Contested theories of prison labor practice

Abstract

AbstractIn recent years, prison strikes and controversies have brought public attention to the systemic problems with prison labor in the United States. Such labor often exploits people who are imprisoned to do work that is vital to society—including firefighting, farming, or manufacturing consumer goods—with wages that can be less than a dollar per hour in highly coercive working conditions. Although there is call to end prison labor today, theories of prison labor have historically been contested, even among activists and progressive reformers. Accordingly, this review offers a short sociological history of labor in correctional environments, highlights contemporary controversies, and argues for a more fine‐grained approach to the relationships among labor, prisons, and reentry. It traces the field of reformers and scholars that have made arguments for punitive, rehabilitative, restorative, and transformative approaches to work. The contested theories of prison labor across time and space suggest that a better understanding is needed of what makes labor exploitative and what forms of labor have the potential to transform the root causes of crime, within and beyond prison walls. Overall, this review has implications for those who study prison and reentry programs, relationships between crime and community, and the political economy of incarceration.