There are thousands of enslaved people in Virginia right now. This is not hyperbole, or just a harsh interpretation. It is the legal status of the workers who produce goods that all Virginia state institutions are required to purchase, including the majority of the furniture in Virginia’s public universities.

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When the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, it made one big exception: prisons. A few years after the Confederacy was defeated and Virginia was forced to end slavery, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that prisoners were “slaves of the state”. Recently-freed enslaved people were criminalized by the Black Codes and sold — legally — to plantations, factories, and coal mines through convict leasing. Although that specific program was defeated, mass incarceration and modern prison slavery are simply the latest versions of a system of racial exploitation that has existed for centuries.

 

America’s incarceration rate is the highest in the world, and Virginia’s is even higher. Although it’s well established that white people and black people use drugs at very similar rates, and the white population is far larger than the black population, 74% of those imprisoned for drug possession are black. This unequal treatment helps explain why Virginia’s population is 19% black but its prison population is almost 60% black.

 

Class also plays a large role in mass incarceration and prison slavery. A boy born into an extremely poor family is 40 times more likely to end up in prison than a boy born into an extremely wealthy family. This makes prison slavery even more cruel; the economically desperate commit crimes, end up in jail, and then leave jail just as economically desperate as they were before, which often leads them to return to crime. Years of backbreaking labor don’t even leave incarcerated workers with savings to fall back on once they’re released.

 

The $0.55-$0.80 an hour that many Virginia prisoners receive is bad enough on its own, but it’s even more indefensible in light of the fact that life in prison is expensive. The billion dollar commissary industry exploits prisoners by charging them impossible prices for necessities like toilet paper, hygiene products, and over-the-counter medication. Meager prison wages are quickly drained by those commissary costs, in addition to the massive fees and fines prisoners are saddled with. Rather than leaving prison with some savings built up, many prisoners find themselves crushed by debt upon their release.

 

The “skills” and “work experience” that prisoners are coerced into learning will never be enough to overcome the fact that only 5% of black job applicants with criminal records get callbacks. The so-called “cost to taxpayers” of letting prisoners keep the wages they are owed is far outweighed by the wide variety of costs associated with perpetuating a permanent underclass of people who do not have the resources they need to survive. The institutions buying goods produced by prison slavery aren’t even saving money; even though incarcerated workers are paid wages 14 times lower than those of non-prisoner furniture workers, the furniture produced in Virginia’s prisons is sold at market prices.

 

What newly-released prisoners need in order to overcome their precarious economic situation is the savings they have earned through their labor, not intangible skills like the “concept of teamwork”. That is why we are calling on the Virginia General Assembly to pass legislation that ends wage garnishment and reclassifies prison “slaves” as “employees”.  This would give incarcerated workers basic protections like the right to organize, the enforcement of workplace safety standards, sick leave, and overtime pay. It would also mean that incarcerated workers have a better chance of a decent life once they are released from prison. Considering the racist, unjust, and inhumane characteristics of our criminal justice and corrections systems, this is the least we can do.

 

By signing this petition, you are helping us end modern slavery. Add your name to tell Virginia’s General Assembly that incarcerated workers must receive their full wages and their rightful legal status as employees.

 

William & Mary Young Democratic Socialists of America