What We Have Here Is a Failure to Compensate

At a time of record unemployment, American companies are increasingly exploiting the low-cost labor of 2.3 million Americans behind bars. This means fewer jobs available for free citizens, which leads to more unemployment, which produces more crime and higher incarceration rates, which leads to … well, you get the ugly picture.

The richly detailed article below provides a historical glimpse into the use of prison labor in the U.S. and describes how major corporations and American politicians benefit from the exploitation of the prison population. — ARK

AlterNet:

There is one group of American workers so disenfranchised that corporations are able to get away with paying them wages that rival those of third-world sweatshops. These laborers have been legally stripped of their political, economic and social rights and ultimately relegated to second-class citizens. They are banned from unionizing, violently silenced from speaking out and forced to work for little to no wages. This marginalization renders them practically invisible, as they are kept hidden from society with no available recourse to improve their circumstances or change their plight.

They are the 2.3 million American prisoners locked behind bars where we cannot see or hear them. And they are modern-day slaves of the 21st century.

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