Prison Slave Labour

The few people who think about these things assume that we are made to work. This is partly true, in that about half of all prisoners are in paid employment. A fair proportion of these jobs are really made-up jobs, created to fulfil a managerial employment target. It is rare that a prison job involves more than a Neanderthal level of cognition and even rarer that a job offers any type of meaningful training that can be carried through into future life.

The days of treadmills are long gone. Their modern equivalent is 'contract services' - the Governor sells our labour to outside companies, and we get the smallest proportion of the income.

The largest employer in this prison is the company Bulk Hardware, who pay the Governor to force us to work an average wage of around 75p an hour. If we refuse to do this work, we are subjected to disciplinary procedures that include solitary confinement (http://www.againstprisonslavery.org/).

Such is the desperation of management to keep this contract with Bulk Hardware that nothing is allowed to get in its way -including the law and a semblance of decency. The Governor has targets for getting us out of our cells and in 'purposeful activity’ and the Bulk Hardware contract helps meet that target. It also brings him a nice top-up to his budget. Losing this contract would hurt.

So when one of the most regular and productive prisoners in that workshop was accused by the supervisor of producing shoddy work, it was a big deal - big enough for formal charges to be made against him. These were thrown out, due to evidence that all was not as it seemed. So far, so fair. Except that another manager decided that the allegation was true and rather than risk upsetting Bulk Hardware, sacked him.

Why should you give a damn? Apart from the small matter of prisoners being made slaves for private companies to profit, of course? You should care because you are being robbed in this scheme. Robbed twice, in fact. Where you fork out over £30,000 a year for each of us to be 'treated', made better before we're turfed back into your communities, the reality is that the Institution trousers this chunk of taxes for staff wages. These staff supervise our labour for outside companies. These companies then sell you their goods at a massive mark-up, as they have the advantage over their competitors of cheap forced labour. You get robbed of your taxes and robbed by the prices on the goods we are forced to produce.

Bulk Hardware packs items for DIY stores. Screws, bolts, hooks, are counted into little plastic bags by prisoners for you to buy at 1000% mark-ups. Your ignorance of the realities of prison labour allows you to play your little part in this sordid game. But now you don't have any excuses.