Stories the Mainstream Media Doesn't Want to Cover #2

The Largest Prison Strike in U.S. History 
On September 9th a nationwide prison strike began resulting in work stoppages and and protests regarding the working conditions for incarcerated individuals in the United States. Although crime in the U.S. is approaching historically low numbers we continue to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Although this fact may be common knowledge, the extent to which prisoners are used for labor is rarely talked about and the conditions of their employment even less.

Having prisoners work isn't inherently a negative thing. Programs to train and employ workers have been reviewed academically for their effectiveness at preparing inmates for their return to society and their likelihood to fall back into patterns of criminal behavior. Some states, like Florida, offer programs for prisoners to use work as a means of shortening their sentence and some supporters of the practice claim that working provides structure to prison life and incentive to remain on good behavior.

One glaring flaw in these notions are the conditions in which prisoners work, and their overall powerless role in shaping those conditions. Most state and federal prisons make manual labor mandatory. States like Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas refuse to pay prisoners for their work. When prisoners are paid it is almost universally less than one dollar an hour, even in federal work programs. In fact federal and state work programs often end up taking most of the wages earned through taxes as well as paying back victims and in some cases the cost of their incarceration itself. Additionally prison workers have no union to organize or bargain for them, and working conditions have little to no oversight.

Prisoners are not a population that earns much sympathy, but they are still people. Many prisoners suffer from undiagnosed or untreated mental illness, and many of the folks we categorize as aggressors were victimized themselves at some point in their lives. It's pretty safe to say that most prisons are less than peaceful, and inmates typically find more things to fight about than work together for. Perhaps this is what is so shocking about over 20 thousands prisoners from more than 29 prisons in 12 different states uniting and protesting over a single common issue.

The inmates protesting compare their servitude to slavery. Considering the disturbingly concentrated distribution of minorities in prison and the wages prison workers earn, the comparison is chilling. In addition to doing a large amount of the work that is required to maintain the operation of prisons, workers in some states are employed by private contractors for labor. This recent article highlights 7 major corporations that rely on prison workers.

It is easy to write off this widely ignored moment in history because prisoners have little to no ability to be heard, and don't elicit much compassion or sympathy. Perhaps working is a good form of rehabilitation, but workers of any kind should at least be heard when voicing grievances against working conditions. Nelson Mandela once said that "A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones". Prisoners who have refused to work in poor conditions for abysmal pay are now sitting in solitary confinement right this moment, and yet their plight remains almost entirely invisible.

Sure, part of me wants so say it's justified because who knows what those people have done. The larger part of me wonders how civilized or morally sound we can be if our version of justice relies on the isolation of individuals and profiting off of their misery. These people are locked up, their dignity and life has been completely taken - isn't that enough? Should we perhaps re-evaluate how we treat these lost souls when rival gangs of criminals collaborate and work together?