The sharp increase in the number of working people behind bars, up 1 million since 1994, is a result of the bipartisan assault spearheaded by the federal government over the last two decades to put more police on the streets, impose longer prison terms, and widen the use of mandatory sentencing, particularly for drug offenses.

Workers who are Black and male were incarcerated in record numbers last year in the United States, with a total of 791,600 Black males behind bars, or 40 percent of the total prison population. Blacks make up 12 percent of the population as a whole. Nearly one in eight Black males age 20 to 34 were in prison on any given day, according to a Justice Department report.

Black youth in the United States are six times more likely to be put in prison than white youth. The recent case in Florida of 14-year-old Lionel Tate, convicted of first-degree murder for causing the death of a six-year-old playmate when he was 12 and sentenced to life in prison without parole, highlights the growing number of states that have expanded their laws to punish juveniles as adults for a variety of offenses.

Last year in Louisiana state officials, facing several lawsuits, agreed to stop placing any more convicted juvenile offenders in privately run "youth prisons." The lawsuits charged that administrators in these prisons, run by the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, the world's largest operator of for-profit prisons, had deprived teenage inmates of food, clothing, and medical care, and that guards had routinely beaten the youth.

Wackenhut Corrections manages 55 correctional/detention facilities in North America, Europe, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand, with a total of 40,000 beds. The company's annual revenues in 2000 were $535.6 million, up 22 percent from 1999. Its net income, however, declined to $17 million from $21.9 million the previous year due in part to the "deactivation" of the Jena, Louisiana, youth prison, where abusive conditions had sparked the lawsuits.

In a recent report on abuse of female inmates, an Amnesty International report noted that only three states prohibit male guards from conducting "pat-down" searches of female inmates. In addition, some states consider only some types of sexual assault of women in prison to be criminal, while others apply laws only to corrections officers and not to kitchen staff or medical workers. In New York State, a dozen state prison guards have been charged with sexual offenses in 1999 and 2000.

Earlier this month the U.S. Bureau of Prisons launched a new policy limiting inmates of federal prisons to 300 minutes of telephone calls per month, an average of 10 minutes a day. Previously only collect calls were limited. The federal prisons recently installed a new telephone system allowing the use of debit accounts paid for by the prisoners. Prison authorities require the inmates to use punch codes to keep track of calls and billing. Prisoners may call up to 30 phone numbers, which must be pre-approved. All telephone calls in the 98 U.S. federal prisons are routinely monitored or recorded. Prisoner advocate groups are protesting the move.

Use of workers serving prison terms as a source of cheap labor is on the rise and some U.S. manufacturers are pressing to broaden the practice.

Last year 80,000 prisoners were working for wages, both in private enterprises and in state-run operations. Over the past 20 years some 30 states have passed laws allowing the use of convict labor by private companies. Prisoners are being employed at low wages--from 25 cents to $7 an hour--to book airline tickets, pack and ship computer software, and stock toys, in addition to doing traditional in-prison work, such as making license plates.

The Christian Science Monitor noted that bosses "who employ convicts also save bundles in health insurance, unemployment insurance, payroll and Social Security taxes, workers compensation, and vacation time."

Jack Cleveland of Server Technologies, a computer company that employs prisoners at the Central California Women's Facility to make computer components, said prison labor "has been a fabulous success for us.... The work force can expand and contract to our needs...which saves us a lot." Under the California program the prisoners supposedly earn $5.75 an hour, which is taken by the state and allocated to pay for room and board costs that the prisoner "owes" and other expenses, after which the remainder, if any, goes to a bank account for the prisoner.

Large profits from this exploitation have stimulated the boom in the construction of private prisons. The "corrections industry" capitalists can not only make profits by jailing the workers, but by using their labor power at a bargain price.

In Michigan, Bill Martin, the director of the Department of Corrections, recently praised a proposal by business leaders in Jackson, Michigan, to permit the creation of a "manufacturing condominium" on prison land as a prisoner-exploitation zone for private industry. There are 39 other such operations in the country. Current Michigan law permits prison work only in industries owned and operated by the prison, which sell the goods or services produced to state governments and nonprofit organizations.

Under the new proposal, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reports, prisoners in most cases would perform "work that is labor-intensive and difficult to find other workers [for] because of the region's tight labor market." Workers behind bars would be paid "market wages," the article continued, which "would be subject to guidelines established by public policy, including paying back room and board costs," estimated at about $18,000 a year. A worker earning minimum wage has an annual gross income of less than $12,000.  
 
'An exciting proposal' for business
Such programs are touted by business officials as the way workers behind bars can supposedly learn skills. "It's an exciting proposal," said Martin. "it would move us into a new level of opportunity and I think, more than anything, it would help prepare inmates for release into society, while at the same time producing something of value for the community."

The National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-wing think tank, published a report in its on-line magazine titled "Creating Factories Behind Bars." The piece, written by Knut Rostad, president of the Enterprise Prison Institute, and Morgan Reynolds, director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis, urges the Bush administration to take measures "alleviating the 93 percent unemployment rate behind the gates of American prisons and a workforce shortage that threatens American competitiveness." They motivate the effort as a way of lowering the rate of recidivism, the return to prison of many incarcerated workers after their release.

Complaining about the high wages paid to "offshore" capitalist operations in other countries and the "dearth of skilled, motivated, and reliable workers with an aptitude for math and a sense of teamwork," Reynolds and Rostad counterpose "what might be called an 'InPrison' operation" that "can provide an excellent, cost-effective domestic alternative."  
 
 
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