Site Network:Prison Policy Initiative|Prisoners of the Census

Section III: The Prison Economy

Prison labor

  • Year slavery and involuntary servitude abolished by the 13th Amendment except as punishment for crime503: 1865
  • Year the Virginia Supreme Court declared that prisoners were "slaves of the state"504: 1871
  • Year the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed the United Nations, giving "[e]veryone ... the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests"505: 1948
  • Year the Supreme Court upheld a North Carolina warden's ban on prisoners forming a labor union506: 1977
  • Number of prison and jail industries in 1998507: 2,500
  • Minimum estimate of annual value of prison and jail industrial output508: $2 billion

Prison labor in the federal prisons

  • Percent of able-bodied sentenced federal prisoners required to work in the prison509: 100%
  • Number of prisoner workers in UNICOR, the federal prison industries510: 22,560
  • Pay scale for federal prisoners who work outside of UNICOR in prison maintenance, in dollars per hour511: $0.12-$0.40
  • Minimum wage in Haiti in dollars per hour512: $0.30
  • Percent of federal prisoner-workers who work for UNICOR rather than in prison maintenance513: 25%
  • Minimum UNICOR wage, in dollars per hour514: $0.23
  • Maximum UNICOR wage, in dollars per hour515: $1.15
  • Number of prisons where UNICOR makes office furniture516: 18
  • Average hourly earnings of a non-prisoner U.S. worker making office furniture517: $13.04
  • Number of prisons where UNICOR makes clothing and textiles518: 22
  • Average hourly earnings of a non-prisoner U.S. worker in a textile mill519: $10.95
  • UNICOR 2001 sales520: $583.5 million
  • Amount purchased from UNICOR in 2001 by the Department of Defense521: $388 million
  • Amount purchased from UNICOR in 2001 by the U.S. Postal Service522: $21 million
  • Number of prisoners UNICOR projects will be in federal prisons in 2009523: 211,516
  • Number of prisoner-workers UNCOR plans on hiring in 2009524: 31,826
  • Percent of industrial orders delivered late, industry-wide525: 6%
  • Percent of UNICOR orders delivered late526: 42%
  • Percent failure rate of wire sold by UNICOR to the military compared to the military's next-worst supplier527: 200%

Prison labor in the states

  • Minimum wage in the United States, in dollars per hour528: $5.15
  • Average hourly rate paid at a prison camp in Nevada529: $0.13
  • Maximum wage paid to prisoner workers in dollars per day in Georgia and Texas530: $0
  • Most prisons that pay prisoners for work have a range of pay depending on the job. Average of the minimum wages for prisoners paid by the states, in dollars per day for non-industry work531: $0.93
  • Average of the maximum wages paid to prisoners by the states, in dollars per day532: $4.73
  • Lowest wage reported, in dollars per day, for prisoners working in private industry533: $0.16

This page is an excerpt from The Prison Index: Taking the Pulse of the Crime Control Industry (2003) by Peter Wagner, published by the Western Prison Project and the Prison Policy Initiative..