SHADOWS ON HIGH: Is Old Glory Made In America's Prisons?

http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/brianrothenberg/C3Cq

It’s our nation’s symbol, and in this case it is a troubling metaphor.

Profit knows little bounds – and even pervades Ohio’s prison system. What is morally and ethically troubling, is that some of the very arguments we make against cheap Chinese prison labor affecting trade, can apply to Ohio’s introduction of private profit into prison labor.

The question is whether Ohio’s use of prison labor is the best way to train prisoners and address the state’s high recidivism and unemployment.

Buried in the Shadows of a March 9, 2007, Correctional Institution Inspection Committee report is information showing that Ohio prisoners are helping a private sector company that makes and sells flags.

Columbus is home to “The Flag Lady” – a patriotic Clintonville store run by a patriotic GOP small business owner who was selected to open the 1996 Republican National Convention in with her star-spangled, spirited Pledge of Allegiance. Mary Eckert’s rags-to-riches story has landed a contract to have prison labor help her business thrive at “The Flag Lady Store”.

To some, prison laborers working for pennies on the dollar while the state takes in the rest of their earnings, smacks of slave labor. This partnership dates back to the 19th Century in Ohio – when the state began using prison labor to help make license plates, prison clothes, institutional furniture and even construction on the Statehouse.

What makes the issue so morally conflicted today is the additional mix of private profit. The use of prisoners for private industry also raises other issues – including omission of some of the basic workplace safety and regulatory safeguards all other Ohio workers receive.

There are questions by some critics as to whether prison labor actually takes needed jobs from those on the outside of prison gates – and it is very analogous to the U.S. government’s argument with China over prisoner-produced trade.

Given Ohio’s problems with prisoner re-entry employment, it appears as if many of the jobs incarcerated prisoners hold could be better performed outside prison walls by ex-cons who struggle to find work and cost Ohioans significant social welfare dollars.

PRIVATE COMPANIES THAT BENEFIT FROM PRISON LABOR

Clintonville’s “Flag Lady” is not alone in contracting with the State of Ohio. Beyond just license plates, inmates in Ohio build furniture, do subcontracted work for Honda, make institutional clothing, mattresses and chairs, do computer graphics, host optical laboratories and conduct dental labs. Prisoners are even employed to do asbestos removal.

Nationwide, socially progressive companies such as Costco use prison labor. Other companies that use or have used prison labor are:

Chevron, IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Nike, Microsoft, Victoria’s Secret, Boeing, American Airlines, AT&T, Microjet, Lockhart Technologies, Inc., TWA, Eddie Bauer, Wilson Sporting Goods, Best Western Hotels, K-Mart, McDonald’s, Nordstrom “Prison Blues” jeans line, Imperial Palace Hotel/Casino, C.M.T. Blues, Allstate, Shearson Lehman, Parke-Davis, Mecca, Lee Jeans, Dell Computers, Planet Hollywood, J.C. Penney, Target, Burger King, New York, New York Hotel/Casino, “No Fear” Clothing Line, Konica, Merrill Lynch, Louisiana Pacific, Upjohn, Seattle Cotton Works, Omega Pacific, Wal-Mart, JanSport, Elliot Bay, A & I Manufacturing, Nyman Marine, Redwood Outdoors, United Van Lines, Kaioti Gear, Union Bay, Lockhart Technologies and U.S. West.

In 2004, former Ohio prison director Reginald Wilkinson told a U.S. Senate committee that 2,100 prison inmates in Ohio produced over $18 million in sales and added $15.9 million to Ohio prison coffers in 2003, offsetting the corrections budget by almost $16 million. At that time, Wilkinson reported 808 inmates worked on contracts with 13 private-sector employers. Ohio prisons make up $1.8 billion of Ohio’s budget.

Nationwide, more than 80,000 inmates hold traditional jobs and the federal program alone employs 21,000 inmates and does $600 million in annual sales.

California has the most prisoner work programs, followed by Texas, New Jersey and Ohio (which now has 3,100 employed). In Maine, 77.6% of the prison population is in prison work programs.

Back in 2004, Director Wilkinson argued that the programs are important because they provide:

Tools to keep prisoners busy.
Job training that reduces crime and eases successful reentry.
Partnerships with private-sector industries that boost economic development.
An offset for the cost of incarceration.
Help creating a work ethic and a sense of self-responsibility.
THE HYPOCRITICAL ARGUMENT FOR DOMESTIC PRISON LABOR AND AGAINST CHINESE PRISON LABOR

Ironically, what is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. In May of 2002, the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission announced recommendations to Congress to shift the burden of proof that goods imported from China were not made by prison or forced labor. This change came after reports of that wide spread prisoner-produced, low-cost imports were reaching the American market. Cheap labor helped produce the high profit margin for Chinese importers and American trade partners.

The trade argument with China was essentially that prison labor cut costs to bare bones and created an unfair labor imbalance for global competition. And yet, when Director Wilkinson testified, he argued the opposite. He cited a 1995 study indicating that these jobs reduced the return rate of offenders by 20%. (Hopefully Beijing wasn’t paying attention to the spin.)

What is not clear from that 1995 study, is the statistical imbalance created by Wilkinson’s other statement that jobs are used as a management tool – a reward – to get out of the routine of prison life. That would likely lead to a workforce picked from the prison system that naturally lends itself more toward rehabilitation.

There is no question that Ohio prisoners, despite the imbalance in pay and workplace protections, would welcome relief from the institutional rigors of their punishment.

SHIFTING FROM STATE PROFIT MOTIVES, TO STATE JOBS MOTIVES

State Representative Vernon Sykes is at the beginning stages of looking at the potential of a pilot program that could determine whether the way Ohio’s prison system uses this money is the most efficient and effective programming for an increasingly fickle Ohio economy that already is unfriendly to ex-felons.

Rather than use private-sector prison work contracts as revenue generation – which conjures up significant moral, ethical and competitiveness problems – Sykes is exploring whether Ohio should use these contracts to train convicts in their final six months of incarceration for jobs that the state could leverage and secure for released prisoners re-entering our neighborhoods.

Obviously, if prisoners can do quality work within the prison walls, they are equally capable of doing that job beyond prison walls. And the benefits of taking jobs used by prison labor and using them as a generator for felons re-entering society refocuses the program morally and ethically from a profit basis for the state, to an economic stimulus for the state.

At the same time, jobs and employment are a significant factor in determining repetitive crime. If, as Director Wilkinson pointed out to the U.S. Senate, the prison work program produced a 50% reduction in recidivism from a program concentrated within prison walls, imagine the reduction percentage if the state leveraged these opportunities outside the prison walls to employ those very same prisoners in society.

The only arguments against refocusing the prison jobs program toward re-entry, as Sykes would like to see, would be the loss of the revenue to the Ohio correction’s department, logistical issues that would involve lining up jobs in the geographical area where the prisoner will re-enter, and any arguments that business benefits from prison labor because it is cheaper and avoids workplace safety regulations and laws.

But there is an argument to be made that the reduced recidivism of employed ex-felons would significantly decrease the cost of recidivism in prisons, as well as the family costs incurred by the state through social welfare programs when ex-felons are jobless.

But for now, whether it is Costco, Victoria Secret or The Flag Lady, prisoners do the work, and they re-enter society, then find themselves looking for jobs in an increasingly shrinking and hostile job market.

For un-employed non-prisoners (that would be most of us), they are left to wonder whether these job opportunities are costing them entry into the job market and whether the cheap labor costs effect their pocketbooks. For ex-felons, they are left to wonder how to use these skills they have learned laboring for the state with few job prospects in the real world. And for the Ohio prison system, they make a profit.

So, too, does The Flag Lady.

It makes you wonder what the Chinese think of sales of “Old Glory” profiting from prison labor and how that would go over in trade talks in Beijing.

That question is reason enough to re-examine the profit arm of the prison worker program.
http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/brianrothenberg/C3Cq

of companies that use prison labor and the monies used for restitution for the crime victims and their families.