Contested theories of prison labor practice

Abstract

In recent years, prison strikes and controversies have brought public attention to the systemic problems with prison labor in the United States. Such labor often exploits people who are imprisoned to do work that is vital to society-including firefighting, farming, or manufacturing consumer goods-with wages that can be less than a dollar per hour in highly coercive working conditions. Although there is call to end prison labor today, theories of prison labor have historically been contested, even among activists and progressive reformers. Accordingly, this review offers a short sociological history of labor in correctional environments, highlights contemporary controversies, and argues for a more fine-grained approach to the relationships among labor, prisons, and reentry. It traces the field of reformers and scholars that have made arguments for punitive, rehabilitative, restorative, and transformative approaches to work. The contested theories of prison labor across time and space suggest that a better understanding is needed of what makes labor exploitative and what forms of labor have the potential to transform the root causes of crime, within and beyond prison walls. Overall, this review has implications for those who study prison and reentry programs, relationships between crime and community, and the political economy of incarceration.

Intersectional stigma as a fundamental cause of health disparities: A case study of how drug use stigma intersecting with racism and xenophobia creates health inequities for Black and Hispanic persons who use drugs over time.

“…Furthermore, incarcerated people’s labor is often exploited to provide goods and services for the larger society. For example, incarcerated people engage in agricultural work, manufacturing, and firefighting, and may receive less than minimum wage for their efforts (DelSesto, 2021).…”

Perspectives on Prison Labour in Canada and Beyond: An Introduction

“…Meanwhile, issues related to prison labour have been increasingly central to prison protests and strikes in Canada, the United States, and other jurisdictions (ACCA, 2019;ACLU, 2022;House, 2018;Losier, 2021;Nowak, 2016;Wijnen, 2018). There has recently been renewed interest in American prison labour from a variety of disciplinary angles, (Cao, 2019;Crittenden et al, 2018;DelSesto, 2021;Feldman, 2019;Fink, 2016;Hatton, 2020;Hatton, 2021;Khater, 2021;VanderPyl, 2021) -which can at least be partially attributed to dramatic national prison labour strikes in 2016 and 2018 in the United States. Such scholarship builds on earlier literature that considered the linkages between the modern prison industrial complex and American racialized chattel slavery -and its afterlives (Davis, 2003;Lichtenstein, 1996).…”

Prison Labor across the Carceral Continuum

“…Additionally, the concepts of work and workers differ in the free labor market when compared to the criminal legal system, and this volume would have been strengthened if the contributing authors had theorized about how labor differs in the total institution of prison, how prison changes the calculation of rights of the incarcerated, and what work is and is not as it relates to punishment. For instance, DelSesto (2021) argues that current theoretical arguments about prison labor—punitive, rehabilitative, restorative, transformative—are not definitive; therefore, there is a need to contest all theories of prison labor to develop a better understanding of what labor is in a controlling and exploitative environment, what impact carceral labor practices have on the political economy, and what forms of labor, inside and outside prison, have the potential to assist men and women reentering society. The lack of theorizing about labor in and out of prison in this edited volume is a drawback because, as the contributing scholars point out, the literature about labor and punishment is emergent; providing readers with one or many theoretical arguments would have strengthened this volume considerably.…”