Laura Appleman
speaker
10 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Laura Appleman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
As a whole in society, we are not incredibly sympathetic towards prisoners having to do work. I think if you asked the average American, they would be like, good. But if you explained exactly how it worked, they would be a little more unsettled.
You don't really see the first prison labor until the beginning of the 19th century.
What quickly became common is something called the industrial prison. Prisoners were essentially rented out to for-profit companies for labor. They were putting together furniture. They were making clothes, making wagons, whatever was local. Originally, it was to recoup the expense of prisons. But then they realized, hey, we can make some money here.
The 13th Amendment outlaws slavery except when you have been convicted of a crime.
Things didn't really start going into the big time until the 80s, 90s, when mass incarceration really started booming. Costs skyrocketed and prison labor is the way that government is trying to pay for it.
Prison labor is classified as, quote, non-market work. So you don't have to pay them anything near the minimum wage.
All states are in on this. I mean, it's a great source of very low-cost labor.
The companies really want to keep it quiet, but I think they're thrilled because it's so much cheaper. And the state government is thrilled because they make some money.
46 states run agricultural programs within their prison systems. They raise a lot of food, and some of it's used for the prison itself, and some of it is sold on the open market.
Technically, it's not forced labor, although it depends how you define forced. It's not the chain gang. It's not convict leasing. But the pressures are different. If you absolutely refuse to do anything, your privileges are going to be taken away. And of course, when you're incarcerated, privileges sort of make life bearable.
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