November 27th, 2017
Written by - Dorothy Bogen '20
I find it unfathomable that people who are incarcerated are so frequently exploited for their labor. While some may argue that because of their criminal history, criminally low wages are justifiable as part of their punishment. But, just because someone is incarcerated doesn’t mean their human rights are suddenly vanquished. If people in prison are being forced to work under threat of punishment for just a couple pennies, does that not violate their right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment? This is especially outrageous as, according to my research, most of their work involves hard manual labor. Furthermore, because their human rights have not been vanquished, don’t prisoners deserve the same worker’s rights as free people, such as the right to unionize or earn a fairer wage? Under any other circumstances, society would find it completely reprehensible if people were forced to do hard labor for significantly less than minimum wage. But, somehow, we as a society have been able to dehumanize those who are incarcerated so much that we can ignore and stomach such a blatant breach of human rights. Plus, this system incentivizes incarceration if companies are relying on a steady prison population for labor. What is just about wanting to fill prisons so companies can have cheap labor? That does not reduce crime, recidivism, or combat the cycle of violence or root causes of crime. On top of that, there is disproportionate amount of people, particularly men, of color being incarcerated, meaning this system also reinforces many of the racist ideas perpetuated in society. As angry as I am, I unfortunately can’t even say I’m surprised given this country’s long history of exploiting marginalized peoples. For a supposed criminal “justice” system, this is incredibly unfair.
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