Movement grows to abolish US prison labor system that treats workers as ‘less than human’

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work in US prisons as part of their sentences, often without basic protections and for little to no pay

For more than two decades imprisoned in California, Samual Brown worked more than a dozen different jobs and was transferred between penitentiaries throughout the state – earning less than a dollar per hour. At the beginning of the pandemic, he worked as a healthcare facility worker tasked with disinfecting areas where inmates with Covid had been held. He wanted to quit his job – he had asthma and risked his life – but was told he “had no choice”. By the time Brown was released in December 2021, he had paid just $3,000 of the more than $37,000 in restitution he owed the state.

“That is tied directly into the same type of practices from slavery,” Brown, who is co-founder of the Anti-Violence Safety and Accountability Project, says. “That’s the same practice, the same energy, the same spirit that you see in this prison setting. A person can be on one plantation, and then they’ll be moved to another plantation, and you’ll never see the people who you were with ever again. They can separate you from your wife, separate you from your children, from your family. It’s the same way in the modern-day carceral setting.”