Prison Labor, Slavery & Capitalism in Historical Perspective

8/2/2019 Prison Labor, Slavery & Capitalism in Historical Perspective

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swapped land that was to become the site of the state capital for the managementof California's prison laborers. These three antebellum examples are not typicalof pre-Civil War labor arrangements, however. The institution of slavery in theSouth and the unprecedented migration of poor Europeans to America in theNorth provided the capitalist elite with ample labor at rock bottom prices. Thisleft prison labor as a risky resource exploited by only the most adventurouscapitalists.

Prison labor became a more significant part of modern capitalism duringReconstruction because the Civil War made immigration to America dangerous,

left the U.S. economically devastated, and deprived capitalism of its lucrativeslave labor. One of the responses to these crises was to build more prisons andthen to lease the labor of prisoners, many of whom were ex-slaves, to labor-hungry capitalists.

Burdened with heavy taxes to meet the expenses of rebuilding theshattered economy, and committed to the traditional notion thatconvicts should, by their labor, reimburse the government for theirmaintenance and even create additional revenue, the master class,drawing on its past experience with penitentiary leases, reintroduceda system of penal servitude which would make public slaves ofblacks and poor and friendless whites.

-- J.T. Sellin

Slavery and the Penal System

The conditions of such leased prison labor -- much like the conditions of bothplantation slave labor and Northern factory work before the War -- wereatrocious. For example, D.A. Novak reveals in The Wheel of' Servitude: BlackForced Labor After Slavery that the death rate of prisoners leased to railroadcompanies between 1877 and 1879 was 45% in South Carolina, 25% inArkansas, and 16% in Mississippi. Conditions in the labor camps of the TexasState Penitentiary in Galveston were so bad that 62 prisoners died in 1871 alone.Thus, prisons have been linked historically to forced labor, inhumane workingconditions, reproduction of slavery-like conditions, and the imperial needs of arising capitalist elite. Given this perspective, the trend of privatizing both prisonsand prison labor may be seen not so much as a recent reaction of the "lock `em

up" generation, but rather -- as suggested earlier by Shaka -- as one of thefundamental historical links between prison, slavery, and capitalism.

The Correctional-Industrial Complex

While the correctional-industrial complex has become one of the most heavilycapitalized sectors of the US economy, a number of failings are evident. Forexample, it has:

not proven effective at rehabilitating prisonersnot lowered crime rates and in fact bears no relationship to crime ratescoincided with the most profound escalation of violence among young menin our national history andpursued imprisonment patterns that indicate deeply racist practices

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency estimates that over the next tenyears state and federal expenditures on prisons will amount to $351 billion. Somecritics charge that the correctional-industrial complex (along with itscorresponding "war on drugs") is but a form of state-sponsored subsidy, apost-Cold War form of corporate welfare enabling the circulation of federalcapital into friendly pockets while simultaneously appealing to popular racistsentiments.

Indeed, much as the military-industrial complex fueled the economic juggernautof the Reagan/Bush era's redistribution of wealth and resources, so now we arewitnessing the production of a correctional-industrial complex in which society's

n Labor, Slavery & Capitalism In Historical Perspective http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/hisprisl

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already limited resources and funds are redistributed away from socialjustice-based forms of spending in favor of imprisonment. For example, whilestates are cutting spending on education, housing, health care, and otherlong-term infrastructural necessities, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports thatstate spending on prison construction increased 612% between 1979 and 1990.The American Friends Service Committee characterizes this redistribution ofwealth, resources, and possibilities as part of an oncoming "fortress economy" inwhich an America ever more stratified by racial and class divisions retreats intoarmed enclaves where the promises and obligations of justice and democracy areincreasingly replaced by a high-tech correctional-industrial police state.

California is a particularly cogent example of how the "needs" of thecorrectional-industrial complex lead toward a "fortress economy." Its budget forfiscal year 1996/97, for the first time ever, appropriated more money for prisons(9.9% of the budget, up from 2% in 1980) than for the University of Californiaand California State University systems combined (9.5% of the budget, downfrom 12.6% in 1980). Put more simply, since 1980 California has slashededucational spending by roughly 25%, while raising prison spending by roughly500%. The effects of this budgetary redistribution are already evident. MikeDavis reports that the decade from 1984 to 1994 saw California universities andcolleges lose 8,000 employees, while the California Department of Corrections"hired 26,000 new employees to guard 112,000 new inmates." This redistributionof educational monies into the machinery of the correctional-industrial complexis also, whether intentionally or not, reproducing the fundamentally white-supremacist culture of antebellum slavery. The San Francisco-based Center onJuvenile & Criminal Justice reports that in California, the number of black men inprison (41,434) outnumbers black men in college (10,474) by a ratio of almostfour-to-one.

The correctional-industrial complex is therefore a crucial element in reproducingracism. An equally insidious result of the correctional-industrial complex is thatcapitalists now have an economic stake in escalating imprisonment rates. Forexample, consider the case of Prince George County, Maryland, where JonGreenberg reports that in addition to construction and maintenance costs, "Thecounty spends about $4 million a year to buy everything from shoes totoothpaste." This massive outlay of county money may well contribute to thesurvival of some local businesses, but in most cases the recipients of such

correctional largesse are major corporations. Their ability to profit from increasedimprisonment in turn creates a correctional-industrial environment in which, asone of Greenberg's corrections industry interviewees states, "The talk is `threestrikes and you're out' ... well, naturally that's going to translate into more sales.The more crooks you have the better business is for us."

Indeed, the correctional-industrial complex has been in such an accelerated boomcycle that J. Robert Lilly and Paul Knepper report that in 1986 AdtechIncorporated spun-off two subsidiary operations, the Correctional DevelopmentCorporation and American Detention Services Incorporated, and then in 1988acquired Steel Door Industries, with the end result that profits rose from $10.3million in 1987 to a remarkable $21.6 million in 1989. This doubling of profits isdwarfed by the 500% profit-growth over a five year period shown by SpaceMaster Enterprises Incorporated (builders of pre-fabricated prison cells), which

leapt from $12 million in 1982 to $60 million in 1987. The rapid emergence ofthe correctional-industrial complex has fueled the development of new forms ofdisciplinary technology. Much like the endless stream of hardware produced bythe military-industrial complex, these have not enhanced the daily lives ofAmericans yet have made their manufacturers millions of dollars via lucrativedeals with federal, state and county governments.

While it has been estimated that up to 25% of all American children live underthe poverty line, and hence struggle to meet their daily nutritional needs, thecorrectional-industrial complex has spawned a parallel subsidized food economy.Indeed, feeding prisoners has become a major growth industry totaling over $1billion a year. A Campbell Soup Company representative thus recently celebratedthe fact that "the nation's prison system is the fastest growing food service


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market." Prince George County, for example, contracts its Prison food serviceswith Szabo Correctional Services. According to its President Bill Barrett, Szabohas grown "within the last five years from a $20 million company to an $85million company."

As the correctional-industrial complex provides capitalists with imprisonedconsumers, it also provides them with cheap labor. For example, the OregonDepartment of Corrections has been using prison laborers to produce a "PrisonBlues" line of clothing (for public sale both in America and primarily in Asia)with projected yearly sales of over $1.2 million. Despite these profits, prisoners

are reportedly earning real wages (their $8 an hour wage minus state-imposedrestitution fees, and room and board charges) of $1.80 an hour. The largestnetwork of prison labor is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons' manufacturingconsortium, UNICOR. While paying inmate laborers entry-level wages of 23cents an hour, UNICOR boasts of gross annual sales (primarily to the Departmentof Defense) of $250 million.

The correctional-industrial complex therefore relies on a sobering "joint venture"directly relating profits to increased incarceration rates for four kinds of"partners," only the first of whom are those seeking opportunities in prisonconstruction. A second kind of partner stocks these prisons with stun guns,pepper spray, surveillance equipment, and other "disciplinary technology,"corporations such as Adtech, American Detention Services, the CorrectionalCorporation of America and Space Master Enterprises. A third partner finds astate-guaranteed mass of consumers for food and other services in the prisonersthemselves, such as Campbell's Soup and Szabo Correctional Services. The fourthpartner can be any private industry or state-sponsored program that stands togain from paying wages that only nominally distinguish captive forced labor fromslavery. In this last category, an example of the former is Prison Blues and of thelatter is UNICOR which uses prisoners to produce advanced military weaponary.

Capitalism, slavery, and prison labor thus appear as firmly wedded today as inthe eighteenth century. Indeed, the evidence presented above suggests that theshort-term benefits the correctional-industrial complex offers to capitalistscontrasts sharply with the long-term needs of a democratic society struggling withthe questions of how to reduce violence, how to redistribute social wealth, howto address its troubled racial history and how to enable more citizens -- regardless

of race or class -- to play productive and creative roles in their communities.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Sol, one of Shaka's cell-mates, observesthat his experiences with the mind-numbing corruption of both prison andprison-based labor as having amounted to little more than "training in thediscipline of graft":

A chow hall assignment without standards: "just do it." A Job in the Departmentof Recreation where the standards are measured in terms of improvement of yourbasketball and handball games. An educational curriculum with GeneralEducational Development Certificates for sale. A vocational school that grantsAssociates Degrees with honors to students who rebuild cars, lawnmowers,air-conditioners, boats, and motorcycles, anything that's requested, for corruptprison officials and their private enterprises. So much for the work ethic...in fact,

jobs in prison can be described, at best, as training in the discipline of graft.

Bibliography

On the historical relations among prison, labor, slavery, and imperialism

Ayers, E. L. Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th CenturyAmerican South. Oxford University Press, 1984.

Ekirch, A. R. Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to theColonies, 1718-1775. Clarendon Press, 1987.


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Prison Labor, Slavery & Capitalism in Historical Perspective