A Brief Background

Prison Slavery is still slavery, and therefore an economic issue.

On any given day, about 2% of US adult working-age males – roughly the male labor force of one US state – are incarcerated unemployed in US jails and prisons. 70% of US jail and prison inmates have no work whatsoever, $0 annual income. The annual income of the 30% of US inmates fortunate enough to get prison work is believed under $700 a year, below the weekly income of a median US wage earner.

But there are more unsupported minor children of US jail and prison inmates (about 2.2 million) than inmates (about 2.1 million), making inmate unemployment primarily a child poverty issue.

Welcome to PrisonLaborReform.com, a website primarily focused on the economics of US prison labor and its consequences for US economic prosperity or harm. PrisonLaborReform.com, explores with you the economics of prison labor, offering both hope and practical policy tools to anyone seeking reducing mass incarceration or building greater economic prosperity

Almost 40 years ago, on the heels of a hard-won economics PhD and a years-long Census Bureau stint launching the National Prisoner Statistics Program, I decided to “test” my doctorate on prison labor. Good fortune brought invitation to the National Correctional Industries Association’s “National Working Group on Inmate Labor,” ushering years observing debates of key stakeholders in US prison labor, including correctional industries, elected officials, organized business (US Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses), organized labor (AFL-CIO), human rights, and a range of suppliers and competitors in US correctional industries. Learning from those stakeholders and comparing their views more broadly to Western economic thinking and history eventually led me to the principal conclusions portrayed in this website.

Secondarily extending the same economics, the website spans the entire criminal justice spectrum for persons, families, and communities encountering arrest, ​pretrial, incarceration, and post release, regarding exclusion from normal labor force participation.