Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
Despite producing billions of dollars in value for the benefit of prisons and the private sector, incarcerated workers have almost no labor rights and are paid very little—if they are paid at all—for menial, exploitative, and at times dangerous work that fails to prepare them for life beyond incarceration. These dynamics are particularly extreme in the South, which incarcerates people—primarily Black men—at the highest rates in the world and is more likely than other regions to force incarcerated people to work for nothing at all. Because Southern state and local governments raise less tax revenue per capita than other regions (Das 2022), they rely more heavily on free or underpaid labor to operate costly prisons and produce goods and services on which the public sector depends. This reliance on free and underpaid labor is consistent with the racist and anti-worker Southern economic development model that has predominated in states across the region since Reconstruction (Childers 2024). Prison labor not only masks the true costs of mass incarceration but also locks states into inhumane, regressive, and inefficient forms of revenue generation while deepening racial inequities and imposing high fiscal and social costs on local economies.
Nationwide, nearly two million people are confined in state and federal prisons, county jails, juvenile and immigrant detention centers, and other confinement facilities (Sawyer and Wagner 2024). Of the 1.2 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons, nearly 800,000 are prison laborers, most of them by force (ACLU and GHRC 2022). Most of these workers (about 80%) are employed in facility maintenance and operations, such as janitorial duties, food preparation, grounds maintenance, and laundry—tasks that keep the institutions that imprison them running. Of the other roughly 20%, about 17% work for government-run businesses, where they might staff DMV call centers or wash laundry for public hospitals, or on public projects, where they might be tasked with hazardous spill cleanup or firefighting duties in state-owned forests. The other 3% work for private-sector employers, where they earn meager wages producing goods and services for industries across the U.S. economy (Bronars 2024).
Incarcerated labor is rooted in slavery and bears an especially striking resemblance in the South
The incarceration and extraction of labor from prisoners in the South is directly rooted in legacies of slavery. Though the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery in the United States, it also legalized slavery as a punishment for a crime. After this exception was in place, Southern states quickly implemented Black codes, laws that criminalized many mundane activities of formerly enslaved Black men and women and subjected many of them once again to unpaid, forced labor under the convict leasing system. Through this system, employers bid on and “leased” overwhelmingly Black incarcerated workers and subjected them to brutal conditions, often working them to death (Kim 2020).
The 13th Amendment loophole also led to forced labor in the form of debt peonage, in which Black people found guilty—often of fabricated crimes—were forced to work without pay to pay off criminal fines and court fees. In other cases, Black workers who became indebted—through sharecropping (in which white landowners rented farmland to Black workers and hoarded the profits while forcing tenant farmers into debt they often could not repay) or other means—were forced to work without pay under threat of violence or convict leasing. Convict leasing allowed states to criminalize Black people for trivial “offenses” (such as loitering, breaking curfew, or failing to show proof of employment) and lease them to work without pay for private employers. Though convict leasing as an official practice ended in the early 20th century, forced (and often unpaid) labor under threat of punishment continues in prisons across the country. These dynamics are particularly extreme in the South, where incarceration rates are the highest (see Table 1), prison wages are lowest (see Figure C), and forced labor arrangements bear the most striking resemblances to past forms of convict leasing and debt peonage.
One example of incarcerated people working for private employers is the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP), under which they either work directly for the company or are employed by the prison and contracted out. Despite representing a small share of the country’s incarcerated workforce, these workers contribute to large profits for private businesses by producing goods and services for the suppliers of major brands across our economy, often for consumers who are unaware that they were produced with prison labor. Though these jobs tend to pay higher wages than non-industry jobs—jobs that support prison operations—up to 80% of workers’ wages are deducted in room and board, taxes, and victim compensation, and employers regularly exploit the minimal labor standards that do exist with impunity (ACLU and GHRC 2022).
These programs not only exploit imprisoned workers but can be harmful to local economies and businesses. By employing a captive labor force, these private employers enjoy significant cost savings which enable them to offer artificially low-cost products, undercutting local competitors that do not employ prison labor. In some cases, the employment of incarcerated workers in PIECP jobs has resulted in job losses for free workers in the local economy (Sloan 2010).
Southern states incarcerate people at the highest rates in the world
The United States is infamous for exorbitant incarceration rates. If each U.S. state were a country, 30 states and the U.S. as a nation would have some of the highest incarceration rates internationally.1 For example, for every 100,000 people in the United States, 614 are incarcerated (see Figure A). This is more than four times higher than the country from which we gained our independence—United Kingdom (146)—and nearly seven times higher than our northern neighbor—Canada (88).
But the rankings of Southern states are particularly extreme; 13 of the 16 Southern states (and D.C.) have much higher incarceration rates than the U.S. average (614). Louisiana (1,067) and Mississippi (1,020) top the list with rates that exceed 1,000 incarcerated people for every 100,000 people in the state, followed closely by Arkansas (912) and Oklahoma (905) (Widra 2024). READ MORE…
