The origin of prisoner labor in the Anglo-American context dates back to the early jails of the 11th through 13th centuries.  The main purpose of inmate labor during that time was to pay the costs of incarceration — including the sheriff’s wages.

By the 14th century, the moral virtue of labor had been ensconced in the English tradition.  English laws began to criminalize “idleness” and “vagrancy.”  The English Statutes of Labor of 1348 and 1357 made “idleness of the able-bodied a crime.”  In the 16th century, workhouses for vagrants began to be established starting with one at Bridewell built in 1557.  This development introduced the concept of hard labor as a reformative program rather than simply as a way to pay for one’s own incarceration.

A little over 300 years ago is when the idea prisons as an alternative to other forms of punishment emerged. As such the concept of prisons is relatively new in human history.

“According to Carroll Wright, first director of the U.S. Bureau of Labor the earliest writing emphasizing inmate labor as a critical element of the prison regime was that of Mabillon, a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint Germaine in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV.  Mabillon suggested that ‘penitents might be reclused in cells, like those of the Carthusian monks and there (be) employed in various sorts of labor.’  This idea was soon implemented in 1704 by Pope Clement XI, who established a reformatory for juveniles at Saint Michael’s in Rome.

The forerunner of a formal prison industry program dates from the prison at Ghent, which was constructed in 1775.  Viscount Vilain XIV, the builder of the prison emphasized labor as the primary agent for reforming criminals.  The prison industries selected were highly diversified and intended to minimize competition with free labor.” (ACA, 1986)

The U.S. system followed a similar pattern as its European precursor.  The first American jail opened in Massachusetts in 1635.  Early American jails also insisted that inmates pay for the cost of their incarceration.  However they did not really promote the idea of labor as a rehabilitative concept.

The first prisons were established in the United States in the late 18th century in states like New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.  In these prisons, labor was connected to the concept of doing penance but was mainly focused on the goal of economic upkeep (meaning that prisoners should pay for their own incarceration).

It wasn’t until after the Civil War that many more states began to open their own prisons.  Once prisons became more prevalent, prison industries became more formalized as people began to see the value of having a site for communal labor.  This emergence of prison industries was not uncontroversial.  Early prison reformers (who were often very religious) worried that the employment aspect of penitentiaries was resulting in the loss of  the penitence component underlying the initial concept of introducing a labor function to prisons.  Other outside forces representing business and unions also wanted to make sure the prison industries did not have an unfair advantage over “free” labor.

At the beginning of the 20th century, about 85 percent of all “inmates” worked in prison industries; by 1940 the figure had fallen to 44 percent — nearly a 50 percent decline. This decline was precipitated by greater opposition to prison industry from businesses and unions based on the charge of unfair competition.  A number of bills were introduced in Congress to restrict prison industries.  One of the most important was the Hawes-Cooper Act which Congress passed in 1929 to permit states to bar the importation of prison-made goods.  The Great Depression also added voices in opposition to prison industries since unemployment was so widespread across the country.  The Summer-Ashurst Act of 1940 made it a crime to ship prison-made goods in interstate commerce whether or not the receiving state barred their import.

Things remained pretty much stagnant around the concept of prison industries until the 1960s when many changes in corrections facilitated the re-emergence of the concept of labor, employment and industry within penitentiaries.  The 1967 President’s Commission Taskforce Report re-enshrined a work-oriented philosophy of rehabilitation and reintegration for prisoners.  This is a good date from which to mark the beginning of the contemporary re-emergence of prison industries.

As I hope that you can see from the very short description of a history of the emergence of prison industries, this concept has been contested from its inception.  There have been opponents of this idea from the very beginning.  The reasons that they offered for their opposition were different depending on the values that they sought to advance and on their self-interests.  I think that it is instructive to look back as we look forward.  It’s the concept of Sankofa.  The current fights that we have about the concept of the prison industrial complex are ones that have their roots in years of previous argument and struggle.  La Lucha Continua!