THE 13th Amendment to the structure has prohibited slavery and indentured servitude in America since 1865. The one exception is as “punishment for crime”. As a result,prisons expend their inmates as forced labour to balance the books, particularly since private firms were allowed to hire them again in 1979. Last year around a third of America’s prison population of 2.3m worked.
Most of this labour is done for much less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25. According to the Prison Policy Imitative, and an advocacy group,some prisoners working in industry earn as little as five cents an hour. Regular prison chores are unpaid in Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida,Georgia, South Carolina and Texas. Many worry approximately the impact on local labour markets of undercutting free wage rates. But little research has been done to quantify this. A paper presented on April 6th at the Economic History Society’s annual conference at Keele University seeks to accomplish exactly this.*Michael Poyker...
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Source: economist.com