Prisons would "grind to a halt" without the use of prison labor.
"In prisons across the country, incarcerated people are paid as little as 15 to 45 cents an hour. Even worse, in Texas, the minimum wage for a prisoner starts at zero dollars. However, these wages aren't always what employers are paying to hire prisoners. Employers in states like Alabama, Colorado, and South Carolina pay the federal hourly minimum wage for prisoner labor. However, the wage is paid to the state, and prisoners see only a fraction of that check. In Alabama, the Department of Corrections is authorized to take up to 80 percent of a prisoner's income, half of which can go to "offset the costs of the inmate's incarceration."
In prisons across the country, incarcerated people are paid as little as 15 to 45 cents an hour.
Corrections departments across the country have laws stating they can take part or most of prisoners' wages to pay for the upkeep of the prison or room and board. Incarcerating the highest rate of prisoners in the world comes at a cost, so states have increasingly used the prisoners' own labor to lower prison costs. Prolonged work stoppages threaten to increase these costs and create a more expensive prison system -- some states, like Alabama with its high budget deficit, simply can't afford that.
Two weeks after May's strike ended, the warden at Holman Correctional Facility, Carter Davenport, retired. Davenport had arrived at Holman in December 2015, and just three months later, a major prison uprising erupted where a prisoner stabbed him (he recovered). Before Holman, he was the warden at St. Clair Correctional Facility from 2010 to 2015. In 2012, he was suspended for two days after punching a handcuffed inmate in the face, according to an Alabama news site. Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit in Alabama, sued Davenport, as well as the Alabama Department of Corrections, in 2014 for facilitating a culture of violence at St. Clair (the lawsuit is ongoing). That same year, with violence at St. Clair increasing, the nonprofit called for Davenport to be replaced as warden.
Last year, Charlotte Morrison of the Equal Justice Initiative criticized Davenport's leadership at St. Clair. "[Those] in charge of leading these facilities are creating abusive, dangerous environments," Morrison said. "Warden Davenport, somebody who punched a handcuffed inmate in the face, that's the kind of leadership he models. And what we see at the prison is control through intimidation and violence." Prisoners at Holman had similar opinions about Davenport, so his retirement was a major victory for them."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36346-forget-hunger-strikes-what-prisons-fear-most-is-labor-strikes
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