In Texas, every general population prisoner is required to work. They
either work in the service of prison upkeep (i.e. maintenance, food
service, field labor, support service inmate, etc.) or they work in one
of the various factories owned by TCI (Texas Correctional Industries).
TCI is not part of the state. It is not part of the prison system. TCI
is a private conglomerate which contracts with the state for prisoner
labor. They operate metal fabrication plants, stainless steel works,
meat packing plants, furniture factories, computer restoration plants,
and many others throughout the 130+ prison units around the state. These
industries do indeed provide products which the prison system needs for
itself, but these products are also sold to other states for their
prisons and jails at prices greatly marked up. The profits come from the
fact that the prisoner labor is free.
Texas prisoners do not get paid for working.
Now there are a couple of pilot programs which started a couple of years
ago, that do pay their workers a tiny bit. But these programs employ
less than 1% of the 150,000+ prisoner population, and there are no plans
to extend or expand these programs.
When general population prisoners in Texas attempt to involve the U.$.
Department of Labor, OSHA, or other labor organizations concerning the
exploitation of prisoners, we are told that prisoners in Texas
“volunteer” to work, and are therefore not entitled to any support. They
fail to mention that if a prisoner refuses to work, he is subject to
disciplinary action, loses commissary and recreation privileges, has his
good time credits taken away, gets locked up in administrative
segregation - all of which has a negative effect on chances for parole.
So the Catch 22 is: either work for free, or suffer the consequences.
Oh, they tell us that our good time credit is our pay. But good time
only affects non-3G prisoners. It means nothing to the rest of us.
Furthermore, the extent of embezzlement within TCI is outrageous. The
managers and department heads, even the foremen, are ripping off the tax
payers with their thefts. I personally have witnessed many such
incidences. For example: the maintenance department receives a new pump
which it does not need at the time, so it is put into storage. Three
weeks later I can’t find that pump. A month after that, the supply truck
delivers another pump which has the exact same serial number as the
first.
Another example: just before Thanksgiving, the meat packing plant
receives a truckload of frozen turkeys. The plant closes on Friday
evening, and come Monday morning there are 120 frozen turkeys missing.
The official ruling is “inmate theft.” But no prisoners are at the plant
on weekends.
And again: the stainless steel fabrication plant makes the round circles
which are used for the seats we sit on at the chow hall tables. I saw a
bill for 24 of those seats, the price? $40,000 for 24 one foot circles
of stainless steel.
The factories build all the bars, the bunks, the toilets and sinks, the
steel doors, etc., using prison labor. Then TCI sells all that to the
contractors who build the new units at an unbelievable mark-up. The
contractor then builds the prison, and sells it back to the state for an
even more exaggerated price. Meanwhile, briefcases of cash keep changing
hands. How else do you think the state gets away with telling the tax
payers that a new prison costs $64 million when the outside of that
prison is all pre-fab, and the inside is all prisoner built? Where is
the oversight? Where is the accountability? The nature of bureaucracy
allows these things to go on. Hell, they learned it from the feds,
there’s no one left to tell. Those officials who are supposed to look
out for these things just take their share too.
The nature of capitalism ensures that the abuses of prisoner labor and
the rape of tax payers in Texas will continue unchecked while the
imperialistic standards thrive.
MIM(Prisons) responds: This is an excellent exposure of
the prison labor conditions in the state of Texas and the benefit that
private industry is getting for this free labor. The stories of
corruption ring true across the whole federal government. See our
article
on Halliburton/KBR and Blackwater to see parallels in the military
industrial complex.
We only disagree with the author in their assessment that the tax payers
in Texas are being raped. While it is true that the State is paying
ridiculous prices for goods, this is no different than the state paying
high salaries to guards: these things actually work to ensure good jobs
for those working in the service to imperialism. And the vast majority
of taxpayers in Amerika are benefiting from imperialism so we can’t
agree that they are being raped. The criminal injustice system is
helping to prop up the system of imperialism that benefits the
taxpayers, and a little more money exchanging hands to enrich another
imperialist institution (TCI) does not change this situation.
