Hundreds Of American Companies Pay Employees As Little As 23 Cents An Hour [View all]

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By Jonathan Wolfe,

When you think of prison labor, what comes to mind? You might envision inmates making license plates and highway signs or cleaning up road debris. For decades, this perception would have been roughly accurate. Using prison labor in the private sector was illegal, so inmates worked on public projects.

But this dynamic changed dramatically in 1979 with the passing of the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIE). PIE made it legal for private sector companies to contract prison labor to produce goods.

Ever since then, corporations have turned to prison labor at an ever-increasing rate to make their products. At a time when unemployment remains high and millions of Americans look for work, American corporations are capitalizing on America’s sky-high incarceration rates by using inmates to make their products.

The dynamic is a corporation's dream – inmates make as little as 23 cents an hour, never show up late for work, and don’t demand benefits or time off. These inmates don’t account for some small percent of manufacturing production, either.

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