Is High Incarceration Sought as a Solution to High Unemployment?

In her article, 21st-Century Slaves: How Corporations Exploit Prison Labor, Rania Khalek writes an infuriating but not-so-surprising report on Americas high rate of incarceration, and a government that incentivizes corporations to employee prisoners at wages that rival those of third-world sweatshops..

America, with 5 percent of the worlds population, where liberty has long been touted to be one of her greatest strengths, incarcerates one-quarter of the world's prisoners. And, America, who postures itself as standing firm for human rights, where black people make up 13 percent of the population, finds it necessary to incarcerate black Americans at the rate of 40% to all other prisoners.

According to Khalek, Michelle Alexander points out in her book The New Jim Crow [Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness] that more black men are in jail, on probation, or on parole than were enslaved in 1850. [However] Higher rates of black drug arrests do not reflect higher rates of black drug offenses. In fact, whites and blacks engage in drug offenses, possession and sales at roughly comparable rates.

Egregiously, imprisonment, beyond those who really need to be locked up, has been for illegal immigrants and drug offenders, as well as for those who commit other low-level crimes. The New York Times reports that Americans even have been sentenced to life for minor crimes like shoplifting.

In an America where capitalism reigns supreme, where Republicans think that low and middleincome Americans dont count, that only the very wealthy give this country meaning, should not expect that in a government devoted to capitalism, that capitalist would not tap into the potential profit and abundance of labor that prisoners provide. So, not surprisingly, today corporate run prisons operated by companies such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO rack up record profits. Infuriatingly, Federal and state governments have long supported the concept of convict leasing, even though convict lease systems were slowly phased out during the early 20th century, other forms of convict labor exist today. According to the New York Times, Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, introduced a bill last month to require all lowsecurity prisoners to work 50 hours a week. Creating a national prison labor force has been a goal since he went to Congress in 1995, but it makes even more sense in this economy, he said. Think about how much it costs to incarcerate someone. Do we want them just sitting in prison, lifting weights, becoming violent and thinking about the next crime? Or do we want them having a little purpose in life and learning a skill? And, of course, financial experts agree with him. But, the problem is its simply cheap labor, prisoners learn nothing.

Khalek writes, In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit. By dipping into the prison labor pool, companies have their pick of workers who are not only cheap but easily controlled. Companies are free to avoid providing benefits like health insurance or sick days, while simultaneously paying little to no wages. They dont need to worry about unions or demands for vacation time or raises. Inmate workers are full-time and never late or absent because of family problems.

Under the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC), private-sector employers earn a tax credit of $2,400 for every work release inmate they employ as a reward for hiring risky target groups

and they can earn back up to 40 percent of the wages they pay annually to target group workers.

Prior to the 1970s, private corporations were prohibited from using prison labor as a result of the chain gang and convict leasing scandals. But in 1979, Congress began a process of deregulation to restore private sector involvement in prison industries to its former status, provided certain conditions of the labor market were met. Over the last 30 years, at least 37 states have enacted laws permitting the use of convict labor by private enterprise, with an average pay of $0.93 to $4.73 per day.

In consideration that we are a nation that in reality still openly discriminates, that does not set the example for what we claim to be our values, and a government that places greater value on the nations aristocracy and considers that the indigent and middle-class dont count, certainly we should not continue to claim to be the great nation we espouse.

Perhaps the United States has an answer to high unemployment: increase prison populations by making more offenses applicable to imprisonment and three strikes laws, bring back debtor prisons and the like, and increasingly incentivize corporations to employee prison labor.

That sounds like a plan that not only Senator John Ensign, but also Representative John Boehner and his Republicans certainly would support.