Incarcerated people work for cents on the dollar or for free to make goods you use.


Brittany White, 37, was arrested for marijuana trafficking in Alabama in 2009. She went to trial to contest the charges — after all, just a year prior the United States president had admitted, cheekily, that inhaling was “the point.”

She was sentenced to 20 years. But her sentence was meted out in portions, based on good behavior, and she, posing no discernable public safety risk for selling a plant increasingly legal in states all across the U.S., was allowed to work on the outside.

She got a job at a Burger King.

But the state of Alabama took a significant portion of her paltry minimum wage. “They charged me $25 a week for transportation,” she tells Truthdig. “And they take away 40% of your check. It’s egregious to be making minimum wage, and then to have so much taken away by the state.”

Minimum wage in Alabama is $7.25.

Still, White considers herself lucky. Even her paltry earnings were better than nothing. She was able to purchase soap from the commissary. The prison-provided soap is full of lye, she says, which you definitely do not want near your private parts.

Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing. While corporate culprits are commonly blamed for exploiting the labor of incarcerated people, it’s actually primarily states and the federal government who take advantage, and make the public unwittingly complicit.

Got a car? Your license plate was likely made by inmates. In New York, inmates make the trash cans. High school desks are often made on the inside; so are glasses for Medicare patients.

Many stuck behind bars are forced to work for cents per hour, or for nothing, for corporations, states and the federal government.

Companies like CorCraft in New York manage labor in the state’s prisons. They’re funded by the state’s budget, and boast they’re New York state’s preferred choice for “office chairs, desks, panel systems, classroom furniture, cleaning, vehicle, and personal care supplies, and more.”

“Summer Sizzles with Classroom Furniture from Corcraft,” their website declares.

They also claim to help in “the department’s overall mission to prepare incarcerated individuals for release through skill development, work ethic, respect and responsibility.”

The people behind the “sizzling” furniture beg to differ.

In the 12 years he was incarcerated in New York state, Dyjuan Tatro was forced to work a variety of jobs, from making desks to license plates. “At the end, I didn’t have a resume,” he tells Truthdig. “I didn’t get one thing to help me be successful on the outside from the prison. No resume, no job experience… Just $40 and a bus ticket — from 12 years of prison labor, I couldn’t use any of it to get a meaningfully paying job.”

Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, an organization devoted to eradicating unjust prison practices, goes further. “It’s slavery,” she tells Truthdig.

The 13th Amendment, which ended slavery, left an important exception: it’s still legal to garnish wages, or more commonly, refuse to pay incarcerated people for forced labor. “As a result, incarcerated people live in slavery-like conditions,” Tylek adds.

Of course, there are nuances. For example, trading community service, like, say, picking up trash, in exchange for not serving time, is one example of a noncarceral approach. But incarceration changes the equation. Tylek notes that it’s not just about the miniscule (or nonexistent) wages. It’s compelling people to work, with the alternative being a stint in solitary and other punishments, like refusing to let them see relatives, consequences that are meted out by guards. She also notes that they have to work in dangerous trades they may not be trained for, including industrial-sized laundries or ovens.

Despite what someone did or did not do, to end up behind bars, coercing them into performing free labor is wrong, Tylek notes. “I like to ask people the question, ‘Under what circumstances is slavery OK?” she tells Truthdig.

“If you can’t answer that question, the answer is, slavery is never OK.”


  • treeOP
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    1 year ago

    If an admin tells me to do so I will, but you don’t need to backseat my posting, I will not make people open the article to read it if they don’t want to, I’m gonna assume you’re not a lawyer or an admin for that matter, just a fan of cooooooooopyright, like oh no, I totally believe in intellectual property, such a cool concept and I’m sure the people at TruthDig are big mad their work is reaching a wider audience

    • Chozo
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      1 year ago

      It’s one thing to freeboot an article in a world where journalism is already dying due to lack of funding.

      It’s another thing to have a shit attitude on top of it.

      I will not make people open the article to read it if they don’t want to

      Then don’t post it in the first place?

      I’m sure the people at TruthDig are big mad their work is reaching a wider audience

      Literally the opposite effect is happening when you do this. Fewer people will click the link, resulting in less traffic to the site.

      • @neanderthal
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        51 year ago

        I can’t believe people are up voting that I’m not a fan of some aspects of IP law, but it has its place and isn’t all bad. It protects GPL software projects, for one.

        • Chozo
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          31 year ago

          He’s probably 15 and thinks he’s really doing something by stealing other people’s content.

          • @neanderthal
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            41 year ago

            Probably. I’m old enough to remember teenagers getting sued for using Napster, Gnutella, and others back in the 2000s. It isn’t the admin or mods they need to worry about.

            • @[email protected]
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              31 year ago

              Depending where he lives, there could be little or no repercussions for him. Established law in Canada is non-commercial copyright infringement is worth about $500 for all non-commercial infringement prior to the suit. What this translates to is it isn’t worth it for media companies to sue, and if you follow basic practices the ISPs won’t even send you threatening letters.

    • @neanderthal
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      31 year ago

      You are opening up the instance to legal trouble.

      I bet you like buying X brand of something knowing what to expect. Guess what, trademark law makes that possible. Not all IP law is bad.

      • treeOP
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        1 year ago

        Then an admin or mod will tell me to stop doing it, you are just a fan of IP not an admin or a mod, if it becomes a problem I’m sure I’ll hear about it from them directly

        • @neanderthal
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          61 year ago

          You don’t seem to get it. It isn’t the admin or mods I’d worry about. It is getting sued by one of the many media outlets whose articles you have posted in the entirety. Remember when Napster was a thing and teenagers were getting sued by RIAA?

        • Chozo
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          01 year ago

          And you’re a fan of content theft. What’s your point?

          • snooggums
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            31 year ago

            Copyright infringement is not theft. It is copyright infringement.

            • Chozo
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              -21 year ago

              In this case, OP copied the entire article and posted it in the body of the post. This deprives the copyright holder of page impressions, which are very likely used to fund their content production. In many cases, this type of copyright infringement (unauthorized reproduction/unauthorized redistribution) is considered IP theft.

              • snooggums
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                1 year ago

                Only by companies that want to misconstrue infringement as theft.

                Infringement is about potentially lost revenue.

                • Chozo
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                  1 year ago

                  Only by companies that want to misconstrue infringement as theft.

                  So, most companies in the content creation space.

                  Infringement is about potentially lost revenue.

                  Which is… exactly what I described in this thread. Fewer people will click the link (thus providing less revenue to the publisher) than if OP had stayed within fair use and posted a snippet from the article.

    • @AeonFelis
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      11 year ago

      I will not make people open the article to read it if they don’t want to

      What’s wrong with making people open the article? It’s just one click away. It’s not like it’s paywalled or something…