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Date: November 25, 2024 Mon
Time: 8:11 pm
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Results for inmate labor
4 results foundAuthor: California State Auditor. Bureau of State Audits Title: California Prison Industry Authority: It Can More Effectively Meet Its Goals of Maximizing Inmate Employment, Reducing Recidivism, and Remaining Self-Sufficient Summary: This review of the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) revealed the following: * It cannot determine its impact on post‑release inmate employability because it lacks reliable data. * It is unable to match parolees’ social security numbers from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (Corrections) information system to employment data from the Employment Development Department. * In attempting to use another of Corrections’ databases to track employment data, we noted it contained numerous errors— we found more than 33,000 instances of erroneous parolee employer information. »»Although CALPIA created a set of comprehensive performance indicators, several of these indicators are either vague or not measurable. * Since 2004 it has introduced only a modest number of new revenue‑generating enterprises while it has closed, deactivated, or reduced the capacity of six enterprises at 10 locations throughout the State. * Although CALPIA prepared pricing analyses to support its product-pricing decisions, it did not document the basis for how it determines profit margins and in some instances, we found no analysis of market considerations. Details: Sacramento: California State Auditor, 2011. 66p. Source: Internet Resource: Report 2010-118: Accessed April 2, 2012 at: http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2010-118.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2010-118.pdf Shelf Number: 124791 Keywords: Inmate LaborPrison Industries (California)Prison LaborRecidivismRehabilitation |
Author: Furderer, Darin Title: Ohio Penal Industries Summary: Ohio Penal Industries (OPI) is an inmate work program and a division of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC). OPI manufactures goods and services for the DRC and other state agencies through the use of inmate labor under close staff supervision. OPI inmates produce/process a variety of products including inmate clothing, toilet paper, license plates, milk, meat, furniture, dentures, eyeglasses, cleaning compounds, plastic bags and others. Inmates that work in OPI also conduct service on vehicles, provide office support, and install modular furniture. OPI has the potential to provide a tremendous benefit to the Ohio taxpayer. Not only can it provide products at competitive prices, a direct savings for the state, it also teaches inmates valuable work skills that will assist them upon release, assists institutional management, and provides significant community service. Each of these benefits would carry cost savings for state taxpayers. Although OPI can generate revenue for the state and provide numerous opportunities for inmates to acquire knowledge and occupational traits, its potential is hindered due to various challenges, which include restraints placed on its bidding process, negative perceptions of its products and services, and a lack of a strong marketing strategy, among others. Over the course of its study of OPI, CIIC staff came to three important conclusions: (1) OPI is immensely valuable and should be supported; (2) OPI has a number of limitations placed upon it that will need to be lifted for it to truly operate "at the speed of business"; and (3) OPI is a work in progress. New leadership took the helm of OPI in 2010 and has since worked diligently to fix the very same problems that this report highlights. While the problems cannot be hidden or overlooked in an evaluative report such as this one, it must be emphasized that there is a definite break between the OPI of the past and the forward-moving OPI that currently exists. The recommendations are mutually agreed-upon goals between CIIC and the DRC; CIIC will conduct a second evaluation of OPI in two years and expects to report on OPI’s continued success as it builds upon this past year. The following sections provide CIIC's key findings and recommendations, based on a national comparison of correctional industries, inspections of OPI shops at multiple facilities, interviews with DRC staff, and a literature review. The report then discusses in detail OPI's history, current financials, the challenges facing OPI, and the comparison of correctional industries’ products and financial information. Details: Columbus, OH: Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, 2011. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 11, 2014 at: http://www.ciic.state.oh.us/docs/ohio_penal_industries_2011.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.ciic.state.oh.us/docs/ohio_penal_industries_2011.pdf Shelf Number: 133284 Keywords: Correctional IndustriesCorrectional Programs (Ohio)Inmate LaborPrison LaborPrison Work Programs |
Author: O'Brien, Rachel Title: RSA Transitions: A social enterprise approach to prison and rehabilitation Summary: The introduction of working prisons is likely to require significant changes to the workforce and renegotiations of staff contracts. The government's proposals for working prisons risk becoming a good idea turned bad. Our pamphlet, RSA Transitions, is published at the start of the bidding process for new contracts worth $2.5 billion for running nine UK prisons. Under RSA plans, prisoners would be paid to work in social enterprises while in custody. This would continue through the gate with the aim of normalising work, addressing resettlement needs and securing employment in the community. Salaries would make a contribution towards reparation to victims and individual savings towards resettlement. There would be an element of staff and service user ownership linked to performance and rehabilitation. RSA Transitions has been developed with experts from the criminal justice social enterprise fields. It is designed as a social business that would work with different social enterprises within a single framework. This would be underpinned by rigorous evaluation and involve employers, service users, local services and members of the community in its design, delivery, learning and skills content and governance. The government's criminal justice green paper proposed that prisoners will work a 40-hour week and that providers would be paid by results in relation to tackling reoffending levels. The introduction of working prisons is likely to require significant changes to the workforce and renegotiations of staff contracts. RSA Transitions welcomes the government's focus on providing paid work in custody but warns that: - A 23 percent cut to the Ministry of Justice budget increases the pressure to cut costs and maximise profit, risking British prisons becoming more like American profit-led jailhouses that exploit prisoners and fail to rehabilitate. - Prisons are not currently constructed, managed or staffed to support the work ethic. Significant changes would be needed in all these areas in order for them do so. - Prison numbers and overcrowding are at peak levels, making change more difficult. According to the prison service, last week was the eighth consecutive week where over 87,000 people were in prison. - The RSA sets out an alternative model of a not-for-profit community prison that would provide custody and rehabilitation services on a single site, working with between 500 and 700 people at any one time. - The RSA sets out an alternative model of a not-for-profit community prison that would provide custody and rehabilitation services on a single site, working with between 500 and 700 people at any one time Details: London: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), 2011. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 11, 2016 at: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/rsa-transitions-a-social-enterprise-approach-to-prison-and-rehabilitation/ Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/rsa-transitions-a-social-enterprise-approach-to-prison-and-rehabilitation/ Shelf Number: 138966 Keywords: Inmate LaborPrison LaborPrisoner RehabilitationPrisoners |
Author: Cao, Lan Title: Made in America: Race, Trade, and Prison Labor Summary: Justified on redemptive and rehabilitative grounds, prison industries in the United States, built on the backs of prisoners, are thriving. Prisoners laboring, often for little or no pay, to produce goods and services for the government or for private entities, is not a new phenomenon. But the United States has been incarcerating at a globally unprecedented rate, estimated at five times higher than most countries in the world. The enormous scale of incarceration in the United States is made even more troubling by the overrepresentation of persons of color in the prison system. It is hardly surprising that as federal and state prison industries have grown, so have prison industries that rely on prison labor for private sector profit, and that such labor is primarily performed by minorities, particularly African Americans. Critics have rightly warned about the moral hazards incurred when profit and punishment go hand in hand with publicly run prisons providing cheap labor for private companies. But the moral failures of the prison system, intertwined with the disturbing history of race, are conveniently masked in the euphemism of rehabilitation and redemption. In a new, Orwellian twist, the prison industry has also managed to hitch itself to the populist, anti-international trade wave that has reinvigorated economic nationalism. Add "Buy American" and "Made in the USA" to the purported benefits of prison labor for yet another layer of rhetorical flourish. Thus, in addition to rehabilitating prisoners and preparing them for life after prison, hiring American workers and bringing jobs back to the United States are now providing further justifications for the exploitation of prison labor and the proliferation of prison industries. "Insourcing" which relies on inmate labor can be an even cheaper alternative to outsourcing which relies on Third World labor. Companies seeking to preserve savings from low-cost overseas labor can turn to prison labor because employing prisoners does not require compliance with minimum wage or other safety and environmental regulations. Recasting prison industries as the patriotic return of American manufacturing jobs from overseas may be one of the most troubling euphemisms deployed by proponents of prison labor. The substitution of low-wage foreign workers laboring in unsafe working conditions for U.S. prisoners working for low or no pay is a cynical channeling of the rising awareness of the plight of domestic American workers in the age of globalization. Prisoners make cheese for Whole Foods, underwear for Victoria Secret as well as service call centers for financial institutions. Prison-made products and services are increasingly sold not only to state agencies, but also on the open market in the United States and even exported abroad. Even as the United States berates China about its use of forced prison labor or its exports of products made by convicts, the United States, with its own burgeoning inmate pool, has ironically engaged in similar practices. While U.S. laws ban imports of prison labor goods, there is no parallel statutory provision prohibiting U.S. exports of such goods. Moreover, the historical intersection of race and incarceration in the United States, with the post-Civil War development of convict leasing and chain gangs as modes of prison labor, raises the troubling prospect of pervasive racial bias. This systemic bias, combined with the requirement that all prisoners must work, render U.S. prison labor programs morally suspect in ways not so remote from China's use of political dissidents in reeducation camps. The first part of this Article provides a general overview of the prison labor industrial complex and examines the relationship between big business and prison labor in both state and federal systems. It also focuses on the volatile and controversial outsourcing dynamics in the ongoing trade debate. Next, the Article explores the structural complexity intrinsic in prison labor because it embodies both economic and rehabilitative objectives and thus does not fit neatly into the conventional categories of market or non-market work, creating conceptual difficulties in both analysis and proposed solutions. As a result, prison workers are not deemed employees and thus not eligible for the minimum wage afforded other workers. This Article also provides the necessary historical background, particularly the racial dimensions at the root of state and private exploitation of prison labor, arguing that race and incarceration in the United States cannot be separated. The legal and economic ambiguity of prison labor allows the exploitation of racial disparities in the prison system to continue. The last part of the Article examines the wildly inconsistent case law that addresses the application of the Federal Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") and argues that the profit-making, economic character of prison work makes it a market activity that entitles prison workers to the minimum wage mandate of the FLSA. The proposal here is intended as a modest first step towards prison labor reform. It is grounded in pragmatism and incrementalism and is not meant to address all the intricacies intrinsic in this historical tragedy and deeply entrenched system of racial and social control. Rather, it is a plausible proposal that, if implemented, would be an important first step towards reform. Legally recognizing prison workers' right to minimum wage will accomplish a significant immediate change, and will bring prison labor into heightened scrutiny enabling a national conversation about broader reform. Details: Orange, CA: Chapman University, The Dale E. Fowler School of Law, 2018. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed May 30, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3136654 Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3136654 Shelf Number: 150387 Keywords: Inmate LaborPrison IndustriesPrison Labor |