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FORCED PRISON LABOR IN THE “LAND OF THE FREE”  
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Nina Mast
January 16, 2025
Economic Policy Institute
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_ These exploitative dynamics are rooted in slavery and are
particularly extreme in the South, which incarcerates
people—primarily Black men—at the highest rates in the world. _

, Economic Policy Institute

 

SUMMARY: From fighting wildfires to toiling in the kitchens of some
of the country’s most popular food franchises, incarcerated
workers perform vital functions across the United States and produce
billions of dollars in value for the public and private sectors. Yet
they are paid very little (between 13 and 52 cents an hour on
average)—if at all— and are excluded from the basic rights and
protections afforded to most workers.

These exploitative dynamics are rooted in slavery and are particularly
extreme in the South, which incarcerates people—primarily Black
men—at the highest rates in the world and is more likely than other
regions to force incarcerated people to work for nothing at all.
Forced prison labor is one aspect of the racist, anti-worker Southern
economic development model, which relies on inhumane, regressive forms
of revenue generation and masks the true costs of incarceration.

It is past time to reckon with our dehumanization and exploitation of
incarcerated workers and start treating them like other workers. Their
work should be voluntary and provide meaningful training, they should
be paid a minimum wage, and they should be provided the same
protections as other workers. Ending forced labor in prisons is not
only a matter of humanity but will also deliver transformational
fiscal and social benefits to incarcerated workers, their families,
and the economy at large.

Despite producing billions of dollars in value for the benefit of
prisons and the private sector, incarcerated workers have almost no
labor rights and are paid very little—if they are paid at all—for
menial, exploitative, and at times dangerous work that fails to
prepare them for life beyond incarceration. These dynamics are
particularly extreme in the South, which incarcerates
people—primarily Black men—at the highest rates in the world and
is more likely than other regions to force incarcerated people to work
for nothing at all. Because Southern state and local governments raise
less tax revenue per capita than other regions (Das 2022), they rely
more heavily on free or underpaid labor to operate costly prisons and
produce goods and services on which the public sector depends. This
reliance on free and underpaid labor is consistent with the racist and
anti-worker Southern economic development model that has predominated
in states across the region since Reconstruction (Childers 2024).
Prison labor not only masks the true costs of mass incarceration but
also locks states into inhumane, regressive, and inefficient forms of
revenue generation while deepening racial inequities and imposing high
fiscal and social costs on local economies.

Nationwide, nearly two million people are confined in state and
federal prisons, county jails, juvenile and immigrant detention
centers, and other confinement facilities (Sawyer and Wagner 2024). Of
the 1.2 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons,
nearly 800,000 are prison laborers, most of them by force (ACLU and
GHRC 2022). Most of these workers (about 80%) are employed in facility
maintenance and operations, such as janitorial duties, food
preparation, grounds maintenance, and laundry—tasks that keep the
institutions that imprison them running. Of the other roughly 20%,
about 17% work for government-run businesses, where they might staff
DMV call centers or wash laundry for public hospitals, or on public
projects, where they might be tasked with hazardous spill cleanup or
firefighting duties in state-owned forests. The other 3% work for
private-sector employers, where they earn meager wages producing goods
and services for industries across the U.S. economy (Bronars 2024).

Incarcerated labor is rooted in slavery and bears an especially
striking resemblance in the South

The incarceration and extraction of labor from prisoners in the South
is directly rooted in legacies of slavery. Though the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution abolished slavery in the United States, it also
legalized slavery as a punishment for a crime. After this exception
was in place, Southern states quickly implemented Black codes, laws
that criminalized many mundane activities of formerly enslaved Black
men and women and subjected many of them once again to unpaid, forced
labor under the convict leasing system. Through this system, employers
bid on and “leased” overwhelmingly Black incarcerated workers and
subjected them to brutal conditions, often working them to death (Kim
2020).

The 13th Amendment loophole also led to forced labor in the form of
debt peonage, in which Black people found guilty—often of fabricated
crimes—were forced to work without pay to pay off criminal fines and
court fees. In other cases, Black workers who became
indebted—through sharecropping (in which white landowners rented
farmland to Black workers and hoarded the profits while forcing tenant
farmers into debt they often could not repay) or other means—were
forced to work without pay under threat of violence or convict
leasing. Convict leasing allowed states to criminalize Black people
for trivial “offenses” (such as loitering, breaking curfew, or
failing to show proof of employment) and lease them to work without
pay for private employers. Though convict leasing as an official
practice ended in the early 20th century, forced (and often unpaid)
labor under threat of punishment continues in prisons across the
country. These dynamics are particularly extreme in the South, where
incarceration rates are the highest (see TABLE 1), prison wages are
lowest (see FIGURE C), and forced labor arrangements bear the most
striking resemblances to past forms of convict leasing and debt
peonage.

One example of incarcerated people working for private employers is
the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP), under
which they either work directly for the company or are employed by the
prison and contracted out. Despite representing a small share of the
country’s incarcerated workforce, these workers contribute to large
profits for private businesses by producing goods and services for the
suppliers of major brands across our economy, often for consumers who
are unaware that they were produced with prison labor. Though these
jobs tend to pay higher wages than non-industry jobs—jobs that
support prison operations—up to 80% of workers’ wages are deducted
in room and board, taxes, and victim compensation, and employers
regularly exploit the minimal labor standards that do exist with
impunity (ACLU and GHRC 2022).

These programs not only exploit imprisoned workers but can be harmful
to local economies and businesses. By employing a captive labor force,
these private employers enjoy significant cost savings which enable
them to offer artificially low-cost products, undercutting local
competitors that do not employ prison labor. In some cases, the
employment of incarcerated workers in PIECP jobs has resulted in job
losses for free workers in the local economy (Sloan 2010).

Southern states incarcerate people at the highest rates in the world

The United States is infamous for exorbitant incarceration rates. If
each U.S. state were a country, 30 states and the U.S. as a nation
would have some of the highest incarceration rates internationally.1
[[link removed]] For
example, for every 100,000 people in the United States, 614 are
incarcerated (see FIGURE A). This is more than four times higher than
the country from which we gained our independence—United Kingdom
(146)—and nearly seven times higher than our northern
neighbor—Canada (88).

But the rankings of Southern states are particularly extreme; 13 of
the 16 Southern states (and D.C.) have much higher incarceration rates
than the U.S. average (614). Louisiana (1,067) and Mississippi (1,020)
top the list with rates that exceed 1,000 incarcerated people for
every 100,000 people in the state, followed closely by Arkansas (912)
and Oklahoma (905) (Widra 2024).

Black people are more likely to be incarcerated, especially in the
South, and are overrepresented in low-paid prison jobs

The racial and gender composition of the incarcerated population—and
thus the incarcerated worker population—does not match the
population at large. For example, while about 12% of the U.S. is
Black,2
[[link removed]] 32%
of people incarcerated in state and federal prisons are Black. Men,
Hispanic people, and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) people
also make up a larger share of the imprisoned population compared with
their share of the overall population (see FIGURE B).

Black people are overrepresented in state prisons nationwide, but
especially in the South. Of the 12 states where more than half the
state prison population is Black, nine of these states are in the
South (The Sentencing Project 2022). The incarcerated population in
the South is primarily _and_ disproportionately Black. In six of the
12 Southern states with higher-than-average incarceration rates and in
the District of Columbia, more prisoners are Black than any other
racial or ethnic group, and, in _every_ Southern state and D.C.,
Black people are overrepresented in prisons and jails relative to
their share of the state population (see Table 1).

At the same time, white people are underrepresented in prisons in
every Southern state and D.C. (see Table 1). Within state and federal
prisons, Black men are more likely to be assigned work in lower-paid
or unpaid agriculture and prison maintenance jobs, while white men are
assigned higher-paid, more sought-after jobs (Crittenden, Koons-Witt,
and Kaminski 2016). Though we do not have prison work data for women
at the state level, incarcerated women report similar dynamics with
respect to race—white women are assigned more desirable jobs—in
addition to experiencing gender-based discrimination in vocational
training opportunities and sexual abuse from corrections officers who
control their work assignments (ACLU and GHRC 2022).

While women make up a relatively small share of the incarcerated
population, they are the fastest-growing segment of the incarcerated
population (Sawyer 2018). Women are also more likely than men to be
incarcerated in local jails, which are less prepared than prisons to
offer health care and other services. Nearly half of incarcerated
women are held in local jails, among which 60% _have not been
convicted of a crime _and are being held while they await trial,
often because they cannot afford bail (Kajstura and Sawyer 2024).

Incarcerated workers are underpaid, unprotected, and underprepared for
re-entry

Across the United States, incarcerated workers are paid between 13 and
52 cents an hour on average in the most commonly held jobs. In seven
Southern states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi,
South Carolina, and Texas—almost all work by prisoners remains
unpaid. Most incarcerated workers in Louisiana are paid next to
nothing—between two and four cents an hour (see FIGURE C). What
little wages they do earn are deducted in taxes, garnished to pay
court-imposed fines, legal fees, and restitution, and used to cover
the costs of their own confinement (so-called “pay-to-stay” fees
often make up the majority of these deductions). In many states,
incarcerated people are charged by the day for their mattress and
food, as well as service fees for medical copays, email and phone
calls, and commissary items (ACLU and GHRC 2022; Eisen 2023).

Though incarcerated people work long hours and perform labor-intensive
and even deadly work for the benefit of government at all levels, they
are excluded from the rights and protections afforded to most
workers—including overtime pay, protection from discrimination, and
the right to collectively bargain over wages and workplace conditions.
These workers are also denied the ability to earn toward future social
safety net benefits like Social Security, Medicare, and disability
insurance, and they do not qualify for refundable tax credits such as
the Earned Income Tax Credit or Child Tax Credit while employed in
prison. Because they are paid so little and receive no benefits, they
are not able to save money in preparation for life after prison and
are forced to depend financially on family and friends outside—who
are often themselves financially insecure (ACLU and GHRC 2022).

The extremely low wages incarcerated workers are paid make them
vulnerable to economic exploitation in the dangerous, difficult jobs
they are often forced to accept and, in some cases, drives them to
willingly put themselves in harm’s way. For example, the Louisiana
State Penitentiary (more commonly known as Angola), continues to host
a Prison Rodeo, in which incarcerated people can earn cash prizes that
far exceed their negligible wages for participating in dangerous
events involving angry bulls. In one event, “Convict Poker,” four
incarcerated “cowboys” play poker in the middle of the ring while
a bull attempts to gore the players (Stroh 2024). The funds from
ticket sales are supposed to benefit the incarcerated population but
have been mismanaged and diverted to other uses (O’Donoghue 2017).

Prison labor is advertised as a rehabilitative program, and most
incarcerated workers rank skills learning as important. Yet, most of
these jobs do not teach marketable skills or involve relevant
vocational training. Only a third of people in state prisons report
having participated in any job training, and only 43% reported having
participated in educational programming. The most cited reasons for
not participating were not being offered the chance to participate,
being denied, or being waitlisted due to insufficient investment in
the programming (Wang 2022). Beyond the myriad structural barriers to
gainful employment that returning citizens face—including lawful
employment discrimination,3
[[link removed]] inability
to qualify for housing or cash assistance or financial aid, difficulty
getting a driver’s license, among many others (USCCR 2019)—most
prison jobs do little to prepare incarcerated workers for life beyond
prison. A whopping 60% of formerly incarcerated workers are jobless
(Wang and Bertram 2022).

Southern states use various guises to extract labor from prisoners

About 2% of incarcerated workers are employed through “work-release
programs” or “restitution centers,” in which they are sent to a
lower-security confinement facility in exchange for low-paid work
outside the facility at public and private sector employers. Though
this work accounts for only a small share of prison labor nationwide,
the state of Alabama relies heavily on the practice. More than 500
businesses—including major fast-food franchises, hotel chains, and
auto suppliers—leased incarcerated workers in the past five years
alone, and the wages garnished from their paychecks has generated more
than $250 million for the state since 2000 (McDowell and Mason 2024).

In Mississippi, restitution centers known as “work camps” connect
incarcerated workers who owe court-ordered debts to private employers
in fast food service, meatpacking, construction, and other dangerous,
low-wage jobs. Those who refuse to work, encourage others to refuse to
work, participate in work stoppages, or get fired face punishment by
correction officials up to and including incarceration in a
traditional prison (Wolfe and Liu 2020). Mississippi—which is the
only state that still uses restitution centers this way—incarcerates
hundreds of people a year _indefinitely_ until their debts are
repaid (ACLU and GHRC 2022).

And in Oklahoma, a 2017 investigation found that courts across the
state and in neighboring states were sending people to work camps
under the guise of drug and alcohol rehabilitation services (as an
alternative to prison) for non-violent offenders with substance use
disorders. Participants in the “Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in
Recovery” (CAAIR) program in Oklahoma, some of whom have not yet
been convicted of a crime, were assigned to dangerous full-time work
for little or no pay at slaughterhouses owned by billion-dollar
corporations like Simmons Foods in Alabama, Arkansas, and North
Carolina. Workers who experienced mental health crises were kicked out
of the program, and those injured on the job were sent to prison and
received no workers’ compensation (Harris and Walter 2017). Four
class-action lawsuits were filed against CAAIR and another program
along the Arkansas-Oklahoma border alleging violations of state labor
law, human trafficking, and violations of the 13th Amendment ban on
forced labor, and multiple state agencies opened investigations. After
the Oklahoma case, investigative reporters identified at least 300
rehabilitation facilities across 44 states that force participants to
work without pay. Yet, labor law enforcement has been limited, and
many work-based rehab programs continue to withhold workers’ pay
(Walter 2020).

Incarcerated workers are also tasked with cultivating and harvesting
the crops that are eaten within the prison or even producing
agricultural products for sale in the private sector. Though
agricultural employment accounts for only 2.2% of prison labor
nationwide, Southern states utilize prison labor in agriculture at
higher rates—in Arkansas, 17% of work assignments are in
agriculture. In Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas, over 10,000 incarcerated
workers, most of whom are Black, are assigned to agricultural work
under threat of punishment on penal plantations or prison farms
growing some of the same crops on the same land where enslaved people
toiled 150 years ago. In five of these states, incarcerated workers
are paid nothing at all for this work, which generates millions of
dollars in revenue for the state every year (ACLU and GHRC 2022).

The public sector relies on captive labor for revenue—but at a high
cost

Federal, state, and local governments are the primary beneficiaries of
unpaid or underpaid prison labor. Incarcerated workers keep the
prisons that confine them running, maintain local infrastructure,
respond to state emergencies and natural disasters, and produce goods
and services used by state institutions. Incarcerated workers produce
food and agricultural products for state-owned facilities and
agencies, manufacture license plates and office furniture, and produce
other goods. They also provide services such as automotive repair on
state-owned vehicles, hazardous materials removal, local firefighting
and emergency medical response, and even state-level disaster
response. In short, in many states, incarcerated workers are essential
to core government functions.

Southern lawmakers are not shy about their dependence on low-cost
incarcerated labor to maintain a functioning economy or about
prioritizing mass incarceration over investments in the health and
well-being of their residents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Alabama
used $400 million in federal relief funds to fund the construction of
a billion-dollar prison—the most expensive prison ever built in the
U.S.—when it could have invested that money in low-income
Alabamians’ health and economic security (Eisen 2021; Whitmire
2023). The cost of the Alabama prison is equivalent to the entire
annual budget of the state’s Department of Mental Health (EJI 2023).
Meanwhile, Arkansas allocated $75 million of its 2021 budget
surplus—which was enabled by American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA)
grants—to add 500 beds to a state prison, and Kentucky allocated $30
million in ARPA funds to increase the per diems paid to county jails
that incarcerate state prisoners (Quant 2022). The American Civil
Liberties Union has urged the Treasury Department to investigate the
illegal use of COVID relief funds to build or expand prisons in nine
states, including Alabama, Louisiana, and Oklahoma (ACLU 2023).

We’re utilizing our resources … [this work] would cost [the
state] way more money if [it] had to do that through some of these
private contractors.
– Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on the use of unpaid prison labor
for Hurricane Helene cleanup efforts.

Incarcerated workers produce an estimated over $2 billion each year in
goods and services in state prison industries programs, and a
conservative 2004 estimate put the cost savings of prison upkeep by
incarcerated workers at about $9 billion. Of the 10 states with the
highest net sales in correctional industries programs, four are in the
South, totaling nearly $300 million in 2019 alone (ACLU and GHRC
2022). The billions of dollars in value produced by low-paid or unpaid
incarcerated workers—especially in revenue-starved states in the
South—mask the true costs of incarceration and make lawmakers
reluctant to curb these exploitative practices.

However, researchers have recently attempted to begin to unmask these
costs. A 2024 cost-benefit analysis of forced prison labor concluded
that the benefits of abolishing forced prison labor far outweigh its
costs. According to the study, abolishing slavery and involuntary
servitude in prisons and paying incarcerated workers fair wages would
yield a net benefit of $20.3 billion per year nationwide.4
[[link removed]] Put
another way, every dollar spent on an incarcerated worker’s wages
would translate to $2.40 in benefits to that worker, their loved ones,
the government, and the broader economy. Of that $20.3 billion total,
nearly half of the benefit of paying incarcerated workers fair wages
($10.8 billion) would flow to states in the South region alone. Beyond
the fiscal benefits, the projected lower recidivism rates associated
with this policy change would translate to billions of dollars saved
in incarceration costs and a reduction in crime, not to mention the
difficult to quantify but transformational economic and social
benefits for incarcerated workers and their families (Bronars 2024).

Closing the forced prison labor loophole

In many states, advocates have sought to close the prison labor
loophole in the U.S. Constitution by proposing or enacting amendments
to their state constitutions that ban involuntary servitude as
punishment for a crime (Alfonseca 2024). While these proposals are an
important step toward broad acceptance of forced labor as
unacceptable, recent developments in Alabama have shown the
limitations of such amendments. Alabama was one of four states that
banned forced prison labor in 2022. Still, a federal lawsuit arguing
that forced prison labor in Alabama has been rendered unconstitutional
was dismissed in mid-2024 under the logic that workers in Alabama’s
prisons are performing “mandatory chores” rather than forced
labor. The plaintiffs in the case plan to appeal the dismissal order
(Smith 2024).

In December 2024, a Hyundai supplier that leased workers through
work-release jobs ended its contract with the Alabama Department of
Corrections over increasing legal challenges to the use of forced
labor by incarcerated workers (Smith 2024). Mixed reactions to the
decision among incarcerated workers and prison labor organizers
illustrate the need for reforms that center incarcerated workers.
While workers do not want to be compelled to work in difficult and
dangerous jobs, jobs in the private sector tend to offer higher wages
and offer a reprieve from life in prison. The solution is not
eliminating prison labor but making it voluntary, regulated, and
fairly compensated.

Treating incarcerated workers with dignity and respect is essential to
a fair economic model

Prison labor as it exists today is rooted in the convict leasing
system that replaced chattel slavery. It is also another regressive
form of revenue generation, alongside regressive taxation and the
disproportionate levying of fees and fines on poor Black and brown
people, that punishes poor people—and especially poor people of
color—in service of an exploitative economic policy architecture
that prioritizes the wealthy and corporations over the public good
(Childers 2024). Instead of increasing funding for public goods like
education, housing, transportation, and the social safety net,
Southern lawmakers are investing hundreds of millions of taxpayer
dollars to expand prisons or build new ones. In the past two years,
prison populations have increased in the South more than in any other
region (Kang-Brown and Zhang 2024).

There is another way. Treating incarcerated workers like other
workers—making work voluntary, paying workers the minimum wage,
affording them the same protections as other workers, and providing
them with meaningful work and useful skills—would better prepare
them to reintegrate into their communities and contribute meaningfully
to the economy. More broadly, prison labor requires a reckoning with
our reliance on captive labor as a substitute for progressive revenue
generation in the South and across the country and with the view of
incarcerated people as undeserving of the same economic and human
rights as other workers.

Notes

1. 
[[link removed]]Countries
that rank higher or alongside these 30 states are El Salvador at #1,
Cuba at #11, Rwanda at #25, and Turkmenistan at #33.

2. 
[[link removed]]This
is the share of people who identify as Black alone, no other race.

3. 
[[link removed]]There
is no federal law prohibiting employment discrimination based on a
criminal records, and many state statues or local ordinances restrict
hiring people with criminal convictions and/or disqualify people with
criminal records from eligibility for occupational or business
licensing. Additionally, many public and private employers have
policies against hiring people with criminal convictions. See Kleinman
and Kajeepeta 2023. 

4. 
[[link removed]]This
is assuming a stable number of incarcerated workers employed 32.5
hours per week.

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[[link removed]].” _The
Marshall Project_, January 9, 2020.

See related work on Black Americans
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See more work by Nina Mast [[link removed]]

NINA MAST (she/they) joined EPI in 2022 as an economic analyst on the
State Policy and Research team. Mast’s research at EPI includes a
focus on child labor standards.  Mast is a graduate of the Master of
Public Policy program at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School, where she
served as a researcher for the UC Berkeley Labor Center and
represented academic student employees as a union steward with
UAW-2865.

Mast has been interviewed or quoted by numerous outlets including ABC
News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The
Washington Post, CNN, and The New Yorker, and appeared on American
Public Media for “Marketplace” and the popular “Pitchfork
Economics” podcast. 

Before graduate school, Mast worked as a researcher in the labor
movement and at issue advocacy organizations focused on health care
and the economy. At SEIU Local 32BJ, she conducted research to support
fast-food workers in Connecticut and commercial cleaning workers in
New York. Prior to 32BJ, she worked on issue campaigns at The Hub
Project and efforts to advance a progressive economic worldview at the
Groundwork Collaborative.

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