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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for prison labor
10 results foundAuthor: Jackson, Anita Sarah Title: Toxic Sweatshops: How UNICOR Prison Recycling Harms Workers, Communities, the Environment, and the Recycling Industry Summary: This report examines the e-waste recycling program run by Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a government owned corporation that does business under the trade name UNICOR. Key findings include: UNICOR has failed to adequately protect prisoners and staff from exposure to toxics; UNICOR has failed to protect communities from hazardous materials; and UNICOR undercuts responsible recycling businesses. Details: Oakland, CA: Prison Activist Resource Center, 2006. 56p. Source: Year: 2006 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 116206 Keywords: Prison IndustriesPrison LaborPrisoners |
Author: U.S. Department of Justice. Office of the Inspector General. Oversight and Review Division Title: A Review of Federal Prison Industries' Electronic-Waste Recycling Program Summary: This report describes the results of an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) into the health, safety, and environmental compliance practices of Federal Prison Industries’ (FPI) electronic waste (ewaste) recycling program. Federal Prison Industries, which is known by its trade name “UNICOR,” is a government corporation within the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that provides employment to staff and inmates at federal prisons throughout the United States. UNICOR sells a variety of consumer products and services, such as office furniture and clothing, and industrial products, such as security fencing and vehicle tags. As of June 2010, UNICOR had 103 factories at 73 prison locations, employing approximately 17,000 inmates or 11 percent of the inmate population. Starting in 1997, UNICOR began to accept computers, monitors, printers, and other types of e-waste for recycling at federal prisons. UNICOR sold these e-waste items to its customers, sometimes following refurbishment, or disassembled the items into their component parts and sold the parts to recyclers for further processing. E-waste contains many toxic substances that can be harmful to humans and to the environment. For example, a computer can contain toxic metals, such as cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenic, and beryllium. Cathode ray tubes, which are found in televisions and computer monitors, typically contain between 2 to 5 pounds of lead. When e-waste is disassembled and recycled, workers can be exposed to toxic metals which can cause serious health implications. UNICOR’s recycling of e-waste resulted in complaints from BOP and UNICOR staff and inmates, most notably from Leroy A. Smith, Jr., a former Safety Manager at the United States Penitentiary (USP) in Atwater, California. In particular, the complaints asserted that UNICOR’s e-waste recycling practices were not safe and had made UNICOR staff and inmates sick. As a result of these complaints and at the request of the BOP, Department of Justice (DOJ), and attorneys for Mr. Smith, the OIG investigated the safety of UNICOR’s e-waste recycling operations, as well as other allegations of theft, conflict of interest, and environmental crimes that arose during our investigation related to UNICOR’s e-waste operations. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2010. 173p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 2, 2010 at: http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/BOP/o1010.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/BOP/o1010.pdf Shelf Number: 120160 Keywords: Hazardous WasteOffenses Against the EnvironmentPrison IndustriesPrison LaborU.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons |
Author: Dillon, Margaret C. Title: Convict Labour and Colonial Society in the Campbell Town Police District: 1820-1839 Summary: This thesis examines the lives of the convict workers who constituted the primary work force in the Campbell Town district in Van Diemen’s Land during the assignment period but focuses particularly on the 1830s. Over 1000 assigned men and women, ganged government convicts, convict police and ticket holders became the district’s unfree working class. Although studies have been completed on each of the groups separately, especially female convicts and ganged convicts, no holistic studies have investigated how convicts were integrated into a district as its multi-layered working class and the ways this affected their working and leisure lives and their interactions with their employers. Research has paid particular attention to the Lower Court records for 1835 to extract both quantitative data about the management of different groups of convicts, and also to provide more specific narratives about aspects of their work and leisure. Local administrative records from the Convict Department, the Colonial Secretary’s Office and the Engineers Department as well as the diaries and letters of colonists, accounts of travellers, almanacks and newspapers have also been used. Some key results proposed in the thesis include the following: Local magistrates had more varied and liberal middle class backgrounds than their contemporaries in New South Wales. They willingly became the governor’s agents of control over the convict work force, accepting his political authority, and remained primarily interested in increasing their wealth. The duties undertaken by convict police were more complex than the literature acknowledges and the claims of corruption and inefficiency made against police by the contemporary press are challenged. Ganged men maintained interactions with the general community outside their gangs, including complex trading and commercial transactions. The scarcity of female convicts caused them to have significant bargaining power and be allocated as a priority to the largest landowners, where they gave satisfactory service as domestic workers and showed little evidence of being unduly promiscuous or difficult to manage. On farm worksites where a mixed work force of assigned men, ticket holders and free men worked, convicts established hierarchies of control of the significant resources such as alcohol and cash and redistributed these amongst themselves by supplying market needs within their own reach. The political economy of the district and the ambitions of the large landowners to acquire wealth rapidly were instrumental in changing the ways they managed their convict workforces, while their convict workers also exploited any opportunities they could find to improve their conditions and retain as much of their freedom and working class culture as possible. On sites where convicts and employers negotiated reasonable working conditions, employers rarely took their workers before the courts on discipline charges. The convict administration was unable to enforce its expectations about the strict control of convicts by free market employers, neither could it fully limit convicts’ movements around rural districts, by stemming the high absconding rates from government gangs or the more limited movements of assigned men and women around the villages or farms where they worked. As an employer, the administration frequently failed to deliver the basic necessities to which its ganged men were entitled by regulation, nor did it always deliver rewards to those who complied with its requirements. Instead it kept men and women at work by sanctioning local magistrates to use harsh punishments like imprisonment, flogging and sentences to road parties and chain gangs for convicts who were charged with disobeying trivial work regulations. Details: Hobart, Tasmania: University of Tasmania, 2008. 299p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed April 11, 2011 at: http://www.convicthistory.com/entire.pdf Year: 2008 Country: Australia URL: http://www.convicthistory.com/entire.pdf Shelf Number: 121290 Keywords: Convict Labor (Australia)Female InmatesFemale PrisonersHistorical StudiesPrison Labor |
Author: Harris, Thomas R. Title: The Economic Impact of the California Prison Industry Authority on the California Economy for FY 2008/09 Summary: The California Prison Industry Authority was created by statute in 1982 as a semiautonomous state agency to operate California prison industries in a manner similar to private industry. The California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) trains inmate‐workers to produce a variety of goods and services in factories at correctional institutions throughout California. These production activities provide a variety of uses to the state including: (1) training of inmates who acquire work habits and skills; (2) the supervision of inmates in a secure environment; and (3) the provision of goods and services to the state of California public sector agencies. Each of these services has an economic dimension in terms of contributing value added to the state economy. In this report, the contributions of CALPIA to the state of California’s economy are estimated. CALPIA is a self‐supporting government agency. CALPIA sales increased by 50.9 percent from 1996/97 fiscal year to 2008/09 fiscal year, giving them the largest sales ($234.2 million) of any state’s prison industry in the U.S. This sales increase is noteworthy given that CALPIA can only sell to the public sector. CALPIA has approximately 619 civilian employees as well as approximately 6,010 inmates in California’s adult correctional institutions, operating over 60 service, manufacturing, and agricultural industries at 22 prisons throughout California. CALPIA uses its revenues to cover its costs such as purchasing raw materials, providing inmate supervision, inmate payroll, transporting and distributing its products, acquiring capital, and supporting the central office. The Prison Industry Board was established in 1983 to oversee operations of CALPIA. The Board sets general policy for CALPIA, appointing a General Manager, monitoring existing operations, and deciding which new industries to enter. The Board serves as a public hearing body charged with ensuring that the operations of CALPIA are self‐sufficient. The Board actively solicits public input in its decisions with regard to expanding existing or developing new prison industries. CALPIA customers are limited to government entities, except as specified by law. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is CALPIA’s largest customer, purchasing more than half of CALPIA's total annual production of goods and services. This study estimates California’s economic, employment, and household income impacts arising from the production of goods and services by inmates working in CALPIA. This analysis will derive the total and sectoral output, employment and income impacts of CALPIA on the economy of the state of California. As a producer of goods and services, CALPIA is linked to the state economy in several ways. Most importantly, CALPIA purchases intermediate inputs (materials) for further processing in its factories. This study utilizes economic models of the state of California that translates these intermediate input purchases into sales by place of production so that the multiplier effects of CALPIA on the state economy can be estimated. Details: Sacramento: California Prison Industry Authority, 2010. 30p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 22, 2011 at: http://www.pia.ca.gov/public_affairs/pdfs/CALPIA%20Economic%20Impact%20Study%2008-09.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.pia.ca.gov/public_affairs/pdfs/CALPIA%20Economic%20Impact%20Study%2008-09.pdf Shelf Number: 121477 Keywords: EconomicsPrison Industries (California)Prison Labor |
Author: Bracken, Carolina Title: Bars to Learning: Practical Challenges to the ‘Working Prison’ Summary: Without effective rehabilitative intervention, prison offers no long-term social remedy for reducing reoffending. A spell in prison can cost an individual their home, contact with their family, their job, and leave them entirely unable to break the pattern of offending behaviour. Nonetheless, custody can provide a stable, controlled environment, in which prisoners are empowered to take personal responsibility for their behaviour and its consequences. The question is not whether prison can work, but how we can make prison work more effectively. In light of strong evidence of the link between employment and reduced reoffending, the recent Ministry of Justice green paper ‘Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders’ plans to create a new ‘working prison’, in which ‘hard work and industry’ are ‘central to the regime’. The paper promises a renewed and revitalised commitment to enhancing offenders’ employability, as part of its far-reaching ‘rehabilitation revolution’. Details: London: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society, 2011. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 18, 2011 at: http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/barstolearning.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/barstolearning.pdf Shelf Number: 122082 Keywords: Correctional ProgramsJob Training, InmatesPrison LaborPrisoners (U.K.)Rehabilitation |
Author: Ragghianti, Marie Fajardo Title: Prison Industries in South Carolina: 1996-2005. Why and How the PIE Model Prospered Summary: The purpose of this study is to determine why the enhanced prison industries (PIE) model has prospered for more than 10 years in South Carolina, when in other states it has struggled to survive — or even been abolished. A history of prison industries in the United States will provide context for a review of legal, economic, and political issues affecting the PIE program in South Carolina and elsewhere. The leadership style of the state’s director of prison industries (under whose tenure the PIE model has developed and flourished) will be described. Additionally, a cross-jurisdictional comparison of the PIE programs in five other states will be presented, to facilitate future research initiatives, and to provide policymakers and correctional administrators with preliminary guidance for development or improvement of PIE initiatives. In this regard, a conceptual model of enhanced prison industries will be developed and described. Finally, policy and program recommendations will be made, based on the study’s findings. Details: College Park, MD: University of Maryland, 2008. 431p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed August 17, 2011 at: http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/8178/1/umi-umd-5360.pdf Year: 2008 Country: United States URL: http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/8178/1/umi-umd-5360.pdf Shelf Number: 122416 Keywords: Prison Industries (South Carolina)Prison Labor |
Author: 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 OPIs 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 |