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.]

Investigative reporter Anne Elizabeth Moore explains that NGOs that puport to “rescue” women from prostitution in Cambodia actually channel them into garment industry sweatshops, under the smiling approval factory owners and international observers: 

Listen: I spent seven years researching and doing work in Cambodia, made concerted efforts to learn the language, developed a strong stomach and reliable sources, and honed my skills in investigative reporting before I could even understand what, really, anti-human trafficking NGOs do. What they do is normalize existent labor opportunities for women, however low the pay, dangerous the conditions, or abusive an environment they may be. And they shame women who reject such jobs. [Salon]

It’s debateable whether these new jobs constitute rescue at all, and the tactics that some NGOs use to move workers from one sector to another can be coercive. 

[Photo credit: Garment workers in Cambodia on their way to work. World Bank, Creative Commons.]

For nearly a decade, Candice Anderson assumed she was to blame for the 2004 crash that killed her boyfriend. She was driving when the accident occurred and, because she had a trace of Xanax in her bloodstream, she even faced a manslaughter charge in connection with the accident.

Last week, Ms. Anderson learned that the crash had nothing to do with her driving. She lost control of her car because the vehicle had a defective ignition, a defect that the manufacturer, General Motors, did not disclose. Ms. Anderson’s boyfriend was one of 13 people who were killed because of this defect, the New York Times reports.

[Image Credit: Vintage GM ad, Alden Jewell, Creative Commons.]

Hillman Judge Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for reparations in a cover story at the Atlantic. The piece begins: “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.”

It’s an important conversation and one that’s long overdue. We at Hillman are biased, but we can’t think of a better person to put forward the moral and historical case for reparations than Mr. Coates.