shop in a State Prison. (“Prison Labor on
the Rise in US,” Whyte & Baker, 2000.)
In 1994, Oregon
voters passed a constitutional amendment establishing a mandatory 40-hour
work week for the State’s prisoners, resulting in the loss of thousands of
civil service and private sector jobs. Outside construction workers lost
jobs when prisoners were assigned to build more units -- literally
building their own cages.
Currently,
California’s Prison Industrial Authority (PIA) employs 5,900 captives and
operates over 60 service, manufacturing, and agricultural industries at 22
prisons throughout the state. It produces over 1,400 goods and services
including office furniture, clothing, food products, shoes, printing
services, signs, binders, eye wear, gloves, license plates, cell
equipment, and much more. Wages are $.30 to $.95 per hour before
deductions, according to the PIA’s latest figures on its website. When I
need new glasses, they have to be sent to Donovan State Prison, San Diego,
where prisoners fill prescriptions for Medi-Cal patients.
For the State’s
highest wage, $1 hour, prisoners provide the “backbone of the state’s
wildland fire fighting crews,” according to an unpublished CDC report. The
State Department of Forestry saves more than $70 million annually using
prison labor. California’s Department of Forestry has 198 Fire Crews
comprised of CDC and CYA (California Youth Authority) minimum-security
captives housed in 41 Conservation Camps throughout the state.
“Their primary
function is to construct fire line by hand in areas where heavy machinery
cannot be used because of steep topography, rocky terrain, or areas that
may be considered environmentally sensitive,” (i.e., the most dangerous
fire lines).
CYA juveniles are
also working for TWA as ticket agents, assembling computer circuit boards,
doing sheet metal work, photo copying, and packaging plastic eating
utensils for fast-food restaurants.
Now at least 37
states have similar programs wherein prisoners manufacture everything from
blue jeans to auto parts, electronics and toys. Clothing made in Oregon
and California is exported to other countries, competing successfully with
apparel made in Asia and Latin America.
The Federal Prison
Industries (FPI), a nonprofit Justice Department subsidiary, that does
business as UNICOR, was created in 1935. and began supplying the Pentagon
on a broad scale in the 1980s.
In 1985, according
to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, FPI had 71 factories enslaving 9,995
captives generating sales of $239.9 million. By 2003, there were 100 FPI
factories working 20,274 slaves with sales totaling $666.8 million. And
currently FPI employs about 19,000 captives, slightly less than 20 percent
of the federal prison population, in 106 prison factories around the
country. Profits totaled nearly $40 million!
In 2005, FPI sold
more than $750,000,000 worth of goods to the federal government. Sales to
the Army alone put UNICOR on the Army’s list of top 50 suppliers, ahead of
well-known corporations like Dell Computer, according to Wayne Woolley,
Newhouse News Service.
Over the past three
years, thousands of federal prisoners have been working overtime filling
Pentagon contracts for everything from radio components to body armor.
Since the beginning
of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the Army's Communication and
Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., has shipped more than 200,000
radios to combat zones, most with at least some components manufactured by
federal inmates working in 11 prison electronics factories around the
country. Under current law, UNICOR enjoys a contracting preference known
as "mandatory source," which obligates government agencies to try to buy
certain goods from the prisons before allowing private companies to bid on
the work. This same contracting restriction applies to state agencies.
The demand for
defense products from FPI became so great that “national exigency”
provisions were invoked so the 20 percent limit on goods provided in each
category could be exceeded. The rules were waived during the 1991 Persian
Gulf War. Private manufacturers say they’ve been hurt by such practice, as
they are unable to bid on various products.
According to the
Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all
military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts,
pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers
supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of
paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of
home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office
furniture.
Airplane parts,
medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye
dogs for blind people. By 2007, the overall sales figures and profits for
federal and state prison industries had skyrocketed into the billions.
Apparently, the
military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex (PIC) have
joined forces.
This PIC is a
network of public and private prisons, of military personnel, politicians,
business contacts, prison guard unions, contractors, subcontractors and
suppliers all making big profits at the expense of poor people who
comprise the overwhelming majority of captives. The fastest growing
industry in the country, it has its own trade exhibitions, conventions,
websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs and direct advertising
campaigns. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ labor
lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce.
Replacing the
“contract and lease” system of the 19th Century, private companies that
have contracted prison labor include Microsoft, Boeing, Honeywell, IBM,
Revlon, Pierre Cardin, Compaq, Victoria Secret, and Nordstrom.
In 1995, there were
only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000
inmates; now, there are at least 100, with some 62,000 inmates. That
number is expected to hit 360,000 within a decade.
The two largest
private prison corporations in the US, Wackenhut and Corrections
Corporation of America (CCA), are transnationals, managing prisons and
detention centers in at least 13 states, Australia, Canada, South Africa,
and the United Kingdom. A top performer on the New York Stock Exchange,
CCA called California its “new frontier,” and boasts of investors such as
Wal-Mart, Exxon, General Motors, Ford, Chevrolet, Texaco, Hewlett-Packard,
Verizon, and UPS.
Employers (Read:
slave masters) don’t have to pay health or unemployment insurance,
vacation time, sick leave or overtime. They can hire, fire or reassign
inmates as they so desire, and can pay the workers as little as 21 cents
an hour. The inmates cannot respond with a strike, file a grievance, or
threaten to leave and get a better job.
Mass roundups of
immigrants and non-citizens, currently about half of all federal
prisoners, and dragnets in low-income ‘hoods have increased the prison
population to unprecedented levels. Andrea Hornbein points out in Profit
Motive: “The majority of these arrests are for low level offenses or
outstanding warrants, and impact the taxpayer far more than the offense.
For example, a $300 robbery resulting in a 5 year sentence, at the
Massachusetts average of $43,000 per year, will cost $215,000. That
doesn’t even include law enforcement and court costs.”
Nearly 75% of all
prisoners are drug war captives. A criminal record today practically
forces an ex-con into illegal employment since they don’t qualify for
legitimate jobs or subsidized housing. Minor parole violations,
unaffordable bail, parole denials, longer mandatory sentencing and three
strikes laws, slashing of welfare rolls, overburdened court systems,
shortage of public defenders, massive closings of mental hospitals, and
high unemployment (about 50% for Black men) -- all contribute to the high
rates of incarceration and recidivism. Thus, the slave labor pool
continues to expand.
“In order to please
shareholders, corporations must achieve growth. Empty cells do not
generate profits.” (Hornbein)
Unions have been
virtually silent about the huge growth of prison labor in the U.S.,
reports Alan Whyte and Jamie Baker (“Prison Labor on the Rise in
U.S.,2000). The Tennessee AFL-CIO supported privatization of the state’s
prison system and struck a deal with CCA in 1997. For the most part,
unions have bought into the prison system’s propaganda blaming prisoners
for job losses and pitting them against organized labor. In fact, two
Republicans have competing bills in Congress: One would expand the PIC
and give prisoners a raise from 21 cents to $1.15 an hour; the other would
compel prison industry to compete with private enterprise with support
from the AFL-CIO.
Honda paid inmates
$2 an hour for the same work an auto worker would get paid, $20 to $30 an
hour. But in this instance, the United Auto Workers raised hell pressuring
Honda to cancel its prison labor contract.
Among the most
powerful unions today are the guards’ unions. The California Corrections
Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) wields so much political power it
practically decides who governs the state. Moreover, its members get the
State’s biggest payouts, according to the L.A. Times. “More than 1600
officers’ earnings exceeded legislators’ 2007 salaries of $113,098.” Base
pay for 6,000 guards earning $100,000 or more totaled $453 million with
overtime adding another $220 million to wages. One lieutenant guard earned
more than any other state official, including the Governor, or $252,570.
The Progressive
Labor Party accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi
Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."
The National
Correctional Industries Association (NCIA) is an international nonprofit
professional association, whose mission is to promote excellence and
credibility in correctional industries through professional development
and innovative business solutions. NCIA's members include all 50 state
correctional industry agencies, Federal Prison Industries, foreign
correctional industry agencies, city and county jail industry programs,
and private sector companies working in partnership with correctional
industries.
In summary, we must
remember that the emancipation of Black people from chattel slavery
resulted from prolonged guerrilla warfare between the slaves and the
slaveowners, led by the revolutionary General Harriet Tubman. More than
50,000 slaves fled from the South to the North and Canada, 50,000 acts of
rebellion.
As George Jackson
noted in a KPFA interview with Karen Wald (Spring 1971), “I’m saying that
it’s impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters....We have to
prove that this thing won’t work here. And the only way to prove it is
resistance...and then that resistance has to be supported, of course, from
the street....We can fight, but the results are...not conducive to proving
our point...that this thing won’t work on us. From inside, we fight and we
die....the point is -- in the new face of war -- to fight and win.”
---
This report is the second part of a series that
began with publication of A Report on Today’s Prisons and Jails, Part 1:
AMERICAN TORTURE CHAMBERS in the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper last
month, 12/06, and posted on Independent Media Center’s website.
See
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/01/11/18345676.php.
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