Corporate greed at the expense of prisoners

Greetings, my fellow comrades! 


                                                Creator: Jennifer Cappuccio Maher | Credit: Staff Photographer
                                                        Copyright: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG



So as previously stated, I want to emphasize that the purpose of this blog is to expose companies that violate human rights with either prison labor, child labor, and/or just horrendous labor violations. Today I am going to focus on prison labor. As I mentioned, I have personal experience with prison labor, as my mother was arrested and incarcerated in 1998 for about two years. While in a California prison, she volunteered to be enrolled in a fire-camp program. Initially, it sounded great, being able to leave the prison and be out in nature physically. However, the gravity of the situation dawned on her during her first wildfire experience. I remember her telling me about the smoke, the heat, and being shackled to and from the front lines of fire spots while feeling an overwhelming amount of fear. Her stories about the experience have stuck with me and fueled my fire to delve deeper into how prisoners are exploited during their time in prison. 


Prison labor violates the fundamental rights of people while generating billions of dollars in goods and services while working under harsh conditions, according to a report by the University of Chicago Law School's Global Human Rights Clinic and American Civil Liberties Union- 

According to the ACLU there are around 800,000 incarcerated people working within federal and state penitentiaries in America whose fundamental freedoms are stripped and subjected to work at the prison administration's discretion. 


Copyright: ©Copyright 2011. Young Kwak. All Rights Reserved.


Private companies that utilize prison labor, known as “insourcing,” are incentivized with the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) which sounds lovely by all means when looking at their website, stating “for employers who invest in American job seekers who have consistently faced barriers to employment.”-how nice of these typically private companies to want to help those who cannot find gainful employment, BUT how can one find gainful employment while being incarcerated? According to a 2017 prison policy report, wages for inmates are from 0.14 cents to about $4.00 dollars per hour compensation. There is a caveat that some jobs being performed by inmates are facility jobs known as "prison support work"-for the very institution that confines them, such as custodial, maintenance, and food service, to name a few. While I have issues with that, it's not the focus here. I am more concerned with big named companies that make millions/ billions using prison labor. A simple google search shows big names such as Walmart, Starbucks, and Verizon benefit from prison labor, but to what extent is proving to be challenging. 

 Finding the data within those companies has proved to be a complex task. I wonder why they want to keep this information secret; maybe it has to do with the fact that companies such as Walmart generated $152.859 BILLION dollars in revenue for the quarter ending on July 31, 2022- which is an 8.37% increase year-over-year. Walmart not only profits from prison labor in America but in China as well. A story from 2018 where a consumer from Arizona purchased a purse to find a handwritten note in Mandarin Chinese detailing beatings, malnutrition, and long work hours. 

A Sierra Vista, Ariz. woman says she believes she found a note from a Chinese "prisoner" pleading for help, claiming he or she was being forced to work under abusive conditions. (KPTV)



Chinese prison labor, known as The Laogai system, was modeled after the Soviet Gulag system.  Fostering similar inhuman tactics and a method to silence dissents, activists, and course correct political outlooks to a more Communist Party outlook. 



Laogai prison laborer 

China is one of the largest cotton producers in the world in a providence called Xinjiang, which is infamous due to the Uighur minority "re-education camps," which could be described as concentration camps. Forced prison labor is undoubtedly happening in these camps under the guise of "vocational training facilities" so that Uighur Muslims can reintegrate back into Chinese society, where they must learn Mandarin Chinese and renounce their faith. Companies such as Adidas and H&M have used Xinjiang cotton in their products. 

Xijinang cotton production
                        


works cited :

Captive labor: Exploitation of incarcerated workers. American Civil Liberties Union. (2022, June 15). Retrieved September 8, 2022, from https://www.aclu.org/report/captive-labor-exploitation-incarcerated-workers 

Claudia , F. (2022, July 16). U.S. prison labor programs violate fundamental human rights, new report finds. University of Chicago News. Retrieved September 9, 2022, from https://news.uchicago.edu/story/us-prison-labor-programs-violate-fundamental-human-rights-new-report-finds 

Costa, A. N. da. (2019, November 13). Xinjiang Cotton Sparks Concern Over 'forced labour' claims. BBC News. Retrieved September 9, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50312010 

Mosher , S. W. (1991). Chinese prison labor. Chinese Prison Labor | Office of Justice Programs. Retrieved September 7, 2022, from https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/chinese-prison-labor 

Sawyer, W. (2017, April 10). How much do incarcerated people earn in each state? Prison Policy Initiative. Retrieved September 7, 2022, from https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/ 

Walmart revenue 2010-2022: WMT. Macrotrends. (n.d.). Retrieved September 9, 2022, from https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/revenue 

Work opportunity tax credit. United States Department of Labor. (n.d.). Retrieved September 7, 2022, from https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/wotc 




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