THE ROLE OF CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS"Not only criminal behavior but also punishment is disruptive to community harmony" (Lord Croughton)
The rationale behind the use of correctional facilities is separation, specifically, physical separation of the offender from society. This separation rationale or containment doctrine (uncharitably called "warehousing" by critics and charitably called the protection of society and betterment of the offender by advocates) assumes that the conduct of certain crimes is so serious and the chance of repetition so great that the judge, acting for the good of society, must physically separate the offender from any motive or opportunity to harm the public again. Separation or containment is sometimes referred to as incapacitation, although the correct term is incarceration. The difference is that incapacitation aims at making it permanently impossible to re-offend, while incarceration aims at making it impossible only for a short while, with a hope that re-offending will not occur upon release. If you banish somebody from their homeland forever, or if you castrate a rapist, that is incapacitation. If you send somebody away for awhile, and pay careful attention to where you send them, for how long, and whether or not they improved, that is incarceration. Given these examples, a sentence of life without parole would be incapacitation, as would the death penalty, and as would most eye-for-eye retribution. Incarceration is an inseparable combination of deterrence and rehabilitation. Incarceration without paying much attention to the "where," "how long" and "whether improved" is simply called punishment or penalty, and in the sociology of punishment, involves the study of "why" penal sanctions exist, or in philosophy, the study of the "why" or rationale behind punishment. Incarceration with attention to the "where," "how long" and "whether improved" is called penology (short for the 19th Century phrase "penitentiary science") or the science of corrections (a 20th Century social engineering term for the ability to be technically proficient at the processing of incarcerated offenders). The difference is that penology mainly looks at what needs to go on inside a prison to keep it functioning, and correctional science mainly looks at the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole correctional apparatus or the correctional subsystem component of criminal justice.
The central purpose of a correctional subsystem in criminal justice is to carry out the criminal sentence imposed by the court subsystem (Clear & Cole 2000). In this purpose, a correctional subsystem assists with maintaining the integrity of the law and the ability of law to protect society. In a larger sense, the existence of a correctional apparatus helps society to enforce its behavioral norms, since the mere existence of a prison system reinforces the belief that there is a place where people can be put who exceed our tolerance for criminal behavior. In this sense, prisons serve to protect society, help define the limits of behavior, and help everyone know and understand what is permissible and what is not permissible. Almost all contemporary correctional systems claim the twin goals of public protection and fair punishment. Public protection (or public safety) is maintained by having a well-regulated set of procedures, facilities, and philosophies that are consistent with what court officials want and what society needs. Fair punishment is accomplished by applying some "corrective" yet still "punitive" action to convicted offenders that most often takes the form of humane security, custody, and control along a range of program opportunities all administered in a just and equitable manner within the least restrictive environment consistent with public safety.
FOUCAULT ON INCARCERATION & THE HISTORY OF WORKHOUSES
Incarceration, or the use of correctional facilities, arose in the history of Western civilization out of a distaste for transportation (the banishment of offender to far-away lands like Australia) and a distaste for corporal punishment (which was eventually banned). If Foucault's (1995) historical account can be believed, Western civilization moved away from a reliance on physical torture because torture no longer served the interests of maintaining sovereign power and the all-encompassing "carceral" state. Prisons are a "natural" phenomena in a global system of sovereign nation-states because the ultimate purpose is to either make all of society one big prison or to either cherish "liberty" to the point where "deprivation of liberty" becomes the punishment par excellence. At least that is the thesis of Discipline and Punish, admittedly a complex piece of philosophical work about corrections. Another subthesis is that societies progressively moved from torture of the body to torture of the mind, again a controversial point in Foucault's philosophy.
What most historians agree with in Foucault's version of history is the fact that as many European societies "transported" plague and leprosy victims to the colonies, the emptied hospitals and other facilities were converted to the confinement of new clientele -- the insane and the criminal. The significance of the many plagues that made up the worldwide "Black Death" which wiped out nearly 40% of the world's population from 1347-1352 (lasting up to 1429 in some parts of the world and up to the 19th Century in other parts) cannot be overestimated. If you remember the children's song "Ring Around the Rosies... We All Fall Down," then you are remembering a song about the Black Death years. What is more notable is that as people kept moving and migrating in a futile attempt to "flee" the Black Death, governments created WORKHOUSES, or prisons for the poor, which kept beggars, vagrants, pickpockets, and welfare cheats off the streets. The workhouses were officially created in 1834 by what were called "Poor laws" and workhouses came to exist in every county either as a direct descendant of the county jail or the model thereof. Workhouses existed for the "undeserving poor" as opposed to almshouses which existed for the "deserving poor." Workhouses became the model of prison discipline, set the stage for the expected behaviors of "masters" or correctional officers, and eventually deteriorated into orphanages, jails, and aged juvenile prisons. Almshouses became the model for social work institutions. Asylums for the mentally ill crossed both sides, with some becoming prisons and others becoming social work institutions.
TRANSPORTATION AND PENAL SERVITUDE
In earlier times, larger prisons certainly existed as holding pens (usually nothing more than underground dungeons) for far worse punishments (torture, spectacle, or being fed to the lions in the arena). However, as Kittrie, Zenoff & Eng (2002) argue, incarceration as the "ideal" punishment (second in severity to the death penalty) came into favor only after the practices of transportation and penal slavery (servitude) died out. Prior to 1850, most countries relied on transportation to send serious offenders to far-away colonies. After 1850 (and to some extent before), governments started experimenting with a variety of transportation known as PENAL SERVITUDE. Penal servitude involved being "sold into slavery" for a period of years either as a sailor in the Navy, at a galley port for the Navy, as a soldier in the Army, as a fighter in a mercenary force, as a worker for a businessman, or as a worker for a plantation owner. Penal servitude became quite popular in Spanish-speaking parts of the world, and some experts regard early modern Spain (circa 1688-1748) as the birthplace of the modern, above-ground prisons in the form of Spanish forts (presidios) and central prisons which handled the overflow of implacable prisoners assigned to penal servitude. All presidios had prisons, consisting of 8x10 foot stone cells with iron bars, and they were primarily used as part of Spanish conquest (along with missions and pueblos) for housing foreigners and Indians. The model of a prison "cell" widely in use today can be traced to the presidio cells. You can see from the following table why penal servitude became so popular because it was seen a more lenient than transportation.
Transportation
Penal Servitude
7 years or less
4 years or less
7-10 years
4-6 years
10-15 years
6-8 years
15 years or more
8-14 years
life
life
The relationship between slavery and corrections is a story that needs to be elaborated on. Unfortunately, there are few books on the subject that are "classics" such as Hughes (1987) work on transportation. There is also the matter of some controversy over the 13th Amendment, which reads as follows:
THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place to their jurisdiction.
This Amendment is usually interpreted to mean that slavery and peonage (forced servitude for owing debts) are abolished, but nothing prohibits compulsory work (for a private master in a jail) if a breach of contract or offensive behavior is "duly convicted" as a crime. Compulsory conscription into the armed services has been widely used by many states under this Amendment, but there are less than clear-cut cases of when the Amendment might apply, such as whether participating in an illegal union strike against an employer would qualify.
THE UNIQUELY AMERICAN TWIST ON CORRECTIONS
The United States imparted an unique religious twist to correctional institutions, and that twist consisted of the idea that prisons should be harsh, painful places, but not so harsh and painful that the offender cannot have the opportunity to reflect over what they did and mend their ways. This idea is a combination of Enlightenment humanitarianism and 19th century Utilitarianism. It is, at once, both idealistic and practical. Some of the basic principles to enact such an idea include the rule against "fraternization," impersonality of dress, regimented meals and counts, marching in mass movement lines, and an expectation that each inmate will "do their own time." Architecture and routine are designed to convey the impression that restraint is the primary purpose and treatment a casual afterthought. These features make up the basic PENITENTIARY model.
It wasn't long before Americans realized that adding more programs, farms, shops, classes, and recreation resulted in better control of prisoners and to some extent eased tensions within a penitentiary. Hence, the REFORMATORY movement was started, and newer prisons were built, some of which were called medium-security prisons with fences instead of walls, and minimum-security prisons without the need for armed guard towers. Special correctional facilities also sprouted up, for women, for youth, for reception and diagnosis, for prerelease purposes, for medical and psychiatric treatment, etc. A basic problem in such correctional facilities is the lack of funds to evaluate the effectiveness of programs. Corrections has a tendency to adopt new programs in a faddish, impulsive manner, and everything that passes for "new" has probably been tried somewhere, someplace before.
SO, WHAT ARE PRISONS FOR, ANYWAY?
Separation, obedience, and labor appear to be the "Holy Trinity" which guides the rationale for the whole of corrections (Kittrie, Zenoff & Eng 2002). Prisoners could be expected to be treated "differently" from other citizens (morally deranged or defective, perhaps), would obey all orders without question, and would work diligently at their assignments or reflection upon their misdeeds. Of these three, obedience without question appears to take precedence, and for this, correctional facilities adopted the quasi-military model of organization. Nothing else seems to produce a preserved isolation, unquestioning obedience, and regimented efficiency better than a military model. Above all, prisons are supposed to be places of order, a shining example that the outside world can look into and see what good things happen when the right principles of organization are put into place. Unfortunately, we often don't think of prisons that way today. Perhaps it's the MILITARY MODEL. Some reformers have thought so, and suggested a replacement FACTORY MODEL. However, most prison administrators are uncomfortable with suggestions for change at this basic a level.
Fox (1972) has described corrections as having multiple and conflicting goals. From time to time, we hear debates over what is the "primary" goal of corrections -- to contain, to control, to punish, to restrain, to rehabilitate, to reintegrate, etc. Yet, one primary task remains essential -- prisons exist to retain CONTROL as a basic part of their organizational purpose, and control extends to any opportunities for treatment and betterment. The roots of this primacy run deep, as does public resentment, fear, and fashionableness which seem to drive a need to forget about prisons and deprecate those inside of them. To study corrections is nothing less than the study of factors that interconnect the psyche of mankind with the will to overcome inertia in society. Evading the study of prisons or failing to recognize their important place in society is something we cannot afford to do.
INTERNET RESOURCESGardens of the Law: The Role of Prisons in Capitalist SocietyHistory of the WorkhousesJurisprudence of the 13th Amendment's Slavery & Involuntary Servitude Clause (pdf)Penal Servitude in Early Modern SpainReentry & Reintegration - What is Corrections' Role? (pdf)What Role Can the Private Sector Play in Corrections?Wikipedia Encyclopedia Article on What a Prison is
PRINTED RESOURCESClear, T. & Cole, G. (2000). American Corrections, 5e. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.del Carmen, A. (2004). Corrections, 2e. Cincinnati: Atomic Dog.Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. NY: Vintage Books.Fox, V. (1972). Introduction to Corrections. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Garland, D. (1990). Punishment and Modern Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Hirsch, A. (1992). The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Hughes, R. (1987). The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868. NY: Collins.Kittrie, N., Zenoff, E., & Eng, V. (2002). Sentencing, Sanctions, and Corrections. NY: Foundation Press.Reichel, P. (2001). Corrections: Philosophies, Practices, and Procedures, 2e. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Schmalleger, F. & Smykla, J. (2005). Corrections in the 21st Century. Boston: McGraw Hill.Silverman I. & Vega, M. (2000). Corrections: A Comprehensive View. Minneapolis: West. Tewksbury, R. (1997). Introduction to Corrections. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Last Updated: 08/26/04Syllabus for JUS 294MegaLinks in Criminal Justice
Saturday, June 9, 2007
THE ROLE OF CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS
THE ROLE OF CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS"Not only criminal behavior but also punishment is disruptive to community harmony" (Lord Croughton)
The rationale behind the use of correctional facilities is separation, specifically, physical separation of the offender from society. This separation rationale or containment doctrine (uncharitably called "warehousing" by critics and charitably called the protection of society and betterment of the offender by advocates) assumes that the conduct of certain crimes is so serious and the chance of repetition so great that the judge, acting for the good of society, must physically separate the offender from any motive or opportunity to harm the public again. Separation or containment is sometimes referred to as incapacitation, although the correct term is incarceration. The difference is that incapacitation aims at making it permanently impossible to re-offend, while incarceration aims at making it impossible only for a short while, with a hope that re-offending will not occur upon release. If you banish somebody from their homeland forever, or if you castrate a rapist, that is incapacitation. If you send somebody away for awhile, and pay careful attention to where you send them, for how long, and whether or not they improved, that is incarceration. Given these examples, a sentence of life without parole would be incapacitation, as would the death penalty, and as would most eye-for-eye retribution. Incarceration is an inseparable combination of deterrence and rehabilitation. Incarceration without paying much attention to the "where," "how long" and "whether improved" is simply called punishment or penalty, and in the sociology of punishment, involves the study of "why" penal sanctions exist, or in philosophy, the study of the "why" or rationale behind punishment. Incarceration with attention to the "where," "how long" and "whether improved" is called penology (short for the 19th Century phrase "penitentiary science") or the science of corrections (a 20th Century social engineering term for the ability to be technically proficient at the processing of incarcerated offenders). The difference is that penology mainly looks at what needs to go on inside a prison to keep it functioning, and correctional science mainly looks at the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole correctional apparatus or the correctional subsystem component of criminal justice.
The central purpose of a correctional subsystem in criminal justice is to carry out the criminal sentence imposed by the court subsystem (Clear & Cole 2000). In this purpose, a correctional subsystem assists with maintaining the integrity of the law and the ability of law to protect society. In a larger sense, the existence of a correctional apparatus helps society to enforce its behavioral norms, since the mere existence of a prison system reinforces the belief that there is a place where people can be put who exceed our tolerance for criminal behavior. In this sense, prisons serve to protect society, help define the limits of behavior, and help everyone know and understand what is permissible and what is not permissible. Almost all contemporary correctional systems claim the twin goals of public protection and fair punishment. Public protection (or public safety) is maintained by having a well-regulated set of procedures, facilities, and philosophies that are consistent with what court officials want and what society needs. Fair punishment is accomplished by applying some "corrective" yet still "punitive" action to convicted offenders that most often takes the form of humane security, custody, and control along a range of program opportunities all administered in a just and equitable manner within the least restrictive environment consistent with public safety.
FOUCAULT ON INCARCERATION & THE HISTORY OF WORKHOUSES
Incarceration, or the use of correctional facilities, arose in the history of Western civilization out of a distaste for transportation (the banishment of offender to far-away lands like Australia) and a distaste for corporal punishment (which was eventually banned). If Foucault's (1995) historical account can be believed, Western civilization moved away from a reliance on physical torture because torture no longer served the interests of maintaining sovereign power and the all-encompassing "carceral" state. Prisons are a "natural" phenomena in a global system of sovereign nation-states because the ultimate purpose is to either make all of society one big prison or to either cherish "liberty" to the point where "deprivation of liberty" becomes the punishment par excellence. At least that is the thesis of Discipline and Punish, admittedly a complex piece of philosophical work about corrections. Another subthesis is that societies progressively moved from torture of the body to torture of the mind, again a controversial point in Foucault's philosophy.
What most historians agree with in Foucault's version of history is the fact that as many European societies "transported" plague and leprosy victims to the colonies, the emptied hospitals and other facilities were converted to the confinement of new clientele -- the insane and the criminal. The significance of the many plagues that made up the worldwide "Black Death" which wiped out nearly 40% of the world's population from 1347-1352 (lasting up to 1429 in some parts of the world and up to the 19th Century in other parts) cannot be overestimated. If you remember the children's song "Ring Around the Rosies... We All Fall Down," then you are remembering a song about the Black Death years. What is more notable is that as people kept moving and migrating in a futile attempt to "flee" the Black Death, governments created WORKHOUSES, or prisons for the poor, which kept beggars, vagrants, pickpockets, and welfare cheats off the streets. The workhouses were officially created in 1834 by what were called "Poor laws" and workhouses came to exist in every county either as a direct descendant of the county jail or the model thereof. Workhouses existed for the "undeserving poor" as opposed to almshouses which existed for the "deserving poor." Workhouses became the model of prison discipline, set the stage for the expected behaviors of "masters" or correctional officers, and eventually deteriorated into orphanages, jails, and aged juvenile prisons. Almshouses became the model for social work institutions. Asylums for the mentally ill crossed both sides, with some becoming prisons and others becoming social work institutions.
TRANSPORTATION AND PENAL SERVITUDE
In earlier times, larger prisons certainly existed as holding pens (usually nothing more than underground dungeons) for far worse punishments (torture, spectacle, or being fed to the lions in the arena). However, as Kittrie, Zenoff & Eng (2002) argue, incarceration as the "ideal" punishment (second in severity to the death penalty) came into favor only after the practices of transportation and penal slavery (servitude) died out. Prior to 1850, most countries relied on transportation to send serious offenders to far-away colonies. After 1850 (and to some extent before), governments started experimenting with a variety of transportation known as PENAL SERVITUDE. Penal servitude involved being "sold into slavery" for a period of years either as a sailor in the Navy, at a galley port for the Navy, as a soldier in the Army, as a fighter in a mercenary force, as a worker for a businessman, or as a worker for a plantation owner. Penal servitude became quite popular in Spanish-speaking parts of the world, and some experts regard early modern Spain (circa 1688-1748) as the birthplace of the modern, above-ground prisons in the form of Spanish forts (presidios) and central prisons which handled the overflow of implacable prisoners assigned to penal servitude. All presidios had prisons, consisting of 8x10 foot stone cells with iron bars, and they were primarily used as part of Spanish conquest (along with missions and pueblos) for housing foreigners and Indians. The model of a prison "cell" widely in use today can be traced to the presidio cells. You can see from the following table why penal servitude became so popular because it was seen a more lenient than transportation.
Transportation
Penal Servitude
7 years or less
4 years or less
7-10 years
4-6 years
10-15 years
6-8 years
15 years or more
8-14 years
life
life
The relationship between slavery and corrections is a story that needs to be elaborated on. Unfortunately, there are few books on the subject that are "classics" such as Hughes (1987) work on transportation. There is also the matter of some controversy over the 13th Amendment, which reads as follows:
THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place to their jurisdiction.
This Amendment is usually interpreted to mean that slavery and peonage (forced servitude for owing debts) are abolished, but nothing prohibits compulsory work (for a private master in a jail) if a breach of contract or offensive behavior is "duly convicted" as a crime. Compulsory conscription into the armed services has been widely used by many states under this Amendment, but there are less than clear-cut cases of when the Amendment might apply, such as whether participating in an illegal union strike against an employer would qualify.
THE UNIQUELY AMERICAN TWIST ON CORRECTIONS
The United States imparted an unique religious twist to correctional institutions, and that twist consisted of the idea that prisons should be harsh, painful places, but not so harsh and painful that the offender cannot have the opportunity to reflect over what they did and mend their ways. This idea is a combination of Enlightenment humanitarianism and 19th century Utilitarianism. It is, at once, both idealistic and practical. Some of the basic principles to enact such an idea include the rule against "fraternization," impersonality of dress, regimented meals and counts, marching in mass movement lines, and an expectation that each inmate will "do their own time." Architecture and routine are designed to convey the impression that restraint is the primary purpose and treatment a casual afterthought. These features make up the basic PENITENTIARY model.
It wasn't long before Americans realized that adding more programs, farms, shops, classes, and recreation resulted in better control of prisoners and to some extent eased tensions within a penitentiary. Hence, the REFORMATORY movement was started, and newer prisons were built, some of which were called medium-security prisons with fences instead of walls, and minimum-security prisons without the need for armed guard towers. Special correctional facilities also sprouted up, for women, for youth, for reception and diagnosis, for prerelease purposes, for medical and psychiatric treatment, etc. A basic problem in such correctional facilities is the lack of funds to evaluate the effectiveness of programs. Corrections has a tendency to adopt new programs in a faddish, impulsive manner, and everything that passes for "new" has probably been tried somewhere, someplace before.
SO, WHAT ARE PRISONS FOR, ANYWAY?
Separation, obedience, and labor appear to be the "Holy Trinity" which guides the rationale for the whole of corrections (Kittrie, Zenoff & Eng 2002). Prisoners could be expected to be treated "differently" from other citizens (morally deranged or defective, perhaps), would obey all orders without question, and would work diligently at their assignments or reflection upon their misdeeds. Of these three, obedience without question appears to take precedence, and for this, correctional facilities adopted the quasi-military model of organization. Nothing else seems to produce a preserved isolation, unquestioning obedience, and regimented efficiency better than a military model. Above all, prisons are supposed to be places of order, a shining example that the outside world can look into and see what good things happen when the right principles of organization are put into place. Unfortunately, we often don't think of prisons that way today. Perhaps it's the MILITARY MODEL. Some reformers have thought so, and suggested a replacement FACTORY MODEL. However, most prison administrators are uncomfortable with suggestions for change at this basic a level.
Fox (1972) has described corrections as having multiple and conflicting goals. From time to time, we hear debates over what is the "primary" goal of corrections -- to contain, to control, to punish, to restrain, to rehabilitate, to reintegrate, etc. Yet, one primary task remains essential -- prisons exist to retain CONTROL as a basic part of their organizational purpose, and control extends to any opportunities for treatment and betterment. The roots of this primacy run deep, as does public resentment, fear, and fashionableness which seem to drive a need to forget about prisons and deprecate those inside of them. To study corrections is nothing less than the study of factors that interconnect the psyche of mankind with the will to overcome inertia in society. Evading the study of prisons or failing to recognize their important place in society is something we cannot afford to do.
INTERNET RESOURCESGardens of the Law: The Role of Prisons in Capitalist SocietyHistory of the WorkhousesJurisprudence of the 13th Amendment's Slavery & Involuntary Servitude Clause (pdf)Penal Servitude in Early Modern SpainReentry & Reintegration - What is Corrections' Role? (pdf)What Role Can the Private Sector Play in Corrections?Wikipedia Encyclopedia Article on What a Prison is
PRINTED RESOURCESClear, T. & Cole, G. (2000). American Corrections, 5e. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.del Carmen, A. (2004). Corrections, 2e. Cincinnati: Atomic Dog.Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. NY: Vintage Books.Fox, V. (1972). Introduction to Corrections. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Garland, D. (1990). Punishment and Modern Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Hirsch, A. (1992). The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Hughes, R. (1987). The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868. NY: Collins.Kittrie, N., Zenoff, E., & Eng, V. (2002). Sentencing, Sanctions, and Corrections. NY: Foundation Press.Reichel, P. (2001). Corrections: Philosophies, Practices, and Procedures, 2e. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Schmalleger, F. & Smykla, J. (2005). Corrections in the 21st Century. Boston: McGraw Hill.Silverman I. & Vega, M. (2000). Corrections: A Comprehensive View. Minneapolis: West. Tewksbury, R. (1997). Introduction to Corrections. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Last Updated: 08/26/04Syllabus for JUS 294MegaLinks in Criminal Justice
The rationale behind the use of correctional facilities is separation, specifically, physical separation of the offender from society. This separation rationale or containment doctrine (uncharitably called "warehousing" by critics and charitably called the protection of society and betterment of the offender by advocates) assumes that the conduct of certain crimes is so serious and the chance of repetition so great that the judge, acting for the good of society, must physically separate the offender from any motive or opportunity to harm the public again. Separation or containment is sometimes referred to as incapacitation, although the correct term is incarceration. The difference is that incapacitation aims at making it permanently impossible to re-offend, while incarceration aims at making it impossible only for a short while, with a hope that re-offending will not occur upon release. If you banish somebody from their homeland forever, or if you castrate a rapist, that is incapacitation. If you send somebody away for awhile, and pay careful attention to where you send them, for how long, and whether or not they improved, that is incarceration. Given these examples, a sentence of life without parole would be incapacitation, as would the death penalty, and as would most eye-for-eye retribution. Incarceration is an inseparable combination of deterrence and rehabilitation. Incarceration without paying much attention to the "where," "how long" and "whether improved" is simply called punishment or penalty, and in the sociology of punishment, involves the study of "why" penal sanctions exist, or in philosophy, the study of the "why" or rationale behind punishment. Incarceration with attention to the "where," "how long" and "whether improved" is called penology (short for the 19th Century phrase "penitentiary science") or the science of corrections (a 20th Century social engineering term for the ability to be technically proficient at the processing of incarcerated offenders). The difference is that penology mainly looks at what needs to go on inside a prison to keep it functioning, and correctional science mainly looks at the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole correctional apparatus or the correctional subsystem component of criminal justice.
The central purpose of a correctional subsystem in criminal justice is to carry out the criminal sentence imposed by the court subsystem (Clear & Cole 2000). In this purpose, a correctional subsystem assists with maintaining the integrity of the law and the ability of law to protect society. In a larger sense, the existence of a correctional apparatus helps society to enforce its behavioral norms, since the mere existence of a prison system reinforces the belief that there is a place where people can be put who exceed our tolerance for criminal behavior. In this sense, prisons serve to protect society, help define the limits of behavior, and help everyone know and understand what is permissible and what is not permissible. Almost all contemporary correctional systems claim the twin goals of public protection and fair punishment. Public protection (or public safety) is maintained by having a well-regulated set of procedures, facilities, and philosophies that are consistent with what court officials want and what society needs. Fair punishment is accomplished by applying some "corrective" yet still "punitive" action to convicted offenders that most often takes the form of humane security, custody, and control along a range of program opportunities all administered in a just and equitable manner within the least restrictive environment consistent with public safety.
FOUCAULT ON INCARCERATION & THE HISTORY OF WORKHOUSES
Incarceration, or the use of correctional facilities, arose in the history of Western civilization out of a distaste for transportation (the banishment of offender to far-away lands like Australia) and a distaste for corporal punishment (which was eventually banned). If Foucault's (1995) historical account can be believed, Western civilization moved away from a reliance on physical torture because torture no longer served the interests of maintaining sovereign power and the all-encompassing "carceral" state. Prisons are a "natural" phenomena in a global system of sovereign nation-states because the ultimate purpose is to either make all of society one big prison or to either cherish "liberty" to the point where "deprivation of liberty" becomes the punishment par excellence. At least that is the thesis of Discipline and Punish, admittedly a complex piece of philosophical work about corrections. Another subthesis is that societies progressively moved from torture of the body to torture of the mind, again a controversial point in Foucault's philosophy.
What most historians agree with in Foucault's version of history is the fact that as many European societies "transported" plague and leprosy victims to the colonies, the emptied hospitals and other facilities were converted to the confinement of new clientele -- the insane and the criminal. The significance of the many plagues that made up the worldwide "Black Death" which wiped out nearly 40% of the world's population from 1347-1352 (lasting up to 1429 in some parts of the world and up to the 19th Century in other parts) cannot be overestimated. If you remember the children's song "Ring Around the Rosies... We All Fall Down," then you are remembering a song about the Black Death years. What is more notable is that as people kept moving and migrating in a futile attempt to "flee" the Black Death, governments created WORKHOUSES, or prisons for the poor, which kept beggars, vagrants, pickpockets, and welfare cheats off the streets. The workhouses were officially created in 1834 by what were called "Poor laws" and workhouses came to exist in every county either as a direct descendant of the county jail or the model thereof. Workhouses existed for the "undeserving poor" as opposed to almshouses which existed for the "deserving poor." Workhouses became the model of prison discipline, set the stage for the expected behaviors of "masters" or correctional officers, and eventually deteriorated into orphanages, jails, and aged juvenile prisons. Almshouses became the model for social work institutions. Asylums for the mentally ill crossed both sides, with some becoming prisons and others becoming social work institutions.
TRANSPORTATION AND PENAL SERVITUDE
In earlier times, larger prisons certainly existed as holding pens (usually nothing more than underground dungeons) for far worse punishments (torture, spectacle, or being fed to the lions in the arena). However, as Kittrie, Zenoff & Eng (2002) argue, incarceration as the "ideal" punishment (second in severity to the death penalty) came into favor only after the practices of transportation and penal slavery (servitude) died out. Prior to 1850, most countries relied on transportation to send serious offenders to far-away colonies. After 1850 (and to some extent before), governments started experimenting with a variety of transportation known as PENAL SERVITUDE. Penal servitude involved being "sold into slavery" for a period of years either as a sailor in the Navy, at a galley port for the Navy, as a soldier in the Army, as a fighter in a mercenary force, as a worker for a businessman, or as a worker for a plantation owner. Penal servitude became quite popular in Spanish-speaking parts of the world, and some experts regard early modern Spain (circa 1688-1748) as the birthplace of the modern, above-ground prisons in the form of Spanish forts (presidios) and central prisons which handled the overflow of implacable prisoners assigned to penal servitude. All presidios had prisons, consisting of 8x10 foot stone cells with iron bars, and they were primarily used as part of Spanish conquest (along with missions and pueblos) for housing foreigners and Indians. The model of a prison "cell" widely in use today can be traced to the presidio cells. You can see from the following table why penal servitude became so popular because it was seen a more lenient than transportation.
Transportation
Penal Servitude
7 years or less
4 years or less
7-10 years
4-6 years
10-15 years
6-8 years
15 years or more
8-14 years
life
life
The relationship between slavery and corrections is a story that needs to be elaborated on. Unfortunately, there are few books on the subject that are "classics" such as Hughes (1987) work on transportation. There is also the matter of some controversy over the 13th Amendment, which reads as follows:
THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place to their jurisdiction.
This Amendment is usually interpreted to mean that slavery and peonage (forced servitude for owing debts) are abolished, but nothing prohibits compulsory work (for a private master in a jail) if a breach of contract or offensive behavior is "duly convicted" as a crime. Compulsory conscription into the armed services has been widely used by many states under this Amendment, but there are less than clear-cut cases of when the Amendment might apply, such as whether participating in an illegal union strike against an employer would qualify.
THE UNIQUELY AMERICAN TWIST ON CORRECTIONS
The United States imparted an unique religious twist to correctional institutions, and that twist consisted of the idea that prisons should be harsh, painful places, but not so harsh and painful that the offender cannot have the opportunity to reflect over what they did and mend their ways. This idea is a combination of Enlightenment humanitarianism and 19th century Utilitarianism. It is, at once, both idealistic and practical. Some of the basic principles to enact such an idea include the rule against "fraternization," impersonality of dress, regimented meals and counts, marching in mass movement lines, and an expectation that each inmate will "do their own time." Architecture and routine are designed to convey the impression that restraint is the primary purpose and treatment a casual afterthought. These features make up the basic PENITENTIARY model.
It wasn't long before Americans realized that adding more programs, farms, shops, classes, and recreation resulted in better control of prisoners and to some extent eased tensions within a penitentiary. Hence, the REFORMATORY movement was started, and newer prisons were built, some of which were called medium-security prisons with fences instead of walls, and minimum-security prisons without the need for armed guard towers. Special correctional facilities also sprouted up, for women, for youth, for reception and diagnosis, for prerelease purposes, for medical and psychiatric treatment, etc. A basic problem in such correctional facilities is the lack of funds to evaluate the effectiveness of programs. Corrections has a tendency to adopt new programs in a faddish, impulsive manner, and everything that passes for "new" has probably been tried somewhere, someplace before.
SO, WHAT ARE PRISONS FOR, ANYWAY?
Separation, obedience, and labor appear to be the "Holy Trinity" which guides the rationale for the whole of corrections (Kittrie, Zenoff & Eng 2002). Prisoners could be expected to be treated "differently" from other citizens (morally deranged or defective, perhaps), would obey all orders without question, and would work diligently at their assignments or reflection upon their misdeeds. Of these three, obedience without question appears to take precedence, and for this, correctional facilities adopted the quasi-military model of organization. Nothing else seems to produce a preserved isolation, unquestioning obedience, and regimented efficiency better than a military model. Above all, prisons are supposed to be places of order, a shining example that the outside world can look into and see what good things happen when the right principles of organization are put into place. Unfortunately, we often don't think of prisons that way today. Perhaps it's the MILITARY MODEL. Some reformers have thought so, and suggested a replacement FACTORY MODEL. However, most prison administrators are uncomfortable with suggestions for change at this basic a level.
Fox (1972) has described corrections as having multiple and conflicting goals. From time to time, we hear debates over what is the "primary" goal of corrections -- to contain, to control, to punish, to restrain, to rehabilitate, to reintegrate, etc. Yet, one primary task remains essential -- prisons exist to retain CONTROL as a basic part of their organizational purpose, and control extends to any opportunities for treatment and betterment. The roots of this primacy run deep, as does public resentment, fear, and fashionableness which seem to drive a need to forget about prisons and deprecate those inside of them. To study corrections is nothing less than the study of factors that interconnect the psyche of mankind with the will to overcome inertia in society. Evading the study of prisons or failing to recognize their important place in society is something we cannot afford to do.
INTERNET RESOURCESGardens of the Law: The Role of Prisons in Capitalist SocietyHistory of the WorkhousesJurisprudence of the 13th Amendment's Slavery & Involuntary Servitude Clause (pdf)Penal Servitude in Early Modern SpainReentry & Reintegration - What is Corrections' Role? (pdf)What Role Can the Private Sector Play in Corrections?Wikipedia Encyclopedia Article on What a Prison is
PRINTED RESOURCESClear, T. & Cole, G. (2000). American Corrections, 5e. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.del Carmen, A. (2004). Corrections, 2e. Cincinnati: Atomic Dog.Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. NY: Vintage Books.Fox, V. (1972). Introduction to Corrections. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Garland, D. (1990). Punishment and Modern Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Hirsch, A. (1992). The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Hughes, R. (1987). The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868. NY: Collins.Kittrie, N., Zenoff, E., & Eng, V. (2002). Sentencing, Sanctions, and Corrections. NY: Foundation Press.Reichel, P. (2001). Corrections: Philosophies, Practices, and Procedures, 2e. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Schmalleger, F. & Smykla, J. (2005). Corrections in the 21st Century. Boston: McGraw Hill.Silverman I. & Vega, M. (2000). Corrections: A Comprehensive View. Minneapolis: West. Tewksbury, R. (1997). Introduction to Corrections. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Last Updated: 08/26/04Syllabus for JUS 294MegaLinks in Criminal Justice
Penal Servitude
Forced Prison Labor Is a Form of Slavery
An excerpt from Beyond Prisons by Laura Magnani and Harmon Wray
"Art From Jail" Artwork by Jos Sances Serigraph, Edition 120, 8 color, 22" x 30"
"If we look at the chain gangs, jails, and other penal institutions in the country and the state, we arrive at one of two conclusions. Either education and wealth are two of the strongest fortifications against the commission of crime, or there is a different measure of justice for the rich and the poor, white and black, the educated and the unlettered." -- Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, December 27, 1930
Prisons have always reflected the relationship between wealth and power in a country. In the United States today, prisons still clearly reflect the racism and greed that have shaped the national identity.
The use of prisoner labor for corporate or public-sector profit results in prison labor conditions similar to those reported to exist in China. The United States government has regularly and properly condemned the Chinese government's practices. Prison labor programs, and the privatization of prison systems and programs, encourage prison authorities and the state to maximize the number of people in prison rather than focus on public safety. They further shift prison policies away from constructive programs that actually prepare a prisoner psychologically and practically for his or her return to the community.
The forced labor of prisoners has been a crucial factor in the development of prison policy and in the stabilization of the American economy from the very beginning of the U.S. prison system. From the start of the penitentiary movement, the idea that decreasing idleness through productive labor and quiet reflection upon one's crime in the privacy of one's cell was the best way to reform the prisoner, and the practice of leasing prison laborers to private bidders, became the legal and cultural platform upon which the U.S. prison industry was built.
The United States has frequently relied upon a secondary labor force that is in bondage. Forced labor has always existed alongside of, and been recruited from the ranks of, free labor. In times of economic crisis (most notably the Reconstruction period after the Civil War; the period directly following the collapse of the stock market in 1929; and the current period, as we see great underemployment of minimum-wage and low-skilled workers), the prison population has swelled and prisoners have been put to work. These upsurges in the prison population historically have not been followed by a proportional abatement in the number of those imprisoned when the economic crisis has subsided.
Before the abolition of slavery, there were few prisons and penitentiaries in the United States. All large penitentiaries were in northern states. Southern states had smaller prisons, populated almost entirely by white people, since slave owners conducted their own punishment of their slaves. The rapid expansion of state prison systems in the late 19th century had the effect of maintaining the power, racial, and economic relationships that existed under slavery.
When slavery was abolished, the Slave Codes, which had regulated the behavior of slaves and all those of African descent, were rewritten as the Black Codes. The Black Codes had been used in northern states as early as 1790 to criminalize previously legal activities for African Americans and to regulate the activities of free people of African descent. Black men were arrested for "vagrancy" or "breaking curfew." In the South, after the Civil War, former slaves were sentenced to prison and then leased out by the prison to work for local plantation owners.
In the southern states, with the protection of the Thirteenth Amendment, the convict lease system expanded beyond the old slave plantations to include coal mining, railroad building, and other businesses rising in the "New South." In the 1880s, a fledgling labor movement took on the former slave states' exploitation of black and poor white prisoner labor and its effects of disemploying free labor and driving free-world wages down. After decades of political, sometimes violent, struggle, the convict lease system died out in most of the South by the early 20th century.
Just as sharecropping and tenant farming replaced slave labor, the convict lease system was replaced by a combination of chain gangs of prisoners (often under county jurisdictions), working on roads and other public works, and state prison industries run by the governments. Since organized labor had successfully pushed through laws prohibiting states from marketing prison-made merchandise on the open market, many prisoners were put to work manufacturing products to be used only in and by state government -- for example, office furniture, license plates, road signs, and work clothes and uniforms for prisoners and state workers. Others were employed in various farming, maintenance, food service, and laundry service work for the prisons themselves.
In 1979, the U.S. government repealed the interstate transport law that had forbidden interstate transport of prisoner-made goods. The Department of Justice implemented a national work program throughout the federal prison system. There, prisoners theoretically work for minimum wage, of which 80 percent is withheld for room, board, survivor compensation, medical fees, and educational costs.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the economy saw increased mobility of U.S. corporations and the growth of transnational corporations. Seeking greater profit, manufacturers continued their century-long pattern of first going to the southern states, where labor was unorganized. Later, many plants and jobs were moved to poorer nations, as companies continued to seek to maximize profits at the expense of labor.
The flight of factories from manufacturing centers has left entire cities economically unstable. The ensuing poverty and economic vulnerability has resulted in dramatic increases in criminal activity, usually drug crimes and crimes against property, in urban communities. Some jobs are now returning to the United States -- but to the prisons, which contract with private industry, instead of to the urban centers. Industrial programs in prisons subsidize private industry by providing free factory space, subsidies for the tooling of the factory, security, electricity, and guaranteed cheap labor.
Thirty states now allow some type of legalized contracting of prison labor to private firms. Thus, prison labor has become an alternative to moving offshore for many corporations. Workers unemployed because of job flight -- and their children -- are now working these jobs in prison. Upon release, they will go home to the same poor and jobless communities, and they will be as vulnerable to crime as they were before they went to prison.
Involuntary penal servitude
"What we have is a billion-dollar manufacturing industry that legally utilizes slave labor, has little overhead, is unregulated by state and federal workplace safety or labor laws, provides no health insurance or benefits and no sick pay for its employees, includes hazardous materials in the construction of its products, forces customers to buy its products under penalty of law, and prohibits its workers from organizing."-- Karyl Kicenski, "The Corporate Prison: The Production of Crime and the Sale of Discipline," 2002
Today, all forms of convict labor have returned in one form or another. Minimum-wage laws usually do not cover prisoners. They do not receive workers' compensation if they are injured while working. Prison laborers are not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act, nor the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Prison laborers are not permitted to meet among themselves to try to improve their working conditions. Average minimum wages for state prison labor in this country are $0.93 a day for nonindustry work; average maximum wages are $4.73 a day. The wages are much lower than public- or private-sector minimum wages because the vast majority of prisoners work in institutional prison jobs, not in jobs with private industry.
Private-industry state prison jobs pay anywhere from $0.23 to $7.00 an hour, but the "take-home" portion of prison pay is only about 20 percent of that amount. This is equivalent to the cost of maquiladora labor in the factories across the border in Mexico, which pay extremely low wages and have notoriously poor working conditions. Due to severe restrictions on the rights of prison labor, it is not surprising that some industries are turning to the use of prison labor as an alternative to moving offshore.
Politicians and policymakers like to promote prison labor programs as job training, but products fabricated by prisoners are products not being produced by free workers. Thus, labor skills mastered in prison do not necessarily translate into jobs upon release. Private industries, for their part, use prison laborers to drive wages and benefits down and to wield power over their external work force.
While prison officials use prison labor as a management tool, prisoners use it as their only legal way to earn any revenue. Statistics on the hiring of former prisoners do not exist, but very few former prisoners report being hired as a result of their prison work experience. In principle, a fair and voluntary work program, paying meaningful wages for meaningful work, with reasonable opportunities to unionize, gain promotions and raises, and learn job skills marketable on the outside upon release, would serve both prisoners and society.
But under the present penal regime, prison-industry programs are about exploiting vulnerable people's labor for wealthy executives' and shareholders' profit, not about job training.
Slavery and the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
We oppose slavery of all kinds - including the use of prisoner labor for profit -- while supporting the creation of substantial job-training programs. The AFSC National Board calls for revision of this amendment so this exception clause is deleted and the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits all slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States.
Work may be seen by some as a legitimate sanction -- a way for people to "give back" if they have caused harm. However, permitting slavery as an exception to the Thirteenth Amendment makes the prison system the direct heir to the chattel system. The fact that the United States incarcerates people of color at an alarmingly higher rate than whites makes this heritage all too clear.
Beyond PrisonsA New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System
by Laura Magnani & Harmon Wray
Published 2006 by Fortress Press208 pages Price $13.00Phone: 1-800-328-4648www.fortresspress.org
STREET SPIRIT1515 Webster St,#303Oakland, CA 94612Phone: (510) 238-8080, ext. 303
E-mail: Spirit
© 2002-2006 STREET SPIRIT. All rights reserved.
Published by American Friends Service Committee
Editor and Web Design: Terry Messman
Forced Prison Labor Is a Form of Slavery
An excerpt from Beyond Prisons by Laura Magnani and Harmon Wray
"Art From Jail" Artwork by Jos Sances Serigraph, Edition 120, 8 color, 22" x 30"
"If we look at the chain gangs, jails, and other penal institutions in the country and the state, we arrive at one of two conclusions. Either education and wealth are two of the strongest fortifications against the commission of crime, or there is a different measure of justice for the rich and the poor, white and black, the educated and the unlettered." -- Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, December 27, 1930
Prisons have always reflected the relationship between wealth and power in a country. In the United States today, prisons still clearly reflect the racism and greed that have shaped the national identity.
The use of prisoner labor for corporate or public-sector profit results in prison labor conditions similar to those reported to exist in China. The United States government has regularly and properly condemned the Chinese government's practices. Prison labor programs, and the privatization of prison systems and programs, encourage prison authorities and the state to maximize the number of people in prison rather than focus on public safety. They further shift prison policies away from constructive programs that actually prepare a prisoner psychologically and practically for his or her return to the community.
The forced labor of prisoners has been a crucial factor in the development of prison policy and in the stabilization of the American economy from the very beginning of the U.S. prison system. From the start of the penitentiary movement, the idea that decreasing idleness through productive labor and quiet reflection upon one's crime in the privacy of one's cell was the best way to reform the prisoner, and the practice of leasing prison laborers to private bidders, became the legal and cultural platform upon which the U.S. prison industry was built.
The United States has frequently relied upon a secondary labor force that is in bondage. Forced labor has always existed alongside of, and been recruited from the ranks of, free labor. In times of economic crisis (most notably the Reconstruction period after the Civil War; the period directly following the collapse of the stock market in 1929; and the current period, as we see great underemployment of minimum-wage and low-skilled workers), the prison population has swelled and prisoners have been put to work. These upsurges in the prison population historically have not been followed by a proportional abatement in the number of those imprisoned when the economic crisis has subsided.
Before the abolition of slavery, there were few prisons and penitentiaries in the United States. All large penitentiaries were in northern states. Southern states had smaller prisons, populated almost entirely by white people, since slave owners conducted their own punishment of their slaves. The rapid expansion of state prison systems in the late 19th century had the effect of maintaining the power, racial, and economic relationships that existed under slavery.
When slavery was abolished, the Slave Codes, which had regulated the behavior of slaves and all those of African descent, were rewritten as the Black Codes. The Black Codes had been used in northern states as early as 1790 to criminalize previously legal activities for African Americans and to regulate the activities of free people of African descent. Black men were arrested for "vagrancy" or "breaking curfew." In the South, after the Civil War, former slaves were sentenced to prison and then leased out by the prison to work for local plantation owners.
In the southern states, with the protection of the Thirteenth Amendment, the convict lease system expanded beyond the old slave plantations to include coal mining, railroad building, and other businesses rising in the "New South." In the 1880s, a fledgling labor movement took on the former slave states' exploitation of black and poor white prisoner labor and its effects of disemploying free labor and driving free-world wages down. After decades of political, sometimes violent, struggle, the convict lease system died out in most of the South by the early 20th century.
Just as sharecropping and tenant farming replaced slave labor, the convict lease system was replaced by a combination of chain gangs of prisoners (often under county jurisdictions), working on roads and other public works, and state prison industries run by the governments. Since organized labor had successfully pushed through laws prohibiting states from marketing prison-made merchandise on the open market, many prisoners were put to work manufacturing products to be used only in and by state government -- for example, office furniture, license plates, road signs, and work clothes and uniforms for prisoners and state workers. Others were employed in various farming, maintenance, food service, and laundry service work for the prisons themselves.
In 1979, the U.S. government repealed the interstate transport law that had forbidden interstate transport of prisoner-made goods. The Department of Justice implemented a national work program throughout the federal prison system. There, prisoners theoretically work for minimum wage, of which 80 percent is withheld for room, board, survivor compensation, medical fees, and educational costs.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the economy saw increased mobility of U.S. corporations and the growth of transnational corporations. Seeking greater profit, manufacturers continued their century-long pattern of first going to the southern states, where labor was unorganized. Later, many plants and jobs were moved to poorer nations, as companies continued to seek to maximize profits at the expense of labor.
The flight of factories from manufacturing centers has left entire cities economically unstable. The ensuing poverty and economic vulnerability has resulted in dramatic increases in criminal activity, usually drug crimes and crimes against property, in urban communities. Some jobs are now returning to the United States -- but to the prisons, which contract with private industry, instead of to the urban centers. Industrial programs in prisons subsidize private industry by providing free factory space, subsidies for the tooling of the factory, security, electricity, and guaranteed cheap labor.
Thirty states now allow some type of legalized contracting of prison labor to private firms. Thus, prison labor has become an alternative to moving offshore for many corporations. Workers unemployed because of job flight -- and their children -- are now working these jobs in prison. Upon release, they will go home to the same poor and jobless communities, and they will be as vulnerable to crime as they were before they went to prison.
Involuntary penal servitude
"What we have is a billion-dollar manufacturing industry that legally utilizes slave labor, has little overhead, is unregulated by state and federal workplace safety or labor laws, provides no health insurance or benefits and no sick pay for its employees, includes hazardous materials in the construction of its products, forces customers to buy its products under penalty of law, and prohibits its workers from organizing."-- Karyl Kicenski, "The Corporate Prison: The Production of Crime and the Sale of Discipline," 2002
Today, all forms of convict labor have returned in one form or another. Minimum-wage laws usually do not cover prisoners. They do not receive workers' compensation if they are injured while working. Prison laborers are not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act, nor the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Prison laborers are not permitted to meet among themselves to try to improve their working conditions. Average minimum wages for state prison labor in this country are $0.93 a day for nonindustry work; average maximum wages are $4.73 a day. The wages are much lower than public- or private-sector minimum wages because the vast majority of prisoners work in institutional prison jobs, not in jobs with private industry.
Private-industry state prison jobs pay anywhere from $0.23 to $7.00 an hour, but the "take-home" portion of prison pay is only about 20 percent of that amount. This is equivalent to the cost of maquiladora labor in the factories across the border in Mexico, which pay extremely low wages and have notoriously poor working conditions. Due to severe restrictions on the rights of prison labor, it is not surprising that some industries are turning to the use of prison labor as an alternative to moving offshore.
Politicians and policymakers like to promote prison labor programs as job training, but products fabricated by prisoners are products not being produced by free workers. Thus, labor skills mastered in prison do not necessarily translate into jobs upon release. Private industries, for their part, use prison laborers to drive wages and benefits down and to wield power over their external work force.
While prison officials use prison labor as a management tool, prisoners use it as their only legal way to earn any revenue. Statistics on the hiring of former prisoners do not exist, but very few former prisoners report being hired as a result of their prison work experience. In principle, a fair and voluntary work program, paying meaningful wages for meaningful work, with reasonable opportunities to unionize, gain promotions and raises, and learn job skills marketable on the outside upon release, would serve both prisoners and society.
But under the present penal regime, prison-industry programs are about exploiting vulnerable people's labor for wealthy executives' and shareholders' profit, not about job training.
Slavery and the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
We oppose slavery of all kinds - including the use of prisoner labor for profit -- while supporting the creation of substantial job-training programs. The AFSC National Board calls for revision of this amendment so this exception clause is deleted and the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits all slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States.
Work may be seen by some as a legitimate sanction -- a way for people to "give back" if they have caused harm. However, permitting slavery as an exception to the Thirteenth Amendment makes the prison system the direct heir to the chattel system. The fact that the United States incarcerates people of color at an alarmingly higher rate than whites makes this heritage all too clear.
Beyond PrisonsA New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System
by Laura Magnani & Harmon Wray
Published 2006 by Fortress Press208 pages Price $13.00Phone: 1-800-328-4648www.fortresspress.org
STREET SPIRIT1515 Webster St,#303Oakland, CA 94612Phone: (510) 238-8080, ext. 303
E-mail: Spirit
© 2002-2006 STREET SPIRIT. All rights reserved.
Published by American Friends Service Committee
Editor and Web Design: Terry Messman
Penal Servitude
Penal Servitude
Forced Prison Labor Is a Form of Slavery
An excerpt from Beyond Prisons by Laura Magnani and Harmon Wray
"Art From Jail" Artwork by Jos Sances Serigraph, Edition 120, 8 color, 22" x 30"
"If we look at the chain gangs, jails, and other penal institutions in the country and the state, we arrive at one of two conclusions. Either education and wealth are two of the strongest fortifications against the commission of crime, or there is a different measure of justice for the rich and the poor, white and black, the educated and the unlettered." -- Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, December 27, 1930
Prisons have always reflected the relationship between wealth and power in a country. In the United States today, prisons still clearly reflect the racism and greed that have shaped the national identity.
The use of prisoner labor for corporate or public-sector profit results in prison labor conditions similar to those reported to exist in China. The United States government has regularly and properly condemned the Chinese government's practices. Prison labor programs, and the privatization of prison systems and programs, encourage prison authorities and the state to maximize the number of people in prison rather than focus on public safety. They further shift prison policies away from constructive programs that actually prepare a prisoner psychologically and practically for his or her return to the community.
The forced labor of prisoners has been a crucial factor in the development of prison policy and in the stabilization of the American economy from the very beginning of the U.S. prison system. From the start of the penitentiary movement, the idea that decreasing idleness through productive labor and quiet reflection upon one's crime in the privacy of one's cell was the best way to reform the prisoner, and the practice of leasing prison laborers to private bidders, became the legal and cultural platform upon which the U.S. prison industry was built.
The United States has frequently relied upon a secondary labor force that is in bondage. Forced labor has always existed alongside of, and been recruited from the ranks of, free labor. In times of economic crisis (most notably the Reconstruction period after the Civil War; the period directly following the collapse of the stock market in 1929; and the current period, as we see great underemployment of minimum-wage and low-skilled workers), the prison population has swelled and prisoners have been put to work. These upsurges in the prison population historically have not been followed by a proportional abatement in the number of those imprisoned when the economic crisis has subsided.
Before the abolition of slavery, there were few prisons and penitentiaries in the United States. All large penitentiaries were in northern states. Southern states had smaller prisons, populated almost entirely by white people, since slave owners conducted their own punishment of their slaves. The rapid expansion of state prison systems in the late 19th century had the effect of maintaining the power, racial, and economic relationships that existed under slavery.
When slavery was abolished, the Slave Codes, which had regulated the behavior of slaves and all those of African descent, were rewritten as the Black Codes. The Black Codes had been used in northern states as early as 1790 to criminalize previously legal activities for African Americans and to regulate the activities of free people of African descent. Black men were arrested for "vagrancy" or "breaking curfew." In the South, after the Civil War, former slaves were sentenced to prison and then leased out by the prison to work for local plantation owners.
In the southern states, with the protection of the Thirteenth Amendment, the convict lease system expanded beyond the old slave plantations to include coal mining, railroad building, and other businesses rising in the "New South." In the 1880s, a fledgling labor movement took on the former slave states' exploitation of black and poor white prisoner labor and its effects of disemploying free labor and driving free-world wages down. After decades of political, sometimes violent, struggle, the convict lease system died out in most of the South by the early 20th century.
Just as sharecropping and tenant farming replaced slave labor, the convict lease system was replaced by a combination of chain gangs of prisoners (often under county jurisdictions), working on roads and other public works, and state prison industries run by the governments. Since organized labor had successfully pushed through laws prohibiting states from marketing prison-made merchandise on the open market, many prisoners were put to work manufacturing products to be used only in and by state government -- for example, office furniture, license plates, road signs, and work clothes and uniforms for prisoners and state workers. Others were employed in various farming, maintenance, food service, and laundry service work for the prisons themselves.
In 1979, the U.S. government repealed the interstate transport law that had forbidden interstate transport of prisoner-made goods. The Department of Justice implemented a national work program throughout the federal prison system. There, prisoners theoretically work for minimum wage, of which 80 percent is withheld for room, board, survivor compensation, medical fees, and educational costs.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the economy saw increased mobility of U.S. corporations and the growth of transnational corporations. Seeking greater profit, manufacturers continued their century-long pattern of first going to the southern states, where labor was unorganized. Later, many plants and jobs were moved to poorer nations, as companies continued to seek to maximize profits at the expense of labor.
The flight of factories from manufacturing centers has left entire cities economically unstable. The ensuing poverty and economic vulnerability has resulted in dramatic increases in criminal activity, usually drug crimes and crimes against property, in urban communities. Some jobs are now returning to the United States -- but to the prisons, which contract with private industry, instead of to the urban centers. Industrial programs in prisons subsidize private industry by providing free factory space, subsidies for the tooling of the factory, security, electricity, and guaranteed cheap labor.
Thirty states now allow some type of legalized contracting of prison labor to private firms. Thus, prison labor has become an alternative to moving offshore for many corporations. Workers unemployed because of job flight -- and their children -- are now working these jobs in prison. Upon release, they will go home to the same poor and jobless communities, and they will be as vulnerable to crime as they were before they went to prison.
Involuntary penal servitude
"What we have is a billion-dollar manufacturing industry that legally utilizes slave labor, has little overhead, is unregulated by state and federal workplace safety or labor laws, provides no health insurance or benefits and no sick pay for its employees, includes hazardous materials in the construction of its products, forces customers to buy its products under penalty of law, and prohibits its workers from organizing."-- Karyl Kicenski, "The Corporate Prison: The Production of Crime and the Sale of Discipline," 2002
Today, all forms of convict labor have returned in one form or another. Minimum-wage laws usually do not cover prisoners. They do not receive workers' compensation if they are injured while working. Prison laborers are not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act, nor the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Prison laborers are not permitted to meet among themselves to try to improve their working conditions. Average minimum wages for state prison labor in this country are $0.93 a day for nonindustry work; average maximum wages are $4.73 a day. The wages are much lower than public- or private-sector minimum wages because the vast majority of prisoners work in institutional prison jobs, not in jobs with private industry.
Private-industry state prison jobs pay anywhere from $0.23 to $7.00 an hour, but the "take-home" portion of prison pay is only about 20 percent of that amount. This is equivalent to the cost of maquiladora labor in the factories across the border in Mexico, which pay extremely low wages and have notoriously poor working conditions. Due to severe restrictions on the rights of prison labor, it is not surprising that some industries are turning to the use of prison labor as an alternative to moving offshore.
Politicians and policymakers like to promote prison labor programs as job training, but products fabricated by prisoners are products not being produced by free workers. Thus, labor skills mastered in prison do not necessarily translate into jobs upon release. Private industries, for their part, use prison laborers to drive wages and benefits down and to wield power over their external work force.
While prison officials use prison labor as a management tool, prisoners use it as their only legal way to earn any revenue. Statistics on the hiring of former prisoners do not exist, but very few former prisoners report being hired as a result of their prison work experience. In principle, a fair and voluntary work program, paying meaningful wages for meaningful work, with reasonable opportunities to unionize, gain promotions and raises, and learn job skills marketable on the outside upon release, would serve both prisoners and society.
But under the present penal regime, prison-industry programs are about exploiting vulnerable people's labor for wealthy executives' and shareholders' profit, not about job training.
Slavery and the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
We oppose slavery of all kinds - including the use of prisoner labor for profit -- while supporting the creation of substantial job-training programs. The AFSC National Board calls for revision of this amendment so this exception clause is deleted and the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits all slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States.
Work may be seen by some as a legitimate sanction -- a way for people to "give back" if they have caused harm. However, permitting slavery as an exception to the Thirteenth Amendment makes the prison system the direct heir to the chattel system. The fact that the United States incarcerates people of color at an alarmingly higher rate than whites makes this heritage all too clear.
Beyond PrisonsA New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System
by Laura Magnani & Harmon Wray
Published 2006 by Fortress Press208 pages Price $13.00Phone: 1-800-328-4648www.fortresspress.org
STREET SPIRIT1515 Webster St,#303Oakland, CA 94612Phone: (510) 238-8080, ext. 303
E-mail: Spirit
© 2002-2006 STREET SPIRIT. All rights reserved.
Published by American Friends Service Committee
Editor and Web Design: Terry Messman
Forced Prison Labor Is a Form of Slavery
An excerpt from Beyond Prisons by Laura Magnani and Harmon Wray
"Art From Jail" Artwork by Jos Sances Serigraph, Edition 120, 8 color, 22" x 30"
"If we look at the chain gangs, jails, and other penal institutions in the country and the state, we arrive at one of two conclusions. Either education and wealth are two of the strongest fortifications against the commission of crime, or there is a different measure of justice for the rich and the poor, white and black, the educated and the unlettered." -- Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, December 27, 1930
Prisons have always reflected the relationship between wealth and power in a country. In the United States today, prisons still clearly reflect the racism and greed that have shaped the national identity.
The use of prisoner labor for corporate or public-sector profit results in prison labor conditions similar to those reported to exist in China. The United States government has regularly and properly condemned the Chinese government's practices. Prison labor programs, and the privatization of prison systems and programs, encourage prison authorities and the state to maximize the number of people in prison rather than focus on public safety. They further shift prison policies away from constructive programs that actually prepare a prisoner psychologically and practically for his or her return to the community.
The forced labor of prisoners has been a crucial factor in the development of prison policy and in the stabilization of the American economy from the very beginning of the U.S. prison system. From the start of the penitentiary movement, the idea that decreasing idleness through productive labor and quiet reflection upon one's crime in the privacy of one's cell was the best way to reform the prisoner, and the practice of leasing prison laborers to private bidders, became the legal and cultural platform upon which the U.S. prison industry was built.
The United States has frequently relied upon a secondary labor force that is in bondage. Forced labor has always existed alongside of, and been recruited from the ranks of, free labor. In times of economic crisis (most notably the Reconstruction period after the Civil War; the period directly following the collapse of the stock market in 1929; and the current period, as we see great underemployment of minimum-wage and low-skilled workers), the prison population has swelled and prisoners have been put to work. These upsurges in the prison population historically have not been followed by a proportional abatement in the number of those imprisoned when the economic crisis has subsided.
Before the abolition of slavery, there were few prisons and penitentiaries in the United States. All large penitentiaries were in northern states. Southern states had smaller prisons, populated almost entirely by white people, since slave owners conducted their own punishment of their slaves. The rapid expansion of state prison systems in the late 19th century had the effect of maintaining the power, racial, and economic relationships that existed under slavery.
When slavery was abolished, the Slave Codes, which had regulated the behavior of slaves and all those of African descent, were rewritten as the Black Codes. The Black Codes had been used in northern states as early as 1790 to criminalize previously legal activities for African Americans and to regulate the activities of free people of African descent. Black men were arrested for "vagrancy" or "breaking curfew." In the South, after the Civil War, former slaves were sentenced to prison and then leased out by the prison to work for local plantation owners.
In the southern states, with the protection of the Thirteenth Amendment, the convict lease system expanded beyond the old slave plantations to include coal mining, railroad building, and other businesses rising in the "New South." In the 1880s, a fledgling labor movement took on the former slave states' exploitation of black and poor white prisoner labor and its effects of disemploying free labor and driving free-world wages down. After decades of political, sometimes violent, struggle, the convict lease system died out in most of the South by the early 20th century.
Just as sharecropping and tenant farming replaced slave labor, the convict lease system was replaced by a combination of chain gangs of prisoners (often under county jurisdictions), working on roads and other public works, and state prison industries run by the governments. Since organized labor had successfully pushed through laws prohibiting states from marketing prison-made merchandise on the open market, many prisoners were put to work manufacturing products to be used only in and by state government -- for example, office furniture, license plates, road signs, and work clothes and uniforms for prisoners and state workers. Others were employed in various farming, maintenance, food service, and laundry service work for the prisons themselves.
In 1979, the U.S. government repealed the interstate transport law that had forbidden interstate transport of prisoner-made goods. The Department of Justice implemented a national work program throughout the federal prison system. There, prisoners theoretically work for minimum wage, of which 80 percent is withheld for room, board, survivor compensation, medical fees, and educational costs.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the economy saw increased mobility of U.S. corporations and the growth of transnational corporations. Seeking greater profit, manufacturers continued their century-long pattern of first going to the southern states, where labor was unorganized. Later, many plants and jobs were moved to poorer nations, as companies continued to seek to maximize profits at the expense of labor.
The flight of factories from manufacturing centers has left entire cities economically unstable. The ensuing poverty and economic vulnerability has resulted in dramatic increases in criminal activity, usually drug crimes and crimes against property, in urban communities. Some jobs are now returning to the United States -- but to the prisons, which contract with private industry, instead of to the urban centers. Industrial programs in prisons subsidize private industry by providing free factory space, subsidies for the tooling of the factory, security, electricity, and guaranteed cheap labor.
Thirty states now allow some type of legalized contracting of prison labor to private firms. Thus, prison labor has become an alternative to moving offshore for many corporations. Workers unemployed because of job flight -- and their children -- are now working these jobs in prison. Upon release, they will go home to the same poor and jobless communities, and they will be as vulnerable to crime as they were before they went to prison.
Involuntary penal servitude
"What we have is a billion-dollar manufacturing industry that legally utilizes slave labor, has little overhead, is unregulated by state and federal workplace safety or labor laws, provides no health insurance or benefits and no sick pay for its employees, includes hazardous materials in the construction of its products, forces customers to buy its products under penalty of law, and prohibits its workers from organizing."-- Karyl Kicenski, "The Corporate Prison: The Production of Crime and the Sale of Discipline," 2002
Today, all forms of convict labor have returned in one form or another. Minimum-wage laws usually do not cover prisoners. They do not receive workers' compensation if they are injured while working. Prison laborers are not protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act, nor the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Prison laborers are not permitted to meet among themselves to try to improve their working conditions. Average minimum wages for state prison labor in this country are $0.93 a day for nonindustry work; average maximum wages are $4.73 a day. The wages are much lower than public- or private-sector minimum wages because the vast majority of prisoners work in institutional prison jobs, not in jobs with private industry.
Private-industry state prison jobs pay anywhere from $0.23 to $7.00 an hour, but the "take-home" portion of prison pay is only about 20 percent of that amount. This is equivalent to the cost of maquiladora labor in the factories across the border in Mexico, which pay extremely low wages and have notoriously poor working conditions. Due to severe restrictions on the rights of prison labor, it is not surprising that some industries are turning to the use of prison labor as an alternative to moving offshore.
Politicians and policymakers like to promote prison labor programs as job training, but products fabricated by prisoners are products not being produced by free workers. Thus, labor skills mastered in prison do not necessarily translate into jobs upon release. Private industries, for their part, use prison laborers to drive wages and benefits down and to wield power over their external work force.
While prison officials use prison labor as a management tool, prisoners use it as their only legal way to earn any revenue. Statistics on the hiring of former prisoners do not exist, but very few former prisoners report being hired as a result of their prison work experience. In principle, a fair and voluntary work program, paying meaningful wages for meaningful work, with reasonable opportunities to unionize, gain promotions and raises, and learn job skills marketable on the outside upon release, would serve both prisoners and society.
But under the present penal regime, prison-industry programs are about exploiting vulnerable people's labor for wealthy executives' and shareholders' profit, not about job training.
Slavery and the 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
We oppose slavery of all kinds - including the use of prisoner labor for profit -- while supporting the creation of substantial job-training programs. The AFSC National Board calls for revision of this amendment so this exception clause is deleted and the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits all slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States.
Work may be seen by some as a legitimate sanction -- a way for people to "give back" if they have caused harm. However, permitting slavery as an exception to the Thirteenth Amendment makes the prison system the direct heir to the chattel system. The fact that the United States incarcerates people of color at an alarmingly higher rate than whites makes this heritage all too clear.
Beyond PrisonsA New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System
by Laura Magnani & Harmon Wray
Published 2006 by Fortress Press208 pages Price $13.00Phone: 1-800-328-4648www.fortresspress.org
STREET SPIRIT1515 Webster St,#303Oakland, CA 94612Phone: (510) 238-8080, ext. 303
E-mail: Spirit
© 2002-2006 STREET SPIRIT. All rights reserved.
Published by American Friends Service Committee
Editor and Web Design: Terry Messman
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