Prisoners are treated worse than slaves in America

Posted on December 23, 2025 by
Source: It’s Time to Stop Using Inmates for Free Labor

Preface. United States Prisons have 2.2 million in jail, 5 million on parole.

How can Americans be so proud of themselves when our society has imprisoned one in a hundred people, more than any other nation on earth, and for that matter in all of history, many of them subjected to the most cruel kind of torture, isolation, that crushes their souls and drives them insane. It is not only evil but stupid: Violence spawns violence. Prison is a good place for criminals to get a PhD in crime, find new partners, and learn new (violent) skills.

How is this any different from slavery? If anything even more cruel. Prisoners are unable to spend time with their families, in the great outdoors, eating decent food — arguably worse lives than most slaves in human history. And they work for almost nothing plus additional fees that their families have to pay if they can’t.

I am especially angry and horrified by how the majority of prisoners work and paid pennies per hour.  And many many other fees. This is one of many reasons its so hard to get reduce the number of prisoners is the Prison-industrial complex that depend on cheap labor.  Which also drives many small businesses into bankruptcy, apparently the money paid by small businesses to lobbyists is dwarfed by what the prison industry pays. And no wonder, the prison industry is rolling in dough — prisons pay prisoners as little as 12 cents an hour (less than laborers in Haiti), and California spends $47,421 per prisoner per year.

We will all regret this some day, because after collapse, this will increase the numbers of dangerous men (they comprise 90% of the prison population) who will gather together into gangs and mafias to plunder average citizens, along with former and present military men, police, and other security related jobs of Men with Guns.

Books about slavery, prison, eviction

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

Eisen LB (2023) America’s Dystopian incarceration system of pay to stay behind bars. Brennan Center for Justice

oday, as you read this article, there are almost 2 million people locked away in one of the more than 5,000 prisons or jails that dot the American landscape. While they are behind bars, these incarcerated people can be found standing in line at their prison’s commissary waiting to buy some extra food or cleaning supplies that are often marked up to prices higher than what one would pay outside of those prison walls. Many incarcerated people rely on electronic tablets to email a friend or family member, take an online class, or listen to music downloaded on the device. They will pay for these services and sometimes even the device. If they want to call a friend or family member, they need to pay for that as well. And almost everyone who works at a job while incarcerated, often for less than a dollar an hour, will find that the prison has taken a portion of their salary to pay for their cost of incarceration. This is not a scene from a dystopian science fiction novel but the reality for those trapped behind bars and for the millions of their family members who are on the hook for paying these fees.

As the number of people sentenced to jails and prisons has skyrocketed, government agencies have found themselves unable to pay for the associated costs. While the nation’s incarcerated population peaked in 2009, decades of deepening mass incarceration’s hold on the nation resulted in runaway costs. In fact, the Urban Institute estimates that states and local governments spent $82 billion on corrections in 2019. To offset these costs, policymakers have justified legislation authorizing an ever-growing body of fees to be charged to the people (and, as a result, often their families) in prison and jail by claiming some fees, such as medical fees, will deter unnecessary visits that overtax correctional medical systems. These policymakers and government officials also know that this captive population has no choice but to foot the bill for the government’s own increasing costs of jail and prison administration and that if they can’t be made to pay, their families can. In fact, a 2015 report led by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design found that in 63 percent of cases, family members on the outside were primarily responsible for court-related costs associated with conviction; when broken down further into which family members were primarily responsible for the costs, 83 percent were women.

Rutgers sociology professor Brittany Friedman has written extensively on what is called “pay-to-stay” fees in American correctional institutions. In her 2020 article titled, “Unveiling the Necrocapitalist Dimensions of the Shadow Carceral State: On Pay-to-Stay to Recoup the Cost of Incarceration,” Friedman divides these fees into two categories: (1) room and board and (2) service-specific costs. Fees for room and board—yes, literally for a thin mattress or even a plastic “boat” bed in a hallway, a toilet that may not flush, and scant, awful tasting food—are typically charged at a “per diem rate for the length of incarceration.” It is not uncommon for these fees to reach $20 to $80 a day for the entire period of incarceration. The second category, what Friedman refers to as “service-specific costs,” includes fees for basic charges such as copays or other costs for seeing a doctor or nurse, programming fees, email and telephone calls, and commissary items.

In 2014, the Brennan Center for Justice documented that at least 43 states authorize charging incarcerated people for the cost of their own imprisonment, and at least 35 states authorize charging them for some medical expenses. More recent research from the Prison Policy Institute found that 40 states and the federal prison system charge incarcerated people medical copays.

It’s also critical to understand how little incarcerated people are paid for their labor in addition to the significant cut of their paltry hourly wages that corrections agencies take from their earnings. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of incarcerated people work behind bars. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, those who work regular jobs in prisons such as maintaining the grounds, working in the kitchen, and painting the walls of the facilities earn on average between $0.14 and $0.63 an hour. Those who are lucky enough to find jobs working for the state’s correctional industries, such as making furniture for other government agencies, make on average between $0.33 and $1.41 an hour. Arkansas and Texas don’t pay incarcerated workers at all, while Alabama only pays incarcerated workers employed by the state’s correctional industry.

How Expensive Are These Fees?

To stay in touch and send money to pay fees and buy commissary items, many incarcerated people and their families rely on a technology company called JPay, a Florida-based company owned by the private equity firm Platinum Equity Partners. JPay is one of the main providers of communication and financial services to incarcerated people. JPay also sells prison-safe electronic tablets that allow incarcerated people to listen to music, compose and send emails, and play games.

Correctional agencies make money from contracts with companies such as JPay. For example, if someone sends an incarcerated person in Florida $20 online, they will end up paying $24.95. The $4.95 fee goes to JPay, and JPay sends a portion of the profit to the Florida Department of Corrections at a rate of $2.75 per money transfer. In Maine’s Hancock County Jail, JPay charges $12.95 if you put $200.01–$300.00 on an incarcerated person’s account. In Florida’s Avon Park Correctional Institution, the same transaction costs $13.95.

How Expensive Are These Fees?

To stay in touch and send money to pay fees and buy commissary items, many incarcerated people and their families rely on a technology company called JPay, a Florida-based company owned by the private equity firm Platinum Equity Partners. JPay is one of the main providers of communication and financial services to incarcerated people. JPay also sells prison-safe electronic tablets that allow incarcerated people to listen to music, compose and send emails, and play games.

Correctional agencies make money from contracts with companies such as JPay. For example, if someone sends an incarcerated person in Florida $20 online, they will end up paying $24.95. The $4.95 fee goes to JPay, and JPay sends a portion of the profit to the Florida Department of Corrections at a rate of $2.75 per money transfer. In Maine’s Hancock County Jail, JPay charges $12.95 if you put $200.01–$300.00 on an incarcerated person’s account. In Florida’s Avon Park Correctional Institution, the same transaction costs $13.95.

Medical Fees

Dallas County charges incarcerated people a $10 medical care fee for each medical request they submit. In Texas prisons, those behind bars pay $13.55 per medical visit, despite the fact that Texas doesn’t pay incarcerated workers anything. Texas is one of a handful of states that doesn’t pay incarcerated people for their labor.

Telephone Calls, Video Communications, and Emails

In Kentucky’s McCracken County Jail in Paducah, it costs $0.40 a minute for a video call; this translates into $8.00 for each 20-minute video call. Long-distance telephone calls are $0.50 a minute, but if someone doesn’t have money in their account and needs to call collect, long distance in-state calls are $2.50 connect fee plus $0.35 a minute, and long distance out-of-state calls are $3.95 connect fee plus $0.50 a minute. Kentucky currently charges the highest rate in the country for a 15-minute phone call, costing incarcerated people between $5.70 and $9.99.

For those who need to use email, JPay charges $2.35 for five emails for people in the Texas prison system ($0.47 an email). An attachment to the email requires an extra $0.47. JPay charges even more to communicate with those in the Sublette County Jail in Wyoming, where five emails cost $2.50 ($0.50 an email).

Commissary Fees

People in Florida prisons pay $1.70 for a packet of four extra-strength Tylenol and $4.02 for four tampons. And with inflation, commissary items are priced higher than ever. For example, according to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, incarcerated people in Kentucky experienced a 7.2 percent rise in already-high commissary prices in July 2022. Researchers noted that a 4.6-ounce tube of Crest toothpaste, which costs $1.38 at the local Walmart, is $3.77 at the prison commissary. And a three-ounce Speed Stick deodorant was $4.84, compared to $1.98 at Walmart.

Room and Board Fees

In Gaston County, North Carolina, incarcerated individuals who participate in state work release may make more than the state’s $0.38 an hour maximum pay, but they pay the jail a daily rate based on their yearly income of at least $18 per day and up to $36 per day. In fact, Brennan Center research indicates that almost every state takes a portion of the salary that incarcerated workers earn to compensate the corrections agency for the cost of feeding, housing, and supervising them.

These room and board fees are found throughout the nation’s jails and prisons. Michigan laws allow any county to seek reimbursement for expenses incurred in relation to a charge for which a person was sentenced to county jail time—up to $60 a day. Winnebago County, Wisconsin, charges $26 a day to those staying in its county jail. On average, Wisconsin counties charge a pay-to-stay fee of $13 a day (about $390 a month).

Mast N (2025) Forced prison labor in the “Land of the Free”. Economic policy institute.

Despite producing billions of dollars in value for the benefit of prisons and the private sector, incarcerated workers have almost no labor rights and are paid very little—if they are paid at all—for menial, exploitative, and at times dangerous work that fails to prepare them for life beyond incarceration.

From fighting wildfires to toiling in the kitchens of some of the country’s most popular food franchises, incarcerated workers perform vital functions across the United States and produce billions of dollars in value for the public and private sectors. Yet they are paid very little (between 13 and 52 cents an hour on average)—if at all— and are excluded from the basic rights and protections afforded to most workers.

These exploitative dynamics are rooted in slavery and are particularly extreme in the South, which incarcerates people—primarily Black men—at the highest rates in the world and is more likely than other regions to force incarcerated people to work for nothing at all. Forced prison labor is one aspect of the racist, anti-worker Southern economic development model, which relies on inhumane, regressive forms of revenue generation and masks the true costs of incarceration.

It is past time to reckon with our dehumanization and exploitation of incarcerated workers and start treating them like other workers. Their work should be voluntary and provide meaningful training, they should be paid a minimum wage, and they should be provided the same protections as other workers. Ending forced labor in prisons is not only a matter of humanity but will also deliver transformational fiscal and social benefits to incarcerated workers, their families, and the economy at large.

‘US Should significantly reduce rate of incarceration,’ says new report.  April 30 2014. phys.org

Given the minimal impact of long prison sentences on crime prevention and the negative social consequences and burdensome financial costs of U.S. incarceration rates, which have more than quadrupled in the last four decades, the nation should revise current criminal justice policies to significantly reduce imprisonment rates, says a new report from the National Research Council.

A comprehensive review of data led the committee that wrote the report to conclude that the costs of the current rate of incarceration outweigh the benefits. The committee recommended that federal and state policymakers re-examine policies requiring mandatory and long sentences, as well as take steps to improve prison conditions and to reduce unnecessary harm to the families and communities of those incarcerated. In addition, it recommended a reconsideration of drug crime policy, given the apparently low effectiveness of a heightened enforcement strategy that resulted in a tenfold increase in the incarceration rate for drug offenses from 1980 to 2010—twice the rate for other crimes.

“We are concerned that the United States is past the point where the number of people in prison can be justified by social benefits,” said committee chair Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “We need to embark on a national conversation to rethink the role of prison in society. A criminal justice system that makes less use of incarceration can better achieve its aims than a harsher, more punitive system. There are common-sense, practical steps we can take to move in this direction.”

The unprecedented and internationally unique rise in U.S. state and federal prison populations, from 200,000 inmates in 1973 to 1.5 million in 2009, occurred because of policy decisions such as mandatory sentencing, long sentences for violent and repeat offenses, and intensified criminalization of drug-related activity. Stricter sentencing policies were formed initially during a period of rising crime and social change; however, over the four decades when incarceration rates rose steadily, crime rates fluctuated.

The committee evaluated scientific evidence on the effects of high incarceration rates on public safety and U.S. society, as well as their effects on those in prison, their families, and the communities from which prisoners originate and to which they return. The following data illustrate the magnitude of incarceration rates, the racial disparities of incarceration, and societal impacts:

  • With the inclusion of local jails, the U.S. penal population totals 2.2 million adults, the largest in the world; the U.S. has nearly one-quarter of the world’s prisoners, but only 5 percent of its population.
  • Nearly 1 in 100 adults is in prison or jail, which is 5 to 10 times higher than rates in Western Europe and other democracies.
  • Of those incarcerated in 2011, about 60 percent were black or Hispanic.
  • Black men under age 35 who did not finish high school are more likely to be behind bars than employed in the labor market.
  • In 2009, 62 percent of black children 17 or younger whose parents had not completed high school had experienced a parent being sent to prison, compared with 17 percent for Hispanic children and 15 percent for white children with similarly educated parents.

Another major consequence of high rates of incarceration is their considerable fiscal burden on society, the report says. Allocations for corrections have outpaced budget increases for nearly all other key government services, including education, transportation, and public assistance. State spending on corrections is the third highest category of general fund expenditures in most states today, ranked only behind Medicaid and education.

Estimating incarceration’s impact on crime is challenging, and studies on this topic have produced divergent findings. However, the report concludes that the increase in incarceration may have caused a decrease in crime, but the magnitude of the reduction is highly uncertain and the results of most studies suggest it was unlikely to have been large. In addition, the deterrent effect of increases in lengthy prison sentences is modest at best. Because recidivism rates decline significantly with age, lengthy sentences are an inefficient approach to preventing crime, unless they can specifically target high-rate or extremely dangerous offenders.

People who live in poor and minority communities have always had substantially higher rates of prison admission and return than other groups. Consequently, the effects of harsh penal policies in the past 40 years have fallen most heavily on blacks and Hispanics, especially the poorest, the report says. In 2010, the imprisonment rate for blacks was 4.6 times that for whites. This exceeds racial differences for many other common social indicators, from wealth and employment to infant mortality.

Incarceration correlates with negative social and economic outcomes for former prisoners and their families, and it is concentrated in communities already severely disadvantaged and least capable of absorbing additional adversities. From 1980 to 2000, the number of children with incarcerated fathers increased from about 350,000 to 2.1 million—about 3 percent of all U.S. children. Further, men with a criminal record often experience reduced earnings and employment after prison, and housing insecurity and behavioral problems in children are hardships strongly related to fathers’ incarceration, according to the report.

“When ex-inmates return to their communities, their lives often continue to be characterized by violence, joblessness, substance abuse, family breakdown, and neighborhood disadvantage,” said committee vice chair Bruce Western, professor of sociology, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice, and the director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “It can be challenging to draw strong causal conclusions from this research, but it’s clear that incarceration is now a facet of the complex combination of negative conditions that characterize high-poverty communities in U.S. cities. Prisons are part of a poverty trap, with many paths leading in, but few leading out.”

The report notes that deciding whether incarceration is justified requires an analysis of social costs versus benefits. This equation should weigh the importance of recognizing the harm experienced by crime victims, appropriately addressing those harms, and reinforcing society’s disapproval of criminal behavior. However, the committee stressed that future policy decisions should not only be based on empirical evidence but also should follow these four guiding principles, which have been notably absent from recent policy debates on the proper use of prisons:

  • Proportionality: Criminal offenses should be sentenced in proportion to their seriousness.
  • Parsimony: The period of confinement should be sufficient but not greater than necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing policy.
  • Citizenship: The conditions and consequences of imprisonment should not be so severe or lasting as to violate one’s fundamental status as a member of society.
  • Social justice: Prisons should be instruments of justice, and as such their collective effect should be to promote society’s aspirations for a fair distribution of rights, resources, and opportunities.

The committee did not conduct an exhaustive review of literature on the effectiveness of alternatives to incarceration, crime prevention strategies, or victim assistance programs.

In a supplementary statement to the report, one committee member questioned some of the report’s conclusions regarding the effect of incarceration rates on crime prevention and underlying causes of high incarceration rates. However, he concurred with the report’s recommendations, which he noted are important and ripe for consideration by the public and policymakers.

Provided by National Academy of Sciences

“‘US Should significantly reduce rate of incarceration,’ says new report.” April 30th, 2014. http://phys.org/news/2014-04-significantly-incarceration.html

References

Eric Schlosser. December 1, 1998. The Prison-Industrial Complex. Correctional officials see danger in prison overcrowding. Others see opportunity. The nearly two million Americans behind bars—the majority of them nonviolent offenders—mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers. The Atlantic.

 

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