Inmate Labour In America Research Paper

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Inmate Labor in America: Sanctioned Slavery
Imagine, if you will, laborers working on farms for less than a dollar a day or factory workers who do not receive any compensation for hours upon hours of tedious work. This is not happening overseas in some distant land, but right here at home. So it goes in the American prison system. In both government operated and privately run prisons, inmates are often times forced to work for extraordinarily low wages or for free, or, alternatively, face unpleasant consequences if they refuse to do so. While some believe that this is simply a consequence of being incarcerated and/or they are getting what they deserve, inmates should be entitled to a reasonable wage and the right to refuse to work for anything less than that or, …show more content…
However, as with many seemingly good things, the possibility of exploitation exists. As reported by Ben Rosen in The Christian Science Monitor, federal prison inmates are paid $.12-$.40 per hour and are not paid at all in Arkansas, Georgia and Texas. (p10). Even accounting for an offset of room and board for the inmate, this wage range is far below any type of living wage anywhere in America, and often means that inmates leave prison with more debt than when they were originally incarcerated, while the prison and/or outside entity experiences a significant financial gain from the reduced labor costs. We expect the prison system to reform those it incarcerates, yet placing them in a substantially worse financial position than when they entered prison is counterintuitive to that expectation. Moreover, substandard inmate wages create an unfair advantage when entities are bidding on contracts because companies who do not employ inmates are required by law to pay their employees a minimum wage, resulting in loss of jobs for those outside the prison workforce. (Cardwell p1-5). Despite these facts, arguments exist to continue these
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