Business behind bars
The two largest prison companies in the United States are Corrections Corporation of America and GS4. They literally rent out convicted criminals to private companies. This service is in great demand. Even such prestigious corporations as IBM, Exxon Mobil Corporation and Wal-Mart Stores do not hesitate to benefit from this. This is not surprising, since the daily rent of one inmate costs only 90 cents to 5 dollars!
Prisoners' labor is used in various sectors of the economy: they extract minerals, pump oil, slaughter cattle, grow fruits and vegetables, sew clothes, manufacture weapons, answer calls in call centers, build housing, etc. In fact, in the United States there is no longer a single sphere where convicts would not be involved. Businessmen wishing to hire prisoners can bypass private intermediaries and go directly to the state prison. At the request of the customer, convicts are brought to his enterprise, or he can move his equipment and machines to the territory of the correctional institution.
This situation is beneficial both for the state, which saves budget funds and stimulates economic growth, and for businessmen, who receive almost free and disenfranchised labor. Moreover, this system is by no means a modern invention.
Legalized slavery
For the first time, the practice of using convict labor in the production of goods for the open market was tried in the 1820s in the prison in Auburn, New York. Workshops and workshops were opened near the prison, in which prisoners worked. The practice was considered successful and soon took root, first in all the northeastern states, and then in the Midwest. Prison labor began to be widely used to develop the country's infrastructure. The government recruited prisoners to work on building roads and railways, draining swamps, digging canals, etc.
The European stock market crash of 1873 caused a protracted crisis around the world, including in the United States, later called the Long Depression, which lasted until 1896. Entrepreneurs began to strive to reduce costs at any cost, and primarily at the expense of wages. However, here there were problems with the trade unions, which did not allow unjustified lower wages. This is where the forced labor system came to the rescue. The demand for government services to provide the rental of convicted criminals has skyrocketed to fantastic levels. Large enterprises fired employees and took in much cheaper prisoners in return. For example, a New York ironworks owner fired all of his workers and moved production to Sing Sing Prison. If a worker's daily wage was three dollars, then the prisoner cost only 40 cents,or almost eight times cheaper!
Soon, the compulsory lease system became practically the basis of industrial and economic growth in the United States. In the north of the country, where 80% of America's entire prison workforce was located, the annual turnover of this activity, in modern terms, was 35 billion dollars. During the Long Depression, two thirds of all inmates worked in private enterprises. Their owners could not even dream of such workers! After all, they were deprived of all rights and freedoms, could not express discontent and go on strike. In essence, they were ordinary slaves. The first section of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery, states: “Neither slavery nor servitude, unless they are a punishment for a crime for which a person has been duly convicted, shall not exist in the United States or in some other place,subject to their jurisdiction. That is, the state, prohibiting slavery in private hands, reserved the right to dispose of the lives of those who were imprisoned in any way. The worst thing about this situation was that there was no regulatory framework that took into account the rights of rented prisoners.
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Southern hell
If in the North conditions of detention and treatment were more or less bearable, then in the South it was not so. Before the Civil War, convict labor was used on a very limited scale in the slave states of the South. Everything changed after the defeat of the Confederation and the widespread abolition of slavery. The illegal exploitation of humans by the slave-owner-planters was replaced by the legal exploitation from Uncle Sam.
The entire mining industry of the southern states depended on labor from places not so remote. In the coal mines of Birmingham, Alabama, 25% of all coal was mined by prisoners. They were also involved in logging, growing cotton and sugar, crushing stones in quarries, etc. Big business owners were interested in new supplies of "fresh meat". Therefore, in the South, there was a circular corruption guarantee, in which local authorities and law enforcement agencies were involved. In fact, the number of people sent to jail depended on the needs of the business. With a decline in business activity, the number of convicts decreased, and with an increase, accordingly, it grew. Sheriffs, judges and officials received bribes for the supply of new workers. Strange laws were enacted to ensure an uninterrupted flow of laborand sometimes people were imprisoned for absolutely innocent things: gambling, vagrancy, drunkenness, loud parties, jumping onto moving train cars and even staying in a foreign city for too long! Under the "swine law" in Mississippi, a person could receive five years of forced labor in prison for stealing cattle worth more than $ 10.
As a rule, tenants were not too worried about the working and living conditions in which their employees were. The poor fellows lived in unsanitary barracks with rats. They had to work from dusk to dawn, and often many fell to their feet, dead. Burns, illnesses, infections, and loss of limbs were commonplace. Mortality rates among prisoners reached unprecedented levels and were eight times higher than in the northern states. Most of the prisoners died in the mines, which were called "cradles of death." The bodies were buried in mass graves or burned in the furnaces of crematoria.
In addition, for disobedience or non-compliance with the norms, people were subjected to horrific punishments: flogging, drowning, hunger, solitary confinement in a punishment cell, dehydration, attachment of thorns to the feet of the feet, dousing with ice water, as well as "trising" - an incredibly painful technique when a person was hung for the thumbs on the fishing line.
The system is dead. Long live the system
Of course, over time, public discontent in the United States grew. People wondered: why, in general, 620 thousand soldiers and officers died during the Civil War, if slavery did not disappear, but only changed the mask? The most ardent opponents of the compulsory rental system were the trade unions. They constantly went on strikes and strikes. In Chicago, construction workers refused to use materials produced by prisoners. And even among the convicts themselves, discontent grew, sometimes it reached uprisings, and the authorities had to use force to suppress them. Under constant pressure, the states canceled the rental service of criminals one by one. By the end of the 19th century, the system ceased to function in most of the country. However, it should be noted right away that the prisoners stopped working in private enterprises,work at state facilities has not been canceled.
Today this system is resurrected again. Giant corporations no longer need to open factories and factories abroad, in third world countries with low wages. What for? After all, you can get almost free workers in the United States. The scope of the modern reincarnation of the system is amazing. The US population is about 5% of the world, but 25% (about 2.3 million) of all prisoners are in America. In 37 states, companies can rent criminals, including minors! It is not for nothing that many Americans call their penitentiary system the capitalist version of the Soviet GULAG, and, unfortunately, from year to year it only expands, and the number of prisoners in the United States is growing steadily.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №28, Adilet Uraimov