“They chew you up, but they gotta spit you out” — McNulty (The Wire)

Every prison in Taiwan is a Gulag; a forced labor camp. Every inmate has to work. No work, no chance of early release. The Gulags make all kinds of things: tea boxes, bags, nougat, clothes hangers, one factory even makes our commissary forms.

Prison language is heavy in euphemisms: we’re not called inmates, we’re called students; our parole officers are called teachers; the prison is called a factory. I wonder if officials think of a prison as just a factory with walls. Semantics. Whatever helps them sleep at night. The prison loves to extol all the benefits of work: it keeps us inmates happy, keeps us from being bored, we get to earn a decent wage, and it will teach us valuable skills they can use in the future. Fucking communists. I ain’t Boxer and this ain’t Animal Farm. It’s all bullshit. Prisons are a business and business is very good.

The factory I was in made bags; both cloth and paper. Depending on the bag our jobs change. Sometimes, we put tacks in the bags. Other times, we need to flip them inside out. We always need to fold the sides and bottoms and cut the loose threads. The scissors the prison gives us are small and dull. We use the same scissors to trim our nose and pubic hairs. I cut a lightning bolt down south; I’m the boy who lived. The easiest bags are the ones where we just need to tape the tops shut with double sided tape. The most mundane are the ones where we stick shoe strings (handles) through the top of the bags. If you have ever gotten a bag with handles that look like shoelaces in Taiwan, there’s a good chance it was made in prison. By far the biggest pain in the ass were the drawstring bags that we had to put in the drawstring. It was time consuming, tedious, and most of the old folks couldn’t even do it. They just made the young kids do it.

All work in prison is tedious and time consuming. They’re not trying to teach us anything, they’re just throwing bodies at tasks. Rehabilitation in Taiwan is a fantasy. Based on the work I’ve done the prison must think I’m going to be making bags upon my release. I’ve applied for other jobs in prison, asked to be an English teacher. “We don’t have English teachers in the prison.” “Why not? It would actually teach these people something and at least give them a shot at a chance not to come back.” “No. You do what we tell you to do.” I’ve applied for a job stocking shelves at a local convenience store. I met all the requirements: less than 1 year left on my sentence, no infractions, non-violent crime, non-rapist and non-drug dealer. Was denied for no reason. Apparently the only thing the prison deems me qualified to do is make bags.

I’ve done every job related to the bags from holding the bags so a guy can stick his hands in them and flip them inside out (btw this is the most tiring), to folding the sides, to folding the bottoms, to counting them and boxing them up. Eventually I proved adept at folding the bottom of the bags. Yeah, I know how sad/funny that previous sentence is. Whenever I was done folding I’d go help prepping and counting. Being paid to do a job, technically that makes me a professional. A professional bag maker. From duffel bag boy to paper bag boy.

We would work Monday — Friday from 8:30am to 11:30am and 1:00pm — 4:30pm. We’re suppose to get paid monthly but usually we’ll get the the previous month’s salary around the middle of the month the following month and we’re not allowed to pull out all of the money we earn. The money goes into a separate account that we can access only when we leave. We are only allowed to withdraw a certain percentage while incarcerated. For example, at the end of my 16 months, I had 930 NTD. 930!!!! That’s about $30. Furthermore, every 2 months we have to chip in 200 NTD for factory use commissary: dishwashing liquid, soap, trash bags, bleach, etc. That’s right, we buy the supplies we use to clean the prison. In essence, we’re paying the prison for the right to clean.