North Carolina’s criminal justice system is guilty of robbing prisoners of their natural right to be compensated for their labor.
Most prisoners in the state are paid only 40 cents, 70 cents or $1 per day while being tasked with performing tasks that, outside of prison, would pay at least minimum wage.
Furthermore, prisoners are not allowed to consent to or reject the tasks assigned to them.
Conviction of an offense should not be coupled with the deprivation of basic human rights, particularly because North Carolina and the rest of the United States are guilty, in the last half-century, of creating a system of mass incarceration on an unprecedented scale.
Many are imprisoned for offenses that should not result in incarceration. Others receive overly punitive sentences.
This infrastructure is particularly offensive because it is racialized, continuing a long history of race-based labor exploitation. In 2013, 55 percent of North Carolina’s inmates were black.
This echoes past systems of racialized labor exploitation such as sharecropping and debt slavery. Poverty continues to be criminalized to similar effect.
Prisoners should be paid at least minimum wage for their work. Robbing prisoners of the fruits of their labor creates cycles of poverty that perpetuate crime.
A conviction for a crime does not strip a person of his or her humanity. Law should be changed to reflect this essential truth.
