Cheap Labor In The Prison System

Over the centuries slavery and corporations have been tied hand by hand, where poor people are forced to work against their will, and corporations are the tyrannies of history by suppressing people and forcing them to work. The necessity of power among society has led elites to push down masses by controlling the environment which helps elites maintain their status. However, when the new modern civilization is compared with the ancient civilizations the scenarios seem to be the same, where the poor are poorer and the rich are richer, and where the rich people amass fortunes by exploiting and diminishing the less fortunate people. However, in the present era minorities and poor people plague prisons, which account for approximately five percent

of the American population, and most of this population belongs to the minorities of Black African Americans and Latinos. Yet when prisoners are incarcerated, they are deprived of their freedom and are forced to work with salaries ranging from cents to dollars per hour, developing a new form of slavery. Yet more today’s corporations have benefited from the prison system because they obtain cheap labor, massive economic profits, and a new form of slavery.
Many companies look for cheap labor to have a competitive advantage among their competitors, and a similar situation occurs among corporations who are involved in the prison system business.

However, the corporations that focus their business in the prison system could not look overseas for cheap labor. Furthermore, to make it more complicated for corporations in the United States it is hard to find cheap labor because of the several regulations that protect employees, including the minimum wage law, which sets a different amount of money to be paid depending on the state as the minimum remuneration that an individual must perceive for their work. Nevertheless, corporations have found the way to benefit from the prison system and are taking advantage of it. In his journal, U$ Prisons Means Money, Hartman Andrew describes, “the criminal justice system is now supplying the United States with cheap labor” where prisoners get paid half of the minimum wage, and the other half goes for the system itself where many laborer laws do not apply to the prisoners, including health care, pay leave act, and OSHA. In other words, prisoners are not allowing to complain at all about the working conditions (American Humanist

2000).
Yet more corporations in one hand have obtained massive revenues by signing contracts with private prisons.

In his journal, Hartman states, how “Companies like KLK, Inc., continue to reap huge profits from the marketing and sales” of their devices that keep prisoners neutralized, which in some instances the bad design of the devices harm the prisoners and on rare occasions lead to the death of inmates, on the other hand, the “politicians, who receive millions in campaign contributions from companies making millions off the prison-industrial complex” and allow corporations to construct several prisons all over the United States and overseas, and attract more investors to buy more stocks on Wall Street. (American Humanist 2000). Through the campaign contributions, it is clear how corporations invest massive amounts of money to manipulate the public policy in congress, and in return amass legally billions of dollars in profits, using prisoner’s cheap labor to invest on new prisons that will later produce more

revenues.
Moreover, corporations have benefited from a new form of slavery, allowed by the criminal justice system. Once corporations enter in an agreement with prisons, prisoners are forced to work for an extremely low wage. In her article, Vicky Pelaez describes “If [prisoners] don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells” making clear how prisons practice slavery in a legal manner. (Pelaez 2014). Even though, the 13th amendment protects citizens from slavery the second part of the amendment has a loophole which states, “Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” making clear how prisoners lose many of their rights because of their crimes, and are forced to work against their will. (U.S. Constitution). Unfortunately, the loophole in the 13th amendment has led to different interpretations of law; where the criminal justice system has had to reinforce a new modern slavery where prisoners are exploited for the benefit of private corporations.
It is clear how corporations have benefited from the prison system because they obtain cheap labor, massive revenues, and develop a new form of legal slavery. However, in the pursuit of more revenues corporations sign contracts with prisons, which allow them to amass billions and billions of dollars in profits because corporations pay pity wages exploiting prisoners. Unfortunately, prisoners are forced to work for a miserable wage against their will to avoid punishment by the prison system, but in some instances some inmates refuse so and thus they get punished in isolation cells. Even though, the 13th amendment protects citizens from slavery, the prisoners are excluded from this privilege and for that reason they are forced to be part of a modern slavery.