Prison Privatization and Inmate Labor in the Global Economy: Reframing the Debate Over Private Prisons

II. PRISON PRIVATIZATION AND PRISON LABOR The previous discussion argues for lengthening the chronology of prison privatization so as to include the privatization movement in history in an integral way. Doing so adds at least a decade to the story. It also broadens and enriches the context around prison privatization, to include more of the complex social, legal, and political tectonics of the period. Prisons were at the crux of the contradictory crosscurrents discussed above, as demand for stronger measures against offenders (and corresponding demand for new prisons) was at odds with the simultaneous demand for leaner government and brakes on public expenditure. Whatever the appeal of privatization as a structural compromise in theory, the substantive consequences were dramatic as a practical matter. Rates of imprisonment soared even as crime rates declined. (108) Concerned by the unprecedented levels of incarceration that heavily disfavored young black men, some socio-legal scholars saw the situation as a fundamental transformation of state and society-as prisons filled with young men who had been displaced from the labor force in a new climate in which economic risk was displaced onto workers, for whom persistent under- and unemployment became the norm. (109) However, crime policies turned away from rehabilitation, and increasingly toward confinement and punishment." (110) As David Garland observes, incarceration was no longer a matter of reforming individual offenders, but of newly normal selective effects that made prison "a shaping institution for whole sectors of the population." (111) These were major changes; however, from the vantage points afforded by the longer timeframe we propose for prison privatization, the budget constraints and prison overcrowding subsequent to the late 1980's may be seen as relatively late developments. The prison crisis may account for the conditions that made prison privatization (like privatization more generally) politically saleable, but the context, the idea, its rationales and strategies for implementation, and even the firms themselves were already explicitly circulating by that time. In this Part, we look to that earlier period-to two earlier prison reform initiatives that are part of the longer history that made privatization integral to the globalization of capital. Both initiatives involve prison labor. Their similarities and differences are relevant to an analysis of privatization as entailing diverse means and ends, as well as diverse political locations within and beyond government. These initiatives were Federal Prison Industries, now known as "UNICOR," and Prison Industry Enhancement, or PIE. UNICOR is a government owned corporation that manages inmate production of goods and services available for sale to the government and, under some circumstances, on the open market. (112) In its current incarnation, UNICOR is a form of outsourcing in the sense that it draws on labor segregated from the domestic labor force by a state border (i.e., prison walls) that demarcates a legal differential of wages and hours, among other things. (113) UNICOR is not a private enterprise, but it has been increasingly pressed to "act" like a private sector firm since its re-establishment by Congress as a self-supporting agency in 1988, and on-going pressures in the direction of increased competition and absorption of financial risk. (114) By contrast, PIE brings private firms into prisons, giving private sector employers access to inmates as a work force. (115) UNICOR produces goods and services for an essentially governmentally-guaranteed market (as we shall see); PIE relies on the open market. (116) Together, consideration of these programs (discussed separately in the following sections) lends fresh prominence to the role of labor in relation to privatization in the prison context. Once the integral relation of prison labor and global capital is appreciated, prison privatization and the new pressures on labor to absorb the risk in economic fluctuations may be understood in turn as related developments. …