Prison manpower

British Justice Secretary Ken Clarke recently decided that the “feral underclass” overcrowding the country’s prisons should “get off their beds and into purposeful activity”. Prisoners are a wasted resource, he says, “thousands of hours of manpower lying idle,” and they should be working 40 hours a week. In short, prisons are not “delivering as they should”.

So, how should prisons deliver?

The prisoner-employment initiative was pioneered in the UK by shoe-repair and key-cutting chain Timpsons, which trains and employs prisoners in its shops. Other jobs done by prisoners include  construction, sewing, farm, welding, plastering, motor mechanics, printing, manufacture of military equipment, and training guide dogs. Much of the work for the prison itself which would otherwise have to be outsourced to private contractors, such as making prison furniture and uniforms, can be done by inmates.

Why should prisoners work?

Part of the rationale for obliging prisoners to work is that it helps instil a work ethic in them. It gets them into the routine of getting up every morning, putting in a day of productivity, and feeling they have achieved something at the end of the day. This stands them in good stead when they leave prison, because they are more likely to find a job (especially if they have learnt new skills as part of their work) and keep it, and less likely to return to a life of crime.

The system is working well at one prison where all inmates work and also have access to courses such as motor mechanics and literacy. 57% of them go into employment or further training or education after their release, which is 70% higher than the national average.

Working in prison also keeps prisoners occupied. As a prison official, you do not want bored inmates, because they will be tempted to fill their time by causing disruption. (For the same reason, prison officials and sociologists criticised the prohibition on weights in many US prisons. Weights were banned because muscly prisoners make guards nervous and because weights can be used as weapons. However, in practice, weight-lifting gives inmates something to do and keeps them out of trouble.)

So having prisoners work is good for the prisoners and good for society. But it is also good for employers. This site puts it best:

“For business moguls who have participated in prison labor schemes, it is like they continuously hit the lottery. The workers are unable to strike, there is no need to pay unemployment insurance. There is no need to cover vacation pay or workman's compensation bills. The workers pull full-time shifts, they never arrive late for work. They also never call in absent due to family emergencies. Even better than all this is that if the workers are not happy with their twenty five cents an hour, they can be locked up in secluded cells.”

But on the other hand…

But wait! the cry goes up. We are in the depths of a recession. Well-behaved, law-abiding, highly qualified citizens desperate to work can’t find employment – and yet prisoners are to be handed jobs on a silver platter! Employment is a privilege, and being in prison is – or should be – about having privileges taken away. Especially if the privilege deprives somebody else of a job – somebody whose taxes are going towards prisoners’ upkeep.

Prison labour is also a form of exploitation. In the words of US academics Steve Fraser and Joshua Freeman, “Rarely can you find workers so pliable, easy to control, stripped of political rights, and subject to martial discipline at the first sign of recalcitrance.”

THE WAGE ISSUE

Should working prisoners be paid market wages?

Currently prisoners are paid only a fraction of the usual going rate, sometimes as little as£0.40 per hour. (The national minimum wage is £6.08 per hour).

Advantages of paying prisoners at market rate

One concern about paying these low wages is that it does little to demonstrate the value of work. How motivated would you be to work if you were earning 6% of the minimum wage? Paying prisoners properly helps instill in them an understanding of the satisfaction and usefulness of earning their own money, and inspires them to look for employment after being released rather than turning back to crime to survive.

As one vociferous politician whose name I cannot recall vented so eloquently on the radio, “Many of these people are in prison because they’ve never worked a day in their lives. And if they work in prison and get paid miserably, they will see that they were right not to work!”

In addition, proper wages will help a prisoner support his family while he is in prison and to save up so that does not become a burden on the taxpayer when he is released and is setting up a new life.

Insisting on market wages for prisoners also helps protect other workers and job-seekers, since employers often favour the cheap labour of prisoners over the market-rate labour of law-abiding citizens. (Some companies have brought their outsourced services back from India to the UK to be done by prisoners, and some have even fired their own workers or pressurised them to quit to make way for prisoners.) 

But on the other hand…

As mentioned above, employment itself is a privilege, and good wages even more so. If you have broken the law, why should you be rewarded for it by being given a well-paid job?

GMB union leader Paul Kenny’s take on the matter is: “Ken Clarke has taken leave of his senses. There are 2 million people on the dole looking for work and the idea of bypassing them and undermining the national minimum wage is frankly ludicrous and unacceptable.” 

One solution to the wage issue

One way round the problem is to pay prisoners market wages, but allow them access to only a fraction of the money while they are serving their sentence. The rest can be set aside for when they are released.

Is prison life really as good as Ken Clarke would have us believe?

I was once talking to someone who had worked in a British prison, and he painted a picture of a fairly luxurious place: TV, gym facilities, a library, very few responsibilities.

“But what’s the punishment then?” I asked.

“The punishment,” he informed me gravely, “is the complete loss of liberty. You’re trapped there.”

Final thought

One thing that strikes me is that it is easy to draw an “Us and Them” line between prisoners and the general population. “They’re not like us,” we tell ourselves. “They’re a different type of person.” But they’re not. You don’t have to be a particular type of person to go to prison. It can happen to anyone, including you.

Here are some of the ways you too could become a prisoner:

For up to 2 years imprisonment:

Falsely describing or presenting food

Making off without payment

Up to 3 years:

Presentation of an obscene performance of a play

Up to 5 years:

Abstracting of electricity

Up to 7 years:

False accounting

Insider trading

Communicating false information alleging the presence of bombs

Placing or dispatching articles to cause a bomb hoax

Bigamy

Up to 10 years:

Making threats to kill

Up to 14 years:

Fraudulently printing, mutilating or re-issuing stamps

Life:

Offences which amount to the crime of piracy under the Piracy Acts 1698 and 1721

And finally – and I can’t believe this actually happens – impeding a person endeavouring to save himself from shipwreck

Now just tell me you’ve never at least thought about doing one of the acts above. And if you really haven’t, then I bet you know somebody who has. Just the other day a friend of mine “made off without payment”. She walked out of the hairdresser’s salon completely forgetting to pay for her cut and blowdry. (She phoned the hairdresser later when she realised it. “Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked. “I didn’t know what to say,” he replied. Quite.) Or “an obscene performance of a play”. I saw a performance of Shakespeare’s Tempest once where the actress playing Ariel was topless throughout. And I myself regularly “falsely describe or present food” (“It’s supposed to be that colour. Eat it.”)

You’re just lucky because you’ve never been caught for doing these deviant things. But next time you might be. And then you could become a prisoner too, and that “Us and Them” line will not seem quite so substantial anymore.

I leave you with the immortal words from the film Blow, the story of George Jung, cocaine smuggler, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence:

SOURCES
http://weeklywire.com/ww/04-24-00/boston_feature_2.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/08/prisoners-call-centre-fired-staff

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/timworstall/100019395/how-to-square-the-circle-of-paying-prisoners-properly/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8984942/Ken-Clarke-to-double-number-of-prisoners-working-full-time.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15167357

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/898159-prisoners-can-be-turned-into-factory-workers-says-justice-secretary-ken-clarke#ixzz26HgwWIrQ

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/898159-prisoners-can-be-turned-into-factory-workers-says-justice-secretary-ken-clarke#ixzz26Hh46t9S

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/05/do_prisoners_really_spend_all_their_time_lifting_weights.html

http://reality-bytes.hubpages.com/hub/Is-The-Prison-Industrial-Complex-A-New-Form-Of-Slavery

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/08/prisoners-call-centre-fired-staff

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/507ec196-fbf9-11e1-aef9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz26ICsNsfW

http://hillingdonchildcare.proceduresonline.com/chapters/p_remand_legal.htm