There are 870,000 inmates in the United States’ prison workforce. These inmates have virtually no rights at work. Prisoners typically earn less than a dollar an hour, and most of them work at keeping their own prisons running. If all the work of running prisons were paid at minimum wage, prison wouldn’t be nearly as profitable as it currently is. 

Beth Schwartzapfel investigates the demi-monde of the nation’s incarcerated workforce for the American Prospect:

Despite decades’ worth of talk about reform—of giving prisoners the skills and resources they need to build a life after prison—the vast majority of these workers, almost 700,000, still do “institutional maintenance” work like Hazen’s. They mop cellblock floors, prepare and serve food in the dining hall, mow the lawns, file papers in the warden’s office, and launder millions of tons of uniforms and bed linens. Compensation varies from state to state and facility to facility, but the median wage in state and federal prisons is 20 and 31 cents an hour, respectively.

It might appear that the public is saving money by making prisoners earn their keep at very low wages, but this analysis neglects the fact many prisoners have dependents on the outside who are forced onto public assistance because their former breadwinner’s full-time wages are scarcely enough to keep her in sanitary pads from the prison commissary. That’s not even counting the indirect costs of prisoners being released with no savings, or even large debts from all the fees they racked up in the court system. When prisoners are let out with no resources to reestablish themselves in society, they may be tempted to reoffend. 

[Photo credit: Valery, Creative Commons.]