Why Incarcerated people work

“In recent years, activists and politicians across the country have fought to eliminate the “exception clause” in the Thirteenth Amendment, which permits slavery or involuntary servitude “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Proponents of this effort lobby state legislatures to eliminate this language because they argue it warrants “prison slavery.” In addition to the moral justification, they contend this change will have material benefits for imprisoned people, such as grounds for wage increases and improved prison conditions. So far, twelve states have eliminated the exception clause, most recently Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont.

Largely absent from this effort, though, is a proper understanding of how incarcerated people themselves understand their relationship to work and their reasons for doing it. In our conversations with incarcerated comrades, we have found that, when they work, they do so for a variety of reasons that extend beyond being forced to. These conversations motivated us to create The Work and Us, a project dedicated to understanding prison labor from the stories and perspectives of imprisoned people.

Our investigation starts from the premise that imprisoned people are privileged knowers of their experiences. They understand their motivations, including their survival needs and the tradeoffs of working. They understand that working is often a complicated choice, given that most prison jobs keep the prison running. Of course, these motivations and decisions vary greatly due to a variety of factors such as location, race, gender, sexuality, age, and length of sentence. These are a few dimensions we aim to study and better understand through The Work and Us.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE on Inquest: https://inquest.org/why-incarcerated-people-work/