\nRight now there\u2019s a national movement mobilizing to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour. But imagine if instead of earning even that much, you could only earn a few cents an hour.<\/p>\n
If that sounds like something from the developing world, think again. The reality is our prisons are perpetuating slave labor.<\/p>\n
Every day, incarcerated people work long hours for barely any money. Meanwhile, prisons charge inmates for everything from telephone calls, to extra food and convenience items, to occupying a bed.<\/p>\n
In an official statement announcing the start of the historically largest nationwide prison strike, the IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee wrote: \u201cIn one voice, rising from the cells of long term solitary confinement, echoed in the dormitories and cell blocks from Virginia to Oregon, we prisoners across the United States vow to finally end slavery in 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prison system profits from mass incarceration. Prisons have numerous incentives to fill beds \u2014 including the cheap labor prisoners provide \u2014 and very little incentive to treat prisoners like human beings.<\/p>\n
Current minimum wage laws don\u2019t apply to people in prison, nor do labor rights regulations. So prisoners experiencing grueling hours or cruel treatment don\u2019t have any recourse to file complaints or seek restitution.<\/p>\n
On the contrary, clear human rights violations \u2013 including chain gangs \u2014 go unchecked all the time.<\/p>\n
And the prison system targets an already incredibly vulnerable population. Most inmates aren\u2019t just low-income \u2014 they\u2019re the poorest of the poor. In 2014, prior to their incarceration, inmates generally made over 40 percent less than their peers.<\/p>\n
Much of the prison population only wound up in the system in the first place because of policies that criminalize race, poverty, and mental health.<\/p>\n
Some are there because they couldn\u2019t afford to post bail after facing minimal charges. Others end up back in the system because of stigma and policies that make it difficult to find a job as an ex-convict.<\/p>\n
Others still are locked up for being homeless and sleeping on the street, or stealing food. Many with mental illnesses end up cycling between the emergency room and a jail cell.<\/p>\n
But even those with steady work, once inside prison, can\u2019t continue to earn a decent living. On just a few pennies an hour, prisoners can\u2019t support themselves or their families, or earn enough to survive once they reenter society.<\/p>\n
People who spend years or even decades behind bars lose years worth of wages and have few resources for food or rent post-incarceration. It\u2019s easy to see how prisons trap people in a cycle of poverty that helps ensure that even if released, they\u2019re likely to end up back in prison.<\/p>\n
The majority of these prisoners are people of color who\u2019ve been disproportionately targeted for imprisonment \u2014 from racial profiling to the failed war on drugs that targeted black communities starting in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just the wages that are reminiscent of slavery.<\/p>\n
One in ten prisoners is subject to physical and sexual abuse by guards and fellow inmates, according to the first National Former Prisoners Survey.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no real infrastructure to address the physical and mental consequences that come with this abuse. Meanwhile, prison wardens, correction officers, and prison administrators are rarely held accountable for their actions.<\/p>\n
Some of these injustices have inspired the Department of Justice to end federal contracts with private prisons, but that\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n
The Eighth Amendment states that cruel and unusual punishment is illegal in this country. Yet, today people are slaving away in prison factories, under working conditions that first prompted the rise of the labor movement.<\/p>\n
Prisoners are human beings who deserve the same human rights and dignity as the rest of us.<\/p>\n
We must end the practice of prison labor. It\u2019s slavery by another name, and we have a clear obligation to ensure that slavery is completely eradicated in the United States.<\/p>\n
Olivia Alperstein is the Communications and Policy Associate of Progressive Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Right now there\u2019s a national movement mobilizing to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour. But imagine if instead of earning even that much, you could only earn a few cents an hour. If \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/No-Imge.jpg?fit=1280%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elsemanarioonline.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}