1

Katherine Chen

TA Christopher Colligan

LSJ 320/Pol S 368

22 November 2021

Forced Labor in US Prisons and Detention Centers Violates Human Rights

In this essay, I argue that many practices within the US carceral system violate human

rights that protect against forced and unjustly compensated labor. These labor rights violations

create an inhumane environment in prisons and detention centers that additionally violates

human rights against cruel and degrading punishment. Finally, because much of the US carceral

system was founded on practices designed to exploit the labor of People of Color — specifically

Black Americans — forced and unjustly compensated labor in this system also violates human

right protections against racism. The structure of this essay will be divided into three sections.

First, I will describe the violations committed in various entities of the US carceral system. This

includes forced and unjustly compensated labor in state-run prison farms, in state-run prison

labor programs, and in privately-owned or operated prisons and immigrant detention centers.

Second, I will conduct a legal analysis on the specific human rights being violated from the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and

Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

(CERD). I will also discuss how the US Constitution fails to protect against forced labor. Lastly,

I will discuss policy recommendations to address these human rights violations. The solutions

include abolishing the 13th Amendment punishment clause, defunding prisons and redirecting

those funds to restorative and rehabilitative justice, refusing to buy products manufactured by
2

exploited incarcerated labor, divesting from private prison corporations, banning private

detention centers, and abolishing ICE.

Section 1: Describing the human rights problem

I will begin this section by describing human rights violations in state prison farms. State

owned prisons are sometimes built as farms in which incarcerated labor is used to plant, harvest

crops, and do other types of manual labor. In the 1960’s and 70’s when journalist access to

prisons was much less restricted, photographer Bruce Jackson took thousands of photos of prison

farms in Texas and Arkansas. Most of the incarcerated men were black, and they picked cotton

and did other backbreaking work in the fields while white officers oversaw them on horseback1.

The reason why these pictures capture a landscape eerily similar to chattel slavery is because

these prison farms were family-owned slave plantations before the Texas Department of

Corrections (DOC) bought them. Examples of prison plantations in Texas that are still in

operation today include the Ramsey prison unit and the Ellis prison unit — names that used to be

the Ramsey’s family plantation and the Ellis’s family plantation2. The fact that prison farms are

simply modern, legalized slave plantations that disproportionately incarcerate Black Americans

and People of Color violates human rights prohibiting forced labor.

While many state-run prisons are not plantations, incarcerated individuals in state-run

prisons are still required or coerced to provide inadequately compensated labor through punitive

measures. Incarcerated individuals are not provided with enough items to maintain their health

and hygiene, despite being in prisons that are funded by taxpayer dollars. In a Florida state

prison, Graceville Work Camp, incarcerated individuals are given one hotel-sized bar of soap per

week and any additional items are “sold by private vendors, often with substantial markups or

1
The Marshall Project, Prison Plantations: One man’s archive of a vanished culture, May 1, 2015.
2
Ibid.
3

added service fees”3. For incarcerated individuals in Florida state prisons, each email sent to

loved ones requires a digital stamp that costs $12 for a set of 30, with attachments requiring

additional stamps4. Incarcerated individuals need to work to earn money to be able to pay for the

cost of their own incarceration. In many state prisons, refusal to work can result in solitary

confinement, loss of earned “good time”, revocation of family visits5, and loss of opportunities

for sentence reduction or parole6.

The employers of incarcerated labor in state-run prisons are labor corporations that are

usually set up under the state’s Department of Corrections (DOC), so are therefore funded by

taxpayer dollars and are also for profit. CorCraft (New York State Division of Correctional

Industries), one such labor program, pays incarcerated individuals 16 to 65 cents an hour to

manufacture items and up to $1.30 per hour for working “dangerous jobs such as removing

asbestos, mold, and bird feces”7. According to a 2018 Department of Corrections and

Community Supervision report, “75.2 percent of these incarcerated workers identify as Black,

Hispanic, Native American or another non-white race”8. CorCraft sells the manufactured items

back to the DOC and in 2019 alone, yielded $53 million in sales for the DOC9. This practice is

not unique to New York; our very own Washington state DOC sets the minimum hourly wages

of incarcerated people to be 65 cents an hour and the maximum as $1.7010. Forcing labor by

threatening the removal of privileges and paying less than $2/hour as a high wage is a violation

of human rights in state-owned prisons.

3
The Marshall Project, The Hidden Cost of Incarceration, December 17, 2019.
4
Ibid.
5
The Atlantic, American Slavery, Reinvented, September 21, 2015. 
6
Truthout, Prison Laborers are Paid Pennies to Maintain the Prisons They’re Incarcerated In, 
March 21, 2021.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
10
“DOC 710.400 Correctional Industries Work Programs.” Department of Corrections Washington State, 24 May, 2019.
4

I will now continue describing violations in the US carceral system by moving my

attention to privately-owned or operated prisons and detention centers. The start of private prison

industry was created by CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporations of America or

CCA). CoreCivic was founded in the 1980’s during Reagan’s push for privatization11. The

founding mindset behind this corporation was the business of punishment, or profit over

rehabilitation. One of the three founders of CoreCivic, T. Don Hutto, ran for-profit state prison

farms in Texas and Arkansas before being approached by two other businessmen to start

CoreCivic. Additionally, Hutto lived on a cotton plantation during the 60’s that operated on

mostly black incarcerated labor and even had a “house-boy” that was an unpaid incarcerated

individual who served him and his family on the plantation12. CoreCivic is now the largest prison

corporation in the US and has a revenue of $1.9 Billion a year13.

Although private prisons only make up 8 percent of the total state and federal prison

population, since 2000, “the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 32%

compared to an overall rise in the prison population of 3%”14. Additionally, private prisons house

higher percentages of People of Color than public prisons, even considering the fact that “Black

men spend an average of 20 percent longer incarcerated in federal prisons than their white

counterparts for the same crimes”15. This is because private prisons deliberately exclude people

with high medical costs to maximize their profit margin. Younger, healthier incarcerated

individuals — due to racist policies like the War on Drugs — are disproportionately POC, while

older inmates skew white16.

11
Current Affairs, How Private Prisons Profit from Forced Labor, October 26, 2020. 
12
TIME, The True History of America’s Private Prison Industry, September 25, 2018.
13
Ibid.
14
The Sentencing Project, Private Prisons in the US, March 3, 2021.
15
NPR, Why For-Profit Prisons House More Inmates of Color, March 13, 2014.
16
Ibid.
5

The private prison industry now includes private immigrant detention centers and has

also extended its control into federal prisons and federal detention centers through contracting.

Corporations like CoreCivic, Geo Group (the second largest US for-profit prison and detention

center operator), LaSalle Corrections, and the Management and Training Corporation (MTC) all

own private prisons and private detention facilities17. They also all operate federal criminal

detention facilities through contracts with the Bureau of Prison (BOP) and US Marshal Service

(USMS), and they operate federal immigrant detention facilities through contracts with US

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)18. In the past several years, including during the

pandemic, contracts for ICE detention made up around 25 percent of total revenue for both

CoreCivic and the GEO Group. This lends itself to be around $500 million to $800 million a

year, per corporation, from ICE contracts alone19.

The growth of the private prison industry has exacerbated human rights and labor right

violations within privately owned and operated prisons and detention centers. In March 2011,

NPR reported that within the federal detention system, more than 16 percent of detainees are

held in private detention centers, with numbers expected to increase20. During the Trump

Administration, reports showed that “81 percent of people detained each day in January 2020”

were detained in privately owned or operated detention facilities21. This massive increase was

made possible largely due to the private prison industry. As of September 2021, the Biden

Administration has only moved that number to 79 percent22. Immigrant detainees are often held

in “civil detention” until their deportation cases are heard by an immigration judge or an appeals

17
ACLU, More of the Same: Private Prison Corporations and Immigrant Detention Under the Biden Administration, October 5,
2021.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
20
NPR, What is Geo Group?, March 25, 2011.
21
ACLU, More of the Same.
22
Ibid.
6

court. At the Stewart Detention Center, run by CoreCivic, detainees were forced to work for $1

to $4 a day by being denied access to soap and toilet paper if they refused or threatened with

solitary confinement23.

Section 2: Identifying the human rights being violated

This section of the essay focuses on the specific human rights listed in the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

(ICCPR), and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) that are being

violated by the US carcel system. The US has signed and ratified all the international human

rights treaties listed above but does not hold its own Constitution and domestic law up to those

standards.

Article 4 of the UDHR states that “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery

and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”24. The legalized forms of slavery present

in the US carcel system that violate UDHR Art. 4 include state-owned prison plantations, forced

labor in state prisons, and forced labor in private prisons and detention centers. Article 5 of

UDHR states that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading

treatment or punishment”25. The hazardous working conditions that incarcerated individuals are

forced to work in and the fact that certain privileges and basic necessities of hygiene are used as

leverage for gaining their exploited labor violates the UDHR Art. 5 on cruel, inhuman, and

degrading punishment. Articles 22, 23, 24 of the UDHR state that “everyone, as a member of

society, has […] the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions

of work [...] to equal pay for equal work [...] to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for

himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity.” These Articles do not make a
23
Current Affairs, How Private Prisons Profit from Forced Labor.
24
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), art. 4.
25
UDHR, art. 5.
7

caveat that excludes incarcerated individuals from enjoying these labor rights. Therefore, the

inhumanly low wages given to incarcerated individuals in prisons and detention centers who are

then required to use those wages to buy basic necessities are in violation of the UDHR Art. 22,

23, and 24.

In the ICCPR, Article 10.3 states that “the penitentiary system shall comprise treatment

of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation”26. The

business of punishment mindset that runs the prison industrial complex and the US carcel system

violates Art. 10.3, as unjustly compensated, hard manual labor is not conducive to rehabilitation.

Lastly, the CERD Article 2(c) states “each State Party shall take effective measures to

review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and

regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it

exists”27. Disproportionate impacts on POC, especially Black Americans, can be seen throughout

the US carcel system. This includes overrepresentation in state-owned prison labor corporations

and in state prisons, an even higher overrepresentation in private prisons, and immigration

policies that target immigrants who are Black and from non-Western countries28. These racist

outcomes are in violation of CERD art. 2(c), as many state and federal agencies are complicit in

perpetuating them.

The US Constitution and domestic law are not up to the standards of the international

human rights treaties it ratified. The US Constitution’s 13th Amendment prohibits slavery and

involuntary servitude in all instances except for punishment of a crime. This punishment clause

26
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), art. 10.3.
27
International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), art. 2(c).
28
The Atlantic, The ‘Double Punishment’ for Black Undocumented Immigrants, December 30, 
2017.
8

has been a key factor in upholding mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex. US

domestic law such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protects minimum wage laws, but in

many cases where incarcerated individuals have sued prison employers for violating minimum

wage laws, courts have ruled that “the relationship between the penitentiary and the inmate

worker is not primarily economic; thus, the worker is not protected under the statutes”29.

Section 3: Policy Recommendations to Address Human Rights Violations

For the last section of this essay, I will focus on policy recommendations to address the

human rights violations listed above. The solutions include abolishing the 13th Amendment

punishment clause, defunding prisons and investing in restorative and rehabilitative justice,

holding institutions accountable to stop buying products made by incarcerated labor, holding

institutions accountable to divest from private prison corporations, banning private detention

centers, and abolishing ICE.

Movement to abolish the punishment clause reignited in June 2021, when Senator Jeff

Merkley and Congresswoman Nikema Williams proposed the Abolition Amendment that would

strike the punishment clause from the 13th Amendment30. If this Amendment is passed and

added to the US Constitution, it would dramatically improve the labor rights and help collapse

racist institutions within mass incarceration that exist to exploit labor as punishment for a crime.

Secondly, defunding prisons and reinvesting that money into community-based solutions

such as foster care, youth centers, drug rehabilitation clinics, housing and education

opportunities post release, and other preventative and restorative methods will reduce the high

rates of incarceration and recidivism in the US prison system. US prison population is one of the

29
The Atlantic, American Slavery, Reinvented.
30
The Washington Post, As Juneteenth marks the end of slavery, lawmakers turn their focus to forced prison labor, June 19,
2021.
9

highest in the world, incarcerating 716 out of 100,000 people as of 2014 data, with 76% rate of

recidivism or reoffending. In comparison, Norway incarcerates 72 out of 100,000 and has a 20%

recidivism rate31. With de-carceration as a goal, these restorative forms of justice will provide

care to under-served communities and help reduce the school to prison pipeline, the foster care to

prison pipeline, and more. Additionally, prisons should provide secondary and post-secondary

education opportunities to all incarcerated people. Providing higher education in prisons instead

of exploiting incarcerated individuals for labor follows the guidelines set by the ICCPR Article

10.3 that states the goal of a prison should be social rehabilitation. A study conducted by Indiana

DOC found that “recidivism rate for those who had a college education was 31 percent, while the

recidivism rate for those had below high school education was 55.9 percent”32. Defunding

prisons and reallocating funds to focus on rehabilitation and restoration instead of the business of

punishment will drastically improve the labor and human rights within the prison system.

Thirdly, refusing to buy goods manufactured by state prison labor corporations (like

CorCraft) means reducing the profits state prisons receive from exploiting incarcerated labor.

The state prison labor program in Washington state is called Correctional Industries or CI, in

which incarcerated individuals are paid around $1 an hour. The UW has bought CI furniture

(including desks and beds) for residence halls including Alder Hall, Elm Hall, Terry Hall, Maple

Hall, Lander Hall, Willow Hall, Madrona Hall, McCarty Hall, and Mercer Apartments33. Holding

state institutions (like UW) accountable to committing to ending contracts with prisons is a very

important step to lower the profitability of state prison labor corporations.

31
SpringerLink, The Prison Education Project, December 18, 2017, p. 688.
32
Ibid, p. 691.
33
UW ASUW, R-27-6 Resolution, 1.
10

Fourthly, divesting from private prison corporations greatly limits the power these

corporations have to operate their prison and detention facilities that exploit incarcerated labor.

As of 2020, the University of Washington has $142 million of its endowment invested in

BlackRock funds, with BlackRock being the second-largest shareholder in both CoreCivic and

the Geo Group34. Additionally, Bryan White was a managing director of BlackRock from 2007

to 2016 and became (and currently is) a Board Member of the University of Washington

Investment Management Company starting since its founding in 2015, which results in a one-

year period where there was a conflict of interest between his work at BlackRock and at UW

Investment Managing Company35. These combined facts make UW liable and complicit in

funding private prisons, private detention centers, and ICE detention centers that have subjected

hundreds of thousands to violent human rights abuses. If UW were to divest its $142 million

dollar funds from BlackRock, it would help diminish the power of private prison corporations

that have already recently lost a string of investors from institutions and prominent banks36.

There has also been some momentum to ban privately owned detention centers. House

Bill 1090, passed by Washington state legislature in 2021, will phase out Geo Group’s contract

of the Northwest Tacoma Detention Center (an ICE detention center) with the government by

2025. Similar legislation in more states needs to be passed.

Lastly, abolishing and defunding ICE’s annual budget of $7.97 Billion dollars would

mean reinvesting that into community resources and ICE alternatives such as social and legal

services37. Detention while awaiting trial or seeking asylum is unjust and unnecessary, so

34
UW ASUW, R-27-6 Resolution to End the UW’s Investments in Prison Labor and the Prison 
Industrial Complex, March 30, 2021, p.2.
35
Bryan White. (n.d.) Profile. [LinkedIn Page]. Retrieved November 22, 2021 from
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-white-2037526b
36
Current Affairs, How Private Prisons Profit from Forced Labor.
37
AFSC, What you need to know about the call to abolish ICE, February 3, 2021.
 11

abolishing ICE would mean families get to stay together as they navigate the immigration

process.

Bibliography

About the Author AFSC More Posts by This Author Creating a “People’s Budget” in Chicago How

to Imagine a World without Prisons What’s in Our New AFSC Logo?, AFSC More Posts by

This Author Creating a “People’s Budget” in Chicago How to Imagine a World without Prisons

What’s in Our New AFSC Logo?, and More Posts by This Author. "What You Need to Know

about the Call to Abolish ICE." American Friends Service Committee. May 21, 2021. Accessed

November 22, 2021. https://www.afsc.org/blogs/news-and-commentary/what-you-need-to-

know-about-call-to-abolish-ice.

"ACLU News & Commentary." American Civil Liberties Union. October 5, 2021. Accessed

November 22, 2021. https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/more-of-the-same-private-

prison-corporations-and-immigration-detention-under-the-biden-administration/.

Bauer, Shane. "The True History of America's Private Prison Industry." Time. September 25, 2018.

Accessed November 22, 2021. https://time.com/5405158/the-true-history-of-americas-private-

prison-industry/.

Benns, Whitney. "American Slavery, Reinvented." The Atlantic. June 07, 2021. Accessed

November 22, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-

america/406177/.

Chammah, Maurice. "Prison Plantations." The Marshall Project. May 01, 2015. Accessed November

22, 2021. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/05/01/prison-plantations.

 12

Current Affairs. "How Private Prisons Profit from Forced Labor ❧ Current Affairs." Current

Affairs. October 26, 2020. Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/10/how-private-prisons-profit-from-forced-labor.

“DOC 710.400 Correctional Industries Work Programs.” Department of Corrections Washington

State, 24 May, 2019.

https://www.doc.wa.gov/information/policies/default.aspx?show=700 

Fettig, Amy, and Ashley Nellis. "Private Prisons in the United States." The Sentencing Project.

March 30, 2021. Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/.

Knowles, Hannah. "As Juneteenth Marks the End of Slavery, Lawmakers Turn Their Focus to

Forced Prison Labor." The Washington Post. June 20, 2021. Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/19/13th-amendment-prisons-juneteenth/.

Lockwood, Beatrix, and Nicole Lewis. "The Hidden Cost of Incarceration." The Marshall Project.

December 17, 2019. Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/12/17/the-hidden-cost-of-incarceration.

Palta, Rina. "Why For-Profit Prisons House More Inmates Of Color." NPR. March 13, 2014.

Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/13/289000532/why-for-profit-prisons-house-

more-inmates-of-color.

Photo by Sarah-Ji of Love and Struggle Photos, April Fisher &, Diana Kennedy, Courtesy Of

Stephanie Foxworth, Library Of Congress, April FisherApril Fisher Is a Recent Graduate of the

City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and Freelance Researcher with

VICE. They Can Be Found on Twitter At: @flying_fisher.More by This Author…, Diana
 13

KennedyDiana Kennedy Is a Junior at Hunter College Majoring in Women and Gender Studies

with the Goal of Pursuing a Career in Labor Law.More by This Author…, Frances Madeson,

Jindu Obiofuma &, James Kilgore, and Vaidya Gullapalli. "Prison Laborers Are Paid Pennies to

Maintain the Prisons They're Incarcerated In." Truthout. March 22, 2021. Accessed November

22, 2021. https://truthout.org/articles/prison-laborers-are-paid-pennies-to-maintain-the-prisons-

theyre-incarcerated-in/.

Raff, Jeremy. "The 'Double Punishment' for Black Undocumented Immigrants." The Atlantic.

January 03, 2018. Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/the-double-punishment-for-black-

immigrants/549425/.

Reese, Renford. "The Prison Education Project." International Review of Education. December 18,

2017. Accessed November 22, 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11159-017-9695-

5.

Shahani, Aarti. "What Is GEO Group?" NPR. March 25, 2011. Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134852256/what-is-geo-group.

Shapiro, Nina. "Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Slated to Close under Bill Passed by

Legislature." The Seattle Times. March 31, 2021. Accessed November 22, 2021.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/legislature-passes-bill-that-will-close-

northwest-detention-center-in-tacoma/.

UW ASUW, R-27-6 Resolution to End the UW’s Investments in Prison Labor and the Prison 

Industrial Complex, March 30, 2021, p.1-3.