Penal labor in the United States violates international human trafficking laws

1. The Nature of Penal LaborIn the United States, almost 900,000 US prisoners are involved in prison labor. The majority of these prisoners are required to perform labor for the upkeep of the prison itself. The remainder are contracted out to private companies to provide labor and produce products and services for extremely low wages, if they are paid at all. Federal prisons pay between $0.12 and $0.40 per hour while in Texas state prisons the minimum wage is $0.00 per hour. The United States government has denied inmates protections against involuntary servitude when the practice has been challenged in court and prisoners who have refused to work have been punished with solitary confinement and the revocation of visiting privileges [1]. It is important to note that solitary confinement has been demonstrated to produce long-term psychological damage and the United Nations has urged the United States to abandon solitary confinement or to severely curtail the practice and lessen the duration in which prisoners may be held in such confinement [2]. As it stands, it is a practice very much akin to torture and certainly constitutes coercive force [3]. In addition, solitary confinement has been used as a punishment against prisoners who have spoken out against the inadequacy of prison labor conditions [4].The practice of penal labor can be traced to the repeal of slavery as the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery "except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted [5]" While domestic law has permitted, and even abetted, the practice of prison labor as it has been described above, the use of forced labor in immigrant detention centers raises a different issue entirely. While international law under the human trafficking provision forbids forced labor in all circumstances, even the domestic law requires that those subjected to forced labor "shall have been duly convicted" of crimes. In spite of this, the use of forced labor has been documented in immigrant detention centers [6]. Illegal immigrants are, if anything, more vulnerable than prisoners. Private corporations profiting from the forced labor of illegal immigrants in detention constitutes a flagrant violation of international human trafficking laws as the practice coerces vulnerable groups into providing forced labor from which these companies reap profits.2. Penal Labor is Necessarily ExploitativeThe system of penal labor in the United States is necessarily exploitative as it produces benefits for private corporations and state and federal prisons while denying prisoners any real benefits. Prisoners are highly vulnerable to exploitation as they are part of a socially marginalized class of people with limited abilities to protest their exploitation. Furthermore, prisoners are routinely denied basic freedoms the rest of the population enjoys and are therefore less able to protest their exploitation and are entirely unable to escape it. Under the definition provided, exploitation includes “…forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery…” Politicians have claimed a rehabilitative effect pointing to low recidivism among prisoners who have been employed by private companies in skilled labor as a justification for the continuance of the policy. This assertion is misleading as corporations seldom select unskilled prisoners for these positions and instead choose skilled prisoners [7]. For obvious reasons, skilled convicts are better able to reintegrate into society following their incarceration than their unskilled counterparts. Moreover, private companies prefer to employ long-term prisoners or even those serving life-sentences as a means to prevent turnover within production. The claim that the purpose of prison labor is to rehabilitate prisoners and provide them with marketable skills following their incarceration is not supported by the evidence which points to the conclusion that prison labor exists to enrich private corporations through the use of forced labor under conditions similar to slavery and to reduce upkeep costs.3. An Analysis of Penal Labor in the Context of the StatuteThe United States federal and state governments assume a position of power over prisoners and are therefore responsible for their well-being throughout their incarceration. In terms of the definition provided at the beginning for trafficking in persons, the United States can therefore be said to transfer prisoners through the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability to private corporation which exploit prisoners through the use of coercion to gain forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery from prisoners. Regardless of domestic loopholes enacted to preserve the practice of slavery, the United States cannot be said to be in compliance with international law regarding human trafficking by virtue of the continued use of penal labor.4. The Purpose of Penal Labor is the Exploitation of PrisonersThe Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons contains language indicating that the transfer, or harboring of persons must be "...for the purpose of exploitation." in order to covered under the statute. The United States government has full knowledge that the practice occurs as they have passed legislation concerning minimum wages for prison laborers. Furthermore, the United States government is fully aware that the practice of prison labor is objectionable and forbidden under international law as they have taken legislative action to curtail the importation of products produced in China using prison labor [8]. Therefore, it cannot be said that the United States is ignorant of the legality of prison labor or of the fact that international law forbids the practice. It can also be said that the United States has a strong incentive to allow and even to promote the practice of prison labor. International economic competitors to US companies have been able to secure strong positions against them through the use of cheap labor overseas. Indeed, it is common knowledge that this very same labor has led many US firms to relocate to other countries. Cheap labor from US prisons provides an attractive method through which the United States can offer companies a viable labor source and thereby keep firms within its borders. Moreover, costs of maintaining the astonishingly high level of incarceration within the United States are incredibly high. Insofar as the United States can cut costs for incarceration by reassigning upkeep tasks to prisoners, it is in the interests of the United States to do so. It is therefore clear that the United States purposefully transfers prisoners into the custody of private corporations with full knowledge of the treatment they receive from these corporations and the legality of this treatment in the context of international law.Sources:1. https://qz.com...2. http://tbinternet.ohchr.org...;(para 20)3. https://ccrjustice.org...4. http://www.nytimes.com...5. https://www.loc.gov...6. http://www.humantraffickingsearch.net...7. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org...;8. http://money.cnn.com...;