The Prison Industry

Microsoft uses Washington state prison labor to bundle software packages. Let me repeat: Microsoft uses prison labor! Sure, lots of corporations use prison labor in the U.S., but Microsoft is so dodgy and hypocritical on so many other counts, they seem worth highlighting.

Prison labor for corporations is a disgusting display of greed and governmental stupidity. Should prisoners be made to work? Absolutely. I'm totally opposed to degrading, inhumane or chain-gang-like work situations, but I support prisoners working to improve social and civic infrastructure. It's one way for those who've damaged that infrastructure to begin to make restitution.

But being slaved out to mega-corporations like Microsoft, AT&T and American Airlines, to name only a few, so that corporate profits can swell even fatter is simply intolerable. Not only does prison labor benefit those who are already the richest and most privileged, it depresses already-too-low wages and makes jobs unavailable to unincarcerated citizens.

Add to this shameful situation the draconian, rapacious and racist criminalization of drug policy, and you can begin to see what is being decried as a prison-industrial complex. The next time you hear some politician ranting about Chinese prison labor, ask yourself why he isn't ranting about Microsoft or AT&T doing the exact same thing.

Treating the drugs crisis rationally, that is, treating it as a public health crisis, would go a long way, and would be cheaper to boot, to ameliorating the problems drugs cause. This would include legalizing nearly all marijuana use. And, for those violent criminals who very much belong in prison, like rapists and murderers and environmental polluters, shouldn't they be working for all of us if they're going to work at all? Shouldn't prisoners benefit all of us, including themselves, by having to engage in meaningful work that has some relation to the kind of damage they caused? Who benefits when they are employed by the mega-corporations? No one but the greedy few who own them.