This article documents the resurgence of US prison work programmes under neoliberalism, investigating the dynamics through which state and private corporations have erected factories inside public prisons, moving manufacturing jobs behind bars. It contends that the corporate use of inmate labour has not resulted from an autonomous capital's quest for profit, but rather that it is a strategy that has developed through and cannot be abstracted from the US state as it has restructured in order to author processes of globalisation, and as it has adopted the neoliberal domestic policy of mass incarceration.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Albo, G. (2005) ‘Neo-liberalism, Nafta, and the state of North American labour movements’, Just Labour, vols. 6 & 7, Autumn.
2.
Bureau of Prisons Oversight (1999) ‘The importance of the Federal Prison Industries’.
3.
Carceral, K. C. (2006) Prison Inc. (New York University Press).
4.
Davis, A. (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete? (Seven Stories Press).
5.
Dunkel, F. (1999) Prison Labour: Salvation or Slavery? (The Onanti International Institute for the Sociology of Law).
6.
Funke, G., N. Miller & B. Wayson (1989) Assets and Liabilities of Correctional Industries (Lexington Books).
7.
Gill, S. (2005) ‘The contradictions of US supremacy’, Socialist Register.
8.
Harvey, D. (2003) The New Imperialism (Oxford University Press).
9.
Harvey, D. (2004) ‘The new imperialism: Accumulation by dispossession’, Socialist Register.
10.
House of Representatives Report 108-348 (2003) ‘Providing for consideration of H.R. 1829, Federal Prison Industries Competition in Contracting Act of 2003’.
11.
House of Representatives Report 103-39 (2003) ‘The Federal Prison Industry's effects on the US economy and the small business environment’.
12.
King, R. (2003) ‘Big prisons, small towns: Prison economics in rural America’, Sentencing Project Report (Sentencing Project) February.
13.
McNally, D. (2002) Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism (Arbiter Ring).
14.
Moody, K. (1997) Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy (Verso).
15.
National Center for Policy Analysis (1998) ‘Factories behind bars’.
16.
National Institute of Justice (1986) ‘Private sector involvement in prison-based businesses: A national assessment’, February.
17.
National Institute of Justice (1988) ‘Private sector involvement in prison-based businesses: A national assessment’, September.
18.
O'Connor, J. (2002) The Fiscal Crisis of the State (Transaction).
19.
Panitch, L. & S. Gindin (2004) ‘Global capitalism and American Empire’, Socialist Register.
20.
Panitch, L. & S. Gindin (2005) ‘Finance and American Empire’, Socialist Register.
21.
Panitch, L. (2004) ‘Globalization and the state’ in L. Panitch et al. (eds.) The Globalization Reader (Merlin Press).
22.
Panitch, L. (1977) The Canadian State: Political Economy and Political Power (University of Toronto Press).
23.
Parenti, C. (1999) Lockdown American: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (Verso).
24.
Sudbury, J. (2005) Global Lockdown (Routledge).
25.
Senior, N. (1830) Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages, online at the Marxists Internet Archive, <www.marxists.org> [accessed December 2006].
26.
Tomich, D. W. (2004) Through the Prism of Slavery: Labour, Capital and World Economy (Rowman & Littlefield).
27.
UNICOR, ‘Doing business with the Federal Prison Industries: Small business overview’, online at UNICOR website, FPI Contracting section, <www.unicor.gov>.
28.
US Bureau of Prisons Oversight (1999) ‘The importance of Federal Prison Industries, ’ S. Hrg. 106-528, May 24.
29.
US Constitution, available online at Cornell University Law School website, <www.law.cornell.edu>, accessed March 2007.
30.
US Department of Justice and Federal Prison Industries, Inc. (2004) ‘Annual report’.
31.
US Department of Justice, Office of Development, Testing and Dissemination (1985) ‘The privatization of corrections’, February.
32.
US General Accounting Office (1998) ‘Federal Prison Industries: Delivery performance is improving, but problems remain’.
33.
US Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs (2004) ‘Amending the federal procurement policy to establish a government wide policy requiring competition in certain executive agency procurements’, Report 108-415.
34.
United States Senate Subcommittee on Workforce, Empowerment and Government Procedures (2003) ‘Joint hearing on the FPI's effect on the US economy’.
35.
Virginia Department of Corrections, quoted in A. Davis (2003) Are Prisons Obsolete? (Seven Stories Press).
36.
Wacquant, L. (2002) ‘Four strategies to curb carceral costs: On managing mass imprisonment in the United States’, Studies in Political Economy, no. 69, Autumn.
37.
Wood, E. (2003) Empire of Capital, (Verso).
38.
Wright, P. (2001) ‘Profiting from punishment’, Prison Legal News, March.
39.
Wright, P. (2003) ‘Corporate America goes to prison’, Prison Legal News, March.
