“Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime…shall exist within the United States”

-13th Amendment to the United States Constitution

Beginning on August 21st, and set to continue until at least September 9th, prisoners across the United States engaged in a work and hunger strike in order to bring attention to various abuses and injustices in the American judicial system. The issues that the prisoners are focusing on are of crucial importance. Among the issues raised are the poor treatment of prisoners, racial disparities in arrests and sentencing, nearly no compensation for laborers, lack of efforts to rehabilitate prisoners, the death penalty, and denial of voting rights. Various groups have been involved in this movement, either taking part themselves or endorsing the strike, including the Industrial Workers of the World and the Democratic Socialists of America. At this point strikes are taking place all across the country at numerous institutions. The strike, although focused on long-standing systemic issues, was directly inspired by an April riot at Lee Correctional Institute in South Carolina, which was the deadliest prison riot in over 25 years.

The United States is a freakish outlier when it comes to our incarceration rates. Despite being a relatively safe country to live in, we have the highest incarceration rate in the world — and it isn’t even close. Our incarceration rates tend to peak under Republican administrations, and in 2008, under President Bush, over 1% of our population was detained. That was around a quarter of the incarcerated population of the entire world, despite the fact that Americans are only about 4% of the world’s population. We still have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and with Trump’s crackdown on immigration, that number is almost certain to go up. Countries that our government regularly denounces for human rights abuses, like China, North Korea, and Iran, do not have incarceration rates this high. Unless you believe that Americans are an exceptionally immoral people who commit absurdly more crime than people in any other nation on the planet, something is clearly wrong here. So how did it get this way?

Put simply — the system itself is sick. Numerous biases and perverse incentives exist in the American judicial system. The recent rise of for-profit prisons has created a perverse incentive for every level of our government to lock up more Americans. There are many reasons this system inevitably leads to higher levels of incarceration. One is that prisoners are paid incredibly poor wages, sometimes as low as a few cents per hour, because minimum wage laws do not apply to them. Slavery is technically still allowed in the United States under the 13th Amendment as long as somebody has been convicted of a crime. Therefore, many companies and states rely on prisoners as a source of nearly free labor. This happens in both state-run and private prisons.

For-profit prisons also take advantage of lobbying and the influence of money in politics to influence our politicians to pass stricter laws, especially for victimless crimes like marijuana possession, so that they can make more money. Not only are these prisons subsidized by taxpayer money, often based on how many people are locked up there, but the outcomes from such prisons tend to be much worse. After all, why would they rehabilitate people when they get paid if those people commit another crime and come back? If anything, these prisons have an incentive to want prisoners to commit more crimes in the future. This has lead to higher recidivism rates for prisoners in private prisons.

So how do these prisons make sure they have as many convicts as possible for as long as possible? Well, there are a few strategies. One is to lobby for harsher sentencing regardless of how harsh current sentencing might be (after all, harsher always means better for their bottom line). This is done through donations, sometimes totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, to politicians at all levels of government. At that point, it is hard to push for reform since the corporations that run the private prisons have already acquired so much political influence.

Another strategy, of course, is to target those most vulnerable in society. This means passing laws that disproportionately lock up poorer people and people of color. Racial disparities are nothing new in the American prison system. Despite multiple studies showing that there are no significant differences in drug use between whites and other races, people of color are arrested far more often for drug related crimes. Simply put, this is not a difference in the amount of crime committed, but rather a racist bias in how laws are enforced.

Use vs. arrest disparity based on race.

Combine this with people of color being given disproportionately harsh prison sentences, including the death penalty (even when controlling for criminal history, age, and income), and it is clear that the biases in our judicial system take place at every level, from individual officers who make the arrests, to the judges who give the sentences, to the politicians who make the laws. As far back as the Nixon administration during the 60s, the drug war was specifically designed to target minorities, as one former administration official recently admitted in extremely clear language. Unfortunately, the highest incarceration rates are found in the South, and especially the Deep South.

One might think that companies and state institutions could simply stop buying the products of prisoner labor in order to challenge this system. Unfortunately, that is often not the case, as in many states laws passed decades ago actually force state institutions to buy the products of prison labor. As an alum of the College of William & Mary, in Virginia, I want to highlight the situation there, although similar laws exist in many states and the underlying issues are national.

It has been 75 years since the General Assembly passed section 53.1–41 of the Code of Virginia, forcing all state-run agencies, including public colleges, to buy products made with prison labor as often as possible. This is done though an agency called Virginia Correctional Enterprises (VCE). The prisoners who make furniture for VCE are paid as little as 25–80 cents per hour, and many are in on charges like marijuana possession. However, many alumni, faculty, and students at the College are not aware that almost all of the furniture the College uses was made by people making less than a dollar an hour under coercive conditions. Some students recently started making an effort to raise awareness and combat the injustices of prison labor. In particular, the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) at William & Mary has been working to raise awareness as a part of a national campaign by the DSA. So far they have held a film screening to raise awareness, used a podcast and social media to spread information about the issues at hand, began coordinating with other groups in Virginia, and held an anti-Drug War rally in the center of campus where they discussed the issues surrounding the Drug War and prison labor. The national DSA has endorsed the recent strikes.

Nico Villarreal, one of the co-chairs of the W&M YDSA explained that “We’ve been coordinating with DSA chapters and other groups across the state on a campaign to end the wage theft and slavery-like conditions in our prison system. This is an issue that affects us all at William and Mary since the state requires us to buy much of our furniture from suppliers using prison labor”

Any effort to change these unjust elements of the American judicial system will have to take place at every level, from students pressuring institutions of higher learning to make use of any loophole possible to avoid purchasing the products of prison labor, to everyday people contacting and lobbying their representatives to change laws to ban for-profit prisons, legalize marijuana, reduce sentences for most crimes, and increase prisoner pay to at least minimum wage, to national organizations like the DSA and labor unions (and in an ideal world the Democratic Party) bringing attention to these issues, agitating, and educating the public. Although laws have to change, people have the power to vote out politicians who support/are bought by private prison corporations or support draconian laws. Obviously expanding and restoring voting rights will be a key part of this effort. Opposition to the drug war and getting marijuana legalization on the ballot is another priority. In my opinion, realistically change will come from voting for progressives in primaries and general elections, and getting many of these issues on the ballot in order to reduce the influence of politicians who receive money from these corrupt and racist institutions. Ultimately, as a society we need to remember the humanity of incarcerated people.

Here is a paraphrase of the list of demands the striking prison workers have created: