A new report by the American Civil Liberties Union released Wednesday said wages were low and in most cases the government received up to 80 percent of room and board fees, court costs, compensation and other fees, including construction and prison maintenance. Incarcerated workers generate more than $ 2 billion a year in goods and more than $ 9 billion a year in prison maintenance services, the report added. According to the report, wage deductions leave employees with less than half of their gross salary, from which they are expected to cover the cost of their own health and medical care products. Nearly 70 percent of incarcerated workers surveyed said they could not afford basic necessities with their prison wages. The report also found that prison staff in seven states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas – were not paid for most of their work. The ACLU also found that more than 76 percent of incarcerated workers surveyed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics said they were “forced to work or face additional penalties such as solitary confinement, denial of reduced sentence and loss of family visit.” ” According to the report, detainees could not choose the type of work they would do and were allegedly “subject to arbitrary, discriminatory and punitive decisions by prison directors who choose their jobs”. Many incarcerated workers also do dangerous work in unsafe conditions. As a result of poor data collection, the actual number of workers injured at work is unknown, the report added. “Working in prison is inherently forced and exploitative. “Employees are not protected by standard labor laws, such as minimum wages, overtime protection, the right to trade unionism and guarantees of safety at work,” according to the ACLU report. George Washington University Abolishes ‘Colonial’ Names After Student Pressure Nearly half in new poll say US ‘will cease to be democracies in future’ The authors of the report demanded that prisons across the country increase the wages of incarcerated workers to allow them to pay for expenses such as “child support, home phone calls and committee expenses, while supporting their families and saving money for possible reintegration into society. ” They also asked lawmakers to amend the Constitution to remove the 13th Amendment that allows slavery and involuntary slavery as punishment for a crime. More than 1.2 million people in the United States are currently incarcerated in state and federal prisons, about two-thirds of whom work in the penitentiary system.
