The Truth Behind Your Luxury
The connection must be made that mass incarceration is slavery presented in a new light. A light that has been so normalized within today's society that its difficult to see from day to day. The connection can be seen through the ways in which communities are segregated, the housing of people, and distributions of power. The ways our society and media portray topics such as race, gender, and class also largely influence the general public's perception of prisons as well as perpetuate racism.
I specifically would like to focus on one of Angela Davis’s points in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete. There are aspects of our day to day lives that feed into the prison industrial complex, and capitalize on the labor or prisoners which as a results perpetuates slavery. This is based on the overwhelming numbers of minorities that are incarcerated. Do you love your Victoria’s Secret Lingerie? Ever wonder who makes the uniforms for the military? How about things like canoes, or the desks in college dormitories? The blind support of this modern day slavery is so integrated into today’s society that it’s unrecognizable if you don’t know what questions to ask or where to look. The concept of modern American slavery is very much alive and perpetuated by the general public. This occurs in the various ways in which people knowingly, and unknowingly, support the companies that profit off of the prison industrial complex.
In Chapter 5 of Angela Davis’s, Are Prisons Obsolete, she discusses how corporations profit from the “punishment business”. Corporations are making money through not only providing services for the prisons, but also capitalizing on the labor of the prisoners within these institutions. Most people do not associate many well known corporations today as contributors to state punishment, or recognize the ways in which the corporations capitalize off of prisoners labor. As a result the prison system becomes perpetuated, meaning that slavery is also still being perpetuated.
We all love a good, overpriced, caramel macchiato from Starbucks from time to time. What most people don’t know is that a subcontractor of Starbucks, Signature Packaging Solutions, hired prisoners from a prison in Washington to package their holiday coffees. Twin Rivers prison, where inmates make 25-35 cents an hour for labor, are one of the prisons where inmate labor was sought out by Signature Packaging Solutions to package items from Starbucks holiday cups, to Nintendo gaming systems. DOC, Cathy Carlson, states in a Seattle News Article, “The mission is to give offenders, if nothing else, a work ethic and experience mirroring some real world experience”.
These “work opportunities” are usually in high demand during the holidays, making them inconsistent. They also allow corporations to save money and capitalize on inmates underpaid labor, while still serving overpriced coffee. Another flaw with Cathy Carlsons’ statement is that while this “mirrors” work ethic and experience that occurs in the real world, the difficulty is very high for inmates to even find a respectable paying job that realistically allows them to make a living. The opportunities that these inmates will have after being released are few and far between. This reality then could potentially lead to easier alternatives, such as prostitution, and drugs, in order to make money. Which in return puts these individuals again at a high risk of being caught and put through the entire system again. Due to police surveillance being increased in areas of impoverishment, these individuals are also sought out and targeted.
Next time you look down at your coffee cup, buy a new set of cute underwear, or are studying on your dormitory desk, take a moment to ask yourself where it came from, or who’s hands helped make them? Many of the luxuries experienced in our everyday lives are created by the hands of underpaid inmates. Large corporations and businesses that feed into the prison system, which now relies heavily on mass incarceration, are perpetuating slavery through capitalizing on the prison industrial complex.
Literature Cited
Davis, A. Y. Are Prisons Obsolete. Seven Stories Press. 2003.
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