{"id":71586,"date":"2016-04-11T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71586"},"modified":"2016-04-07T14:42:08","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T13:42:08","slug":"usa-prisoners-in-multiple-states-call-for-strikes-to-protest-forced-labor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/04\/usa-prisoners-in-multiple-states-call-for-strikes-to-protest-forced-labor\/","title":{"rendered":"USA: Prisoners in Multiple States Call for Strikes to Protest Forced Labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alice-speri\"<\/a>4 Apr 2016 – <\/em>Prison inmates\u00a0around the country have called for a series of strikes against forced labor,\u00a0demanding reforms of parole systems and prison policies, as well as more humane living conditions, a reduced use of solitary confinement, and better health care.<\/p>\n

Inmates\u00a0at up to five Texas prisons\u00a0pledged to refuse to leave their cells today. The strike\u2019s organizers remain anonymous but have circulated fliers listing a series of grievances and demands, and a letter<\/a> articulating the reasons for the strike.\u00a0The Texas strikers\u2019 demands range from the specific, such as a \u201cgood-time\u201d credit toward sentence reduction and an end to $100 medical co-pays, to the systemic, namely a drastic downsizing of the state\u2019s incarcerated population.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexas\u2019s prisoners are the slaves of today, and that slavery affects our society economically, morally and politically,\u201d reads the five-page letter announcing the strike. <\/em>\u201cBeginning on April 4, 2016, all inmates around Texas will stop all labor in order to get the attention from politicians and Texas\u2019s community alike.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which oversees the state\u2019s prisons,\u00a0\u201cis aware of the situation and is closely monitoring it,\u201d spokesperson Robert Hurst wrote in a statement to The Intercept. <\/em>He did not comment on the prisoners\u2019 grievances and demands.\u00a0Prisoner rights advocates said at least one prison \u2014 the French\u00a0Robertson Unit in Abilene \u2014 was placed under\u00a0lockdown today, but Hurst denied any prisons in Texas were on lockdown because of planned strikes.<\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/a>

Tom Pennington\/Fort Worth Star-Telegram\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Constitutional Servitude<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution bans \u201cinvoluntary servitude\u201d in addition to\u00a0slavery, \u201cexcept as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,\u201d thus establishing the legal basis for what is today a $2 billion a year industry, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research institute.<\/p>\n

Most able-bodied prisoners at federal facilities are required to work, and at least 37 states permit contracting prisoners out to private companies,\u00a0though those contracts account for only a small percentage of prison labor. \u201cIronically, those are the only prison labor programs where prisoners make more than a few cents an hour,\u201d Judith Greene, a criminal justice policy analyst, told The Intercept.<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead, a majority of prisoners work for the prisons themselves, making well below the minimum wage in some states, and as little as 17 cents<\/a> per hour in privately run facilities.\u00a0In Texas and a few other states, mostly in the South, prisoners are not paid at all, said Erica Gammill, director of the Prison Justice League, an organization that works with inmates in 109 Texas prisons. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThey get paid nothing, zero; it\u2019s essentially forced labor,\u201d she told The Intercept<\/em>. \u201c<\/em>They rationalize not paying prison laborers by saying that money goes toward room and board, to offset the cost of incarcerating them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Texas, prisoners have traditionally worked on farms, raising hogs and picking cotton, especially in East Texas, where many prisons occupy former plantations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve ever seen pictures<\/a> of prisoners in Texas working\u00a0in the fields, it looks like what it is,\u201d Greene said. \u201cIt\u2019s a plantation: The prisoners are all dressed in white, they got their backs bent over whatever crop they\u2019re tending, the guards are on horseback with rifles.\u201d\u00a0In the facilities Greene visited, prisoners worked all day in the heat only to return to cells with no air conditioning.\u00a0\u201cThe conditions are atrocious, and it\u2019s about time the Texas prison administration had to take note.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1963, in an effort to reduce the cost of running prisons, Texas began employing inmates to manufacture a wide array of products, including mattresses, shoes, soaps, detergents, and textiles, as well as the furniture used in many of the state\u2019s official buildings. Because of labor laws restricting the sale of prisoner-made goods, Greene said, those products are usually sold to state and local government agencies.<\/p>\n

Although they comprise nearly half the incarcerated population nationwide \u2014 about 870,000 as of 2014 \u2014 prison workers are not counted in official labor statistics; they get no disability compensation in case of injury, no social security benefits, and no overtime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey keep a high conviction rate at any cost,\u201d\u00a0reads the letter circulated by prisoners ahead of today\u2019s strike, \u201call for the well-being of the multimillion-dollar Prison Industrial Complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Underground Prison Network<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Texas action is not an isolated one. Prisoners in nearby Alabama and Mississippi, and as far away as Oregon, have also been alerted to the Texas strike through an underground network of communication between prisons.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the long term, we\u2019ll probably see more work stoppages,\u201d said Gammill. \u201cIn prison, you think it\u2019d be difficult to spread information, but it actually spreads like wildfire.\u201d<\/p>\n

On April 1, a group\u00a0of prisoners from Ohio, Alabama, Virginia, and Mississippi called<\/a> for a \u201cnationally coordinated prisoner work stoppage against prison slavery\u201d to take place on September 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riot.\u00a0\u201cWe will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves,\u201d that announcement reads. \u201cThey cannot run these facilities without us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prison protests and strikes have seen a revival in recent years after a slowdown resulting from the increased use of solitary confinement to isolate politically active inmates. In 2010, thousands of inmates from\u00a0at least six Georgia prisons, organizing through a network of contraband mobile\u00a0phones, refused to leave their cells to work, demanding better living conditions and compensation for\u00a0their labor. That action was followed by prison protests in Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, and Washington. In 2013, California prisoners coordinated a hunger strike to protest the use of solitary confinement. On the first day of that protest, 30,000 prisoners across the state refused their meals.<\/p>\n

Last year in Texas, nearly 3,000 detainees demanding better conditions seized and partially destroyed an immigration detention center.<\/p>\n

In March,\u00a0protests erupted at Holman Correctional Facility, a maximum security state prison in Alabama, where two riots broke out over four days. At least 100\u00a0prisoners gained control of part of the prison and stabbed a guard and the warden. Those protests were unplanned, but prisoners there had also been organizing coordinated actions that they say will go ahead as planned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to strain the economics of the criminal justice system, because if we don\u2019t, we can\u2019t force them to downsize,\u201d an activist serving a life sentence at Holman told The Intercept.<\/em> \u201cSetting fires and stuff like that gets the attention of the media,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I want us to organize something that\u2019s not violent. If we refuse to offer free labor, it will force the institution to downsize.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSlavery has always been a legal institution,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd it never ended. It still exists today through the criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Alice Speri<\/a> – \u2709alice.speri@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Apr 2016 – Prison inmates around the country have called for a series of strikes against forced labor, demanding reforms of parole systems and prison policies, as well as more humane living conditions, a reduced use of solitary confinement, and better health care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}