Other States Banned Forced Prison Labor. Why Didn’t California?

Despite the state’s Democratic majority, more than 53 percent of Californians voted against a ban on slave labor in state prisons. Proposition (Prop) 6 would have amended the state constitution by removing a provision that allows incarcerated people to be forced to work. Though it would not ban “voluntary” work in these facilities, it would prevent prison authorities from compelling an individual to work as punishment for a crime. California’s constitution currently mirrors the 13th Amendment’s notorious exception, which bans slavery except “as punishment for a crime.” That “loophole” underpins the link between capitalism and the carceral state. Nationwide, more than 790,000 people in state and federal prisons are estimated to be working — typically in maintenance jobs within their facilities, and sometimes in manufacturing, agricultural and public-service enterprises — generating several billion dollars in revenue annually, according to a 2022 ACLU report. Tens of thousands of them are in California, often earning less than $1 per hour.

Esteban Núñez, chief strategy consultant for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, one of the groups spearheading the Prop 6 campaign, said the defeat of the measure underscored the need for “more voter education” about what the amendment was meant to accomplish, since many voters may have been confused by the somewhat arcane wording to “eliminate involuntary servitude for incarcerated persons” (written by the attorney general’s office). He noted that, despite Californians’ seeming apprehension about the measure, several other states, even Republican-dominated ones, have approved similar bans in recent years.

“This is something that, of course, was personal to a lot of us because we had lived experience with forced labor,” Núñez told Truthout. For many formerly incarcerated advocates like him, ending forced labor behind bars opens opportunities for more productive activities and positive change, like college courses and job training. “Forced labor really prohibits people’s ability to prioritize rehabilitation, and rehabilitation is really what’s going to drive down recidivism,” he added. “Those programs and education are just really vital to preparing somebody to come home.”

California’s Prison Labor Regime

California’s prison-industrial complex is one of the largest in the country, incarcerating people at a higher rate than most states. The state holds more than 91,000 people in custody as of last November, mostly Latinx and Black men — an ample captive workforce that delivers a variety of goods and services to the government: fighting wildfires, manufacturing office furniture, catering, and, after the pandemic broke out, producing face masks (even as they reportedly were forbidden from wearing masks themselves).

The ballot question, which had no organized opposition campaign and was championed by civil rights organizations and the state’s Reparations Task Force, was framed as a step toward “restor[ing] human dignity” and redressing structural racism in prison.

But some saw it differently, raising criticisms that seemed rooted in the notion that incarcerated people should have to work to pay the cost of their imprisonment and their supposed debt to society. An editorial in the San Jose Mercury News argued, “The fundamental question here is whether inmates should be required to provide work that contributes toward their room and board. We believe they should, just as the rest of us on the outside who have not committed crimes must also do.” The editorial board also argued that allowing incarcerated people to refuse work might pave the way for more mass work stoppages. (A major prison labor strike erupted in 2016, with tens of thousands of workers in multiple states protesting what they called inhumane and exploitative conditions.)

Additionally, political unease about the public cost of paying incarcerated workers fairly may have drawn opposition. An effort to institute a ban through California’s state legislature in 2022 ran into pushback from the Department of Finance, which estimated that implementing the measure would cost an additional $1.5 billion annually if incarcerated workers became entitled to earn a minimum wage, instead of the typical current pay rates of less than $1 an hour. The price tag led both Democratic and Republican lawmakers to back away from the measure. (In this past election cycle, Prop 6 and its accompanying legislation avoided direct projections of fiscal costs by instead “requir[ing] wages for work assignments in county and city jail programs to be set by local ordinance.”)

Abolitionists acknowledge that eliminating prison slavery will be costly for the governments and companies that have long benefited from it. “There is a price to be paid for abolishing slavery, there’s no question,” Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and co-author of Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery, told Truthout. “But what the legislators don’t do is focus on the benefit,” including the economic gains not just for incarcerated workers but also for their families and communities, which are often distressed, impoverished and disproportionately Black, Brown and Indigenous. Incarcerated workers could better support themselves and their families with decently paid voluntary jobs, which would alleviate dependence on the informal underground economy of prison “hustles” and, once released, help them stably transition to the mainstream economy.

State by State

Though it is a setback for the abolitionist movement, the defeat of Prop 6 comes on the heels of several successful efforts to end slavery in state prisons in a number of other, even more conservative, states. In Nevada this year — a state that Donald Trump won narrowly — voters approved a ballot initiative to abolish prison slavery via constitutional amendment by a 21-point margin, indicating that such proposals have moral appeal across party lines.

Colorado was the first state since the signing of the 13^th Amendment to remove the “slavery exception” from its constitution in 2018. Utah, Nebraska, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont followed with similar ballot initiatives. Alabama’s 2022 abolition referendum included several other measures that removed explicitly racist provisions of the state constitution, including school segregation policies and a prohibition on racial miscegenation.

A bill recently introduced in the New York State legislature would amend the state’s constitution to “abolish slavery without exception,” and a companion bill lays out a framework of labor standards and rights for incarcerated workers. Incarcerated workers would be paid at least the state minimum wage — a massive raise from current hourly wages that typically run under a dollar — as well as workplace health and safety protections, which are crucial for the many high-risk maintenance jobs that incarcerated workers often perform, such as asbestos abatement.

On the national level, advocates face a tougher fight to amend the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment. A bill introduced last year declares “the continued existence of slavery and involuntary servitude antithetical to the democratic values, norms, and mores of the United States and can undermine the moral credibility of our country on the global stage.” However, such an amendment would require a two-thirds majority of both chambers of Congress to move forward for ratification by the states — likely impossible with Republicans in control of the House and Senate.

Led by civil and human rights organizations as well as faith and labor groups, the movement to end prison slavery runs parallel to the contemporary abolition movement, which broadly envisions dismantling carceral institutions — which have disproportionately targeted Black communities since the end of chattel slavery — in order to replace them with community-focused systems of justice.

Abolishing forced prison labor is a step toward removing the capitalist infrastructure that has been built around the systematic exploitation of the incarcerated workforce. The vast majority of the incarcerated workforce is employed in maintenance jobs that keep prisons running, such as janitorial work. About 15 percent work for government-run enterprises and public works, according to the ACLU report’s estimates, while private industries employ less than 1 percent. Shifting all these workers into a system of voluntary labor would require an exponential increase in their wages, especially if incarcerated workers became eligible for standard state minimum wages or prevailing wage standards set for their respective industries. According to a recent study by Edgeworth Economics, transitioning to a voluntary paid workforce would put between $11.6 billion and $18.8 billion of annual wages into imprisoned workers’ pockets, and better-paid work in prison would translate into better economic prospects for workers once they are released.

Much of the advocacy around abolishing prison slavery does not go so far as to call for the abolition of prison itself, and some activists say they are above all focused on resolving the immediate human rights crisis of forced labor in prisons. But activists say if forced labor ends in prison, the whole infrastructure of the carceral state will become less economically viable. An obligation to treat incarcerated workers fairly and equally would shake the foundations of a social institution that has been designed for centuries to maximize suffering and exploitation. And empowering the incarcerated with real labor rights would enable them to hold authorities accountable and organize collective resistance to abuse.

“It would alter the balance of power in the prisons quite significantly if incarcerated people have the right to refuse ill-paid and unsafe work,” Ross said. “Because the ability to force people to work is absolutely key to the power of the jailor.”

But advocates acknowledge that ending forced labor in prison is an incremental shift that would not immediately end ingrained practices of oppression in the carceral system; labor remains an everyday part of prison life, and coercive treatment is endemic to the environment. Indeed, incarcerated workers have filed lawsuits in Alabama and Colorado, claiming they have still been forced to work and faced punishment for refusing, despite their states’ prison slavery bans. Those ongoing legal battles reveal how, beyond policy remedies, creating the conditions for true abolition demands sustained vigilance and organizing.

“Formal measures like this are not sufficient, but they’re necessary,” Ross said. “They put you down on the road to freedom, but the road is unbuilt, and you have to then build it.”