prison industries
Convict labor programs
Prison industries are commercial operations within prisons that employ incarcerated workers, typically at wages far below minimum wage.
These programs manufacture goods or provide services—license plates, furniture, call center work—sold to government agencies or private companies.
Advocates claim they teach job skills; critics call them exploitative labor.
The state contracts with prison industries for office furniture.
- penal laborCompulsory inmate work
- chain gangsFettered convicts performing labor
- gulagsSoviet penal colonies
- convictJailed offender after trial
- labor campsDetention facilities requiring toil
fair wages · recidivism reduction · labor exploitation · human rights violations · state contracts · profit margins · job skills · vocational training · cost efficiency · forced labor · apprenticeships · license plates · community reintegration · privatization · penal servitude · press · saw · cheap labor
- prison laborconvict labor, penal labor, hard labor, convict leasing, chain gang
- prisonsinmates, cells, penitentiary, guards, Alcatraz
prison industriesunionized labor
Workforce with collective representation
self-employment · entrepreneurship · worker cooperatives · freelance work · at-will employment
prison industriescivilian workforce
Non-military employed population
prison, prisons, prisoner, prisoners, imprisoned, imprisoning, imprisonment, industry, industries