[Senate Hearing 118-589]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-589
AN EXAMINATION OF PRISON LABOR IN AMERICA
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE
AND COUNTERTERRORISM
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 21, 2024
__________
Serial No. J-118-67
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
www.judiciary.senate.gov
www.govinfo.gov
_______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
59-497 WASHINGTON : 2025
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois, Chair
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina,
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota Ranking Member
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut JOHN CORNYN, Texas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey TED CRUZ, Texas
ALEX PADILLA, California JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia TOM COTTON, Arkansas
PETER WELCH, Vermont JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
LAPHONZA BUTLER, California THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
Joseph Zogby, Majority Staff Director
Katherine Nikas, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism
CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey, Chair
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island TOM COTTON, Arkansas, Ranking
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota Member
CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
PADILLA, ALEX, California JOHN CORNYN, Texas
OSSOFF, JON, Georgia MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah
TED CRUZ, Texas
JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
Lynda Garcia, Democratic Chief Counsel
Drew Hudson, Republican Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Booker, Hon. Cory A.............................................. 1
Cotton, Hon. Tom................................................. 3
WITNESSES
Armstrong, Andrea................................................ 12
Prepared statement........................................... 36
Responses to written questions............................... 84
Lehman, Charles.................................................. 10
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Turner, Jennifer................................................. 7
Prepared statement........................................... 51
Responses to written questions............................... 87
Winn, Terrance................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 82
APPENDIX
Items submitted for the record................................... 35
AN EXAMINATION OF PRISON LABOR
IN AMERICA
----------
TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2024
United States Senate,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice
and Counterterrorism,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice at 2:36 p.m., in
Room 226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Cory A. Booker,
Chair of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Booker [presiding], Padilla, Cotton, and
Kennedy.
Also present: Chair Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CORY A. BOOKER,
A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Chair Booker. All right. We're going to begin now that
Senator Cotton is here, and I want to say good afternoon. I'm
really grateful that you all are here for really an important,
I think, constructive discussion. Welcome to our witnesses
who've traveled here to provide testimony to this Subcommittee.
I'm particularly grateful to Ranking Member Cotton for his
perspective on this important topic relating to labor in
prisons.
Most Americans really are shocked that they learn that the
13th Amendment, which formerly abolished slavery in our
country, excludes incarcerated people. It's called the
Exception Clause, which was approved by our very Senate
Judiciary Committee in 1864. The language of the Exception
Clause lives on not only in our Federal Constitution, but also
in 16 State Constitutions.
Today, almost 150 years after ratification, we're here to
discuss the legacy of this clause and how it impacts the
treatment of incarcerated workers in our Nation's prisons and
jails.
This hearing is intended to shed light on the real issues
facing the workforce that lives behind bars, not to end the
opportunity to work in prisons. I want to emphasize that. I was
grateful in reading the testimony of all of our witnesses about
how everybody understands that work in prisons is a--it could
be a very important part of rehabilitation preparing people for
life outside of prison, and, frankly, to help lower recidivism
rates.
And I'm glad that from reading the testimony of all four
witnesses, there seems to be some accord in that it should be
in our goal, really, a collective goal in our society, that
people in prison develop the professional skills that set them
up for success once they're released. But they can only do so
within a humane system that honors human dignity.
This goal, I know, is shared by Republicans and Democrats
alike because for my 25 years in my professional life, I've
worked with people on both sides of the aisle on these issues,
and the reality is that most people that go to prison actually
come out.
We saw some draconian measures at times where people said,
why should we have Pell Grants for people in prison? Well,
every dollar we try to take away from investing in education
actually cost taxpayers much more than that in terms of
recidivism rates. Empowering people to take responsibility and
to learn skills is something we support.
What I'm excited about also is that in Red States and in
Blue States, Nebraska, Utah, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee,
Vermont, Colorado, they've passed initiatives to remove the
Exception Clause language from their constitutions. It's
amazingly popular with voters. We want our founding documents
to reflect the democratic ideals that unite us as Americans,
and that's why the Federal Government too should look at and
make the necessary fixes that Red and Blue States, Republican
and Democratic voters alike, are doing to address the problems
currently within our system of prison labor.
It's the language, this language, that allows incarcerated
workers to be denied the same protections every other workers
enjoy. Under current law, virtually every single worker in our
country is guaranteed certain protections against exploitation
and abuse.
The Government guarantees American workers that their
workplace also will be safe, and hazard free, and that they
will not be discriminated against in the workplace, and that
they will receive a minimum wage for their labor. I've been
excited. Recently, we've seen bipartisan legislation from this
Committee to stop gender discrimination and recently, age
discrimination in the workplace.
While we have laws that protect workers across the country,
and the Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan manner is doing
even more on that, these laws do not reach the people who work
within the walls of our Nation's jails and prisons. There are
close to 1.2 million people incarcerated in this country, and
today, around 800,000 of them have a job.
Incarcerated Americans contribute to our economy by working
jobs that touch many products and goods that we all use and
purchase. They produce and process foods that we eat. They work
in factories, manufacturing, license plates, traffic signs,
uniforms, and furniture, much of which bears the sought-after
``Made in America'' label.
They also provide critical public services by fighting
wildfires, repairing, and maintaining roads, and responding to
natural disasters, and they work in prison facilities to help
maintain the operations. Most of us have no idea how this labor
contributes to our Nation's economy.
Incarcerated workers around the country produce more than
$2 billion in goods and over $9 billion a year in services
maintaining the prisons in which they live. Yet, an
incarcerated worker can earn an averagely hourly wage of
literally a few cents per hour to half a dollar.
In 7 States, incarcerated workers are paid nothing for
their labor. They also lack a minimum health and safety
standards in their workplaces, and cannot refuse to work even
if they are injured or sick, facing harsh disciplinary
consequences I know we'll clear about today, if they should.
I want to acknowledge that this topic may make some of us
uncomfortable. Many of us bristle when we hear words like
slavery, and that the fact that we are causing folks to work
who do not want to. I'm keenly aware that we are at a point in
our Nation where we can objectively analyze; does this reflect
our values, our collective values, as a country?
We know that it's hard to reconcile a lot of the practices
with the democratic ideals of our country, but we must face it
together so that we ultimately can address it. Our prisons
should reflect the best of who we are, they should reflect our
values, and they should, in my strong opinion, be places that
are not just for punishment, but for rehabilitation, and for
creating roads of redemption.
I believe the ideals of redemption are very much a part of
our Nation's core values and help us create a safer, stronger
nation by ensuring that incarcerated people receive workplace
protections, that they're compensated fairly, and they're not
retaliated against.
If they decline work, we can create a system that reflects
those values and builds the vocational skills necessary for
people to have successful reentry, thereby improving public
safety.
I look forward to having a productive and constructive
conversation. This extraordinary panel, I'm grateful that
you're here. And with that, I'll turn to my Ranking Member of
the Subcommittee, my colleague from Arkansas, Tom Cotton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. TOM COTTON,
A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ARKANSAS
Senator Cotton. Well, unlike Senator Booker, I don't think
many Americans would be surprised or shocked that the 13th
Amendment allows prison labor. It's been there from the very
beginning. It's just as much a part of our constitution as is
any other provision.
I do suspect though at this hearing we're going to hear
more from Democratic Senators and their witnesses unfairly
attacking our prison systems and the outstanding men and women
who serve in them. They might even compare prison work programs
to slavery. This is a vicious and ugly smear against the very
skilled, brave men and women who work and serve in our prisons
as law enforcement and correctional officers.
Such talk may be fashionable in faculty lounges, in
Washington, DC cocktail parties, but it's wholly divorced from
the reality on the ground in our prisons. Prisons are dangerous
places full of dangerous people. Given nothing to occupy their
time, prisoners will usually regress back to doing what they
were sent to prison for in the first place. Idle hands are the
devil's workshop.
Reducing idle time has always been a key policy objective
for prison labor programs. Almost 100 years ago, this very
Committee held hearings on prison labor just like this one. The
Committee issued a report finding that prison work programs
help maintain order inside prisons. This Committee,
``Unanimously conceded that idleness in prisons breeds disorder
and aggravates criminal tendencies,'' and concluded that,
``Prison work prevents prison violence by replacing idle time
with productive activity.''
But it's not just about filling otherwise idle time. This
Committee's 1930 report also found that prison jobs help
prepare inmates for life on the outside by teaching them,
``habits of industry.''
Our prison work programs have come a long way since 1930.
Today, many prisons partner with technical college that gives
inmates the opportunity to receive job skill certificates. Many
offer pre-apprenticeship opportunities as well. Some programs
even allow inmates to work for private employers at market
wages, giving them the opportunity to pay off victim
restitution, meet child support obligations, and save money for
life after prison.
Contrary to what we'll probably hear today, there's nothing
illegal or unconstitutional about prison labor, even for little
or no pay, nor is there anything immoral about it. Prison labor
is a way for inmates to give something back to the society they
wronged. American society doesn't owe criminals restitution.
Criminals owe our society restitution, and if that means
scrubbing toilets, mopping floors, or picking up the garbage,
then so be it.
In summary, prison jobs help keep the peace, teach inmates
job skills and work habits, and fulfill the original objectives
of prison. Most prison officials would tell our Committee just
that, which is why I wish we had a representative from a prison
here today to speak about these programs.
I had invited a respected representative of the Arkansas
prison system to testify, and he had agreed, but after seeing
the amended title of this hearing, which for a few days last
week, equated prison labor to slavery, he chose not to attend.
That's very understandable on his part, but it's also
unfortunate for us. If the Democrats were not interested in
pursuing an ideological agenda, we might have learned something
today.
In any case, I look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
Chair Booker. Thank you, Senator Cotton.
We will now introduce and swear in the distinguished panel
of witnesses. The witnesses will give their opening testimony
and Senators will have 5 minutes for questioning. I'll briefly
introduce the majority witnesses, and then I'll ask the Ranking
Member, Senator Cotton to introduce the final witness.
Our first witness is Terrence Winn. At the age of 16, Mr.
Winn was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and
ultimately served 30 years of imprisonment. After the U.S.
Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v.
Louisiana resulted in his eligibility for parole.
Mr. Winn was incarcerated in the Louisiana State
penitentiary, commonly known as Angola, where he worked on the
cotton fields of Angola, in culinary services, and as a nurse's
aide. Since his release, Mr. Winn has become an advocate for
prison reform, and serves as the executive director and founder
of the Louisiana nonprofit, Priorities, Intentions Practical
Exchanges, or PIPE.
Our second witness is Jennifer Turner. Ms. Turner is the
principal human rights researcher in the human rights program
at the American Civil Liberties Union.
For more than 16 years, she has conducted documented
research and advocacy on human rights violations in the United
States with a focus on the criminal legal system, policing,
economic injustice, and racial injustice in the United States.
She led a multi-year human rights investigation on
incarcerated labor and is the primary author of ``Captive
Labor,'' a report co-published by the ACLU and the Global Human
Rights Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School,
documenting the exploitation of incarcerated workers. Ms.
Turner's a graduate of New York University Law School where she
was a Root-Tilden-Kern scholar, and Yale University.
Our third witness is Professor Andrea Armstrong. Professor
Armstrong is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow, and the Dr. Norman C.
Francis distinguished professor at Loyola University, New
Orleans College of Law, where she teaches in the related fields
of constitutional law, criminal law and procedure.
She is a scholar on incarceration law and brings much
needed transparency to incarceration practices in the United
States. She integrates law, history, public health, and the
arts in her efforts to educate broad audiences about the human
costs of incarceration. Professor Armstrong is a graduate of
Yale Law School, the Princeton School of Public and
International Affairs, and New York University.
I'll turn to Senator Cotton now to introduce the final
witness, Mr. Charles Lehman.
Senator Cotton. Thank you.
Charles Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute where
he works on the Policing and Public Safety Initiative and as a
contributing editor of City Journal. His work has appeared in
outlets, including The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal,
National Affairs and National Review.
He has discussed public safety policy before the House of
Representatives and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and at
colleges such as Carnegie Mellon and Cornell. He's a 2023 and
2024 Robert Novak Fellow with the Fund for American Studies.
Before joining the Manhattan Institute in 2021, he was a
staff writer at The Washington Free Beacon. He's originally
from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He now lives outside Washington
with his wife and sons.
Chair Booker. Thank you very much. And now I'm going to ask
all the witnesses to please rise and raise your right hand.
[Witnesses are sworn in.]
Chair Booker. I'm going to mark that everybody said yes.
Let the record show that is the affirmative, and you all can
sit down now. And you will each have 5 minutes for your opening
testimony, starting with Mr. Winn, and then proceeding to your
left, my right.
Mr. Winn.
STATEMENT OF TERRANCE WINN,
PRISON REFORM ADVOCATE, SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA
Mr. Winn. Hello, and thank you, everyone, for the
opportunity to address you today.
My name is Department of Corrections number 296659 or
Terrance Winn, a native of the plantation known as Angola, by
way of Shreveport. Angola is also known as the Louisiana State
Penitentiary, an 18,000-acre prison larger than the Island of
Manhattan.
My name change took place on December 25, 1989, when I was
a 16-year-old kid and took the life of Jeffrey Owens, and
attempted to take the life of Dejuan Lewis. For my actions, I
was arrested and taken to Shreveport's Juvenile Detention
Center where Judge Gallagher ordered that I be tried as an
adult.
I was immediately taken from juvie and left in a one-man
cell at the Parish jail for my crimes. Judge Hamilton gave me
life without the possibility of parole, plus 25 years to be
served at hard labor. I heard my mother cry when the judge read
the sentence, but I promised her and myself that one day I
would come home.
I was eventually transferred to Angola, at the time, one of
the bloodiest penitentiaries in the world. Upon entering the
gates of that former plantation, one sees a beautiful manicured
lawn. There are flowers and open fields. For one second, I
thought maybe this wouldn't be so bad. That second didn't last.
Within a few days, I was transferred to the infirmary where a
doctor is in charge of determining if a person is fit to work
the fields.
As a 17-year-old, the doctor confirmed that I was fit to
work. I had never worked a day in my life when I found myself
walking out of a gate, rifle was pointed at me, next to a guy
that I didn't know. The line was made up of 125 men. When the
last guy came through the gates, we were counted by the guards
and the field foreman got on this horse and gave an order,
``Walk it out.''
The field is backbreaking work. Every day we would walk for
miles in excessively hot weather, and work sometimes bent over,
on our knees, without breaks for hours. We would go in to eat,
then out again until the day was finished.
Working in the fields, I was forced to goose pick, that's
picking grass with your hands. I was forced to dig ditches. I
was forced to cut the levy with a hoe while officers on horses
looked over us holding rifles. There were a few occasions when
the field warden decided to bring the line in early from work.
Those rare occasions happened when one of the horses would fall
due to the oppressive heat.
If a man fell over, we kept working. If you got injured,
you kept working. Nothing took precedence over going to work. I
witnessed tool fights that led to the death of a man and kept
working. I suffered back a back injury at the age of 25, an
injury I live with today, and I was forced to work until I got
so tired of suffering that I chose to be sent to the hole.
That's the dungeon or administrative segregation.
I spent 30 years of at Angola. Twenty-five of those years I
spent was spent working in the field. I received 75
disciplinary writeups for aggravated work offense. This means
in layman terms, refusing to work. I mostly refused to work
because of the physical pain, more so than out of a rebellious
nature.
I admit though, every time I was told to pick cotton, I
refused to do it. Every time, I chose to go to the dungeon.
$0.02 cents an hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That is the
pay that decided that makes us human and not slaves.
Those $0.02 cents never made me feel better than how I know
my ancestors felt. I felt humiliated every time I had to use
the restroom in the field, every time a horse defecated in my
path as I walked to a work site, every time a guard refused to
let me use the restroom with threats to write me up, every time
a white field foreman called the whole line ``Ns'' or ``Boys,''
and every time a guard took their anger out on me while I
worked.
Was the modern version of slavery better than better for me
than it was for my ancestors? $0.02 cents is what separates
17th century slavery and 21st century slavery. The dungeon
replaces the whip as punishment. The dungeon is a place of
humiliation where you are stripped of all your possessions and
placed in a jump jumpsuit. You can only have a toothbrush and
toothpaste, nothing else. Just you and your thoughts, and the
sounds of people losing their minds, or fighting, or being
beaten to death.
After 25 years being forced to work in fields, I was
assigned as a tier walker. A job that forces you to be an
inmate guard. The job requires me to walk up and down the
extended lockdown tiers for hours, making sure that no one was
trying to commit suicide. You become a security guard and a
mental health worker, while being labeled as a rat.
I also attended the culinary school of arts in Angola, and
once I completed the course, I became a kitchen worker. My last
job was a nurse's aide, a job that changed my life forever,
taking care of people who were dying and could no longer take
care of themselves. Showing care and compassion for guys in
their final days. That truly changed me.
Thirty years of incarceration at hard labor. I never made
more than $0.16 cents an hour. It would've been easy to come
home and never look back, but when I was released, I found my
old neighborhood plagued with violence and a lack of resources.
So, I immediately knew what I needed to do. I founded my
organization, PIPE, Priorities, Intentions, And Practical
Exchanges. Our mission was and remains today to make life
better for our community members, especially our youth, while
working with former incarcerated people in their reentry
process.
Post-incarceration syndrome is real and our people need
support. I still think about my family all those years serving
time with me. I think about the families of people who are
incarcerated today. All of them directly impacted as well. My
goal during the work I do is to keep our communities safe and
thriving. I believe we can create a system that does not simply
punish perpetrators, but works with them while investing in our
community and taking care of victims.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Winn appears as a submission
for the record.]
Chair Booker. Thank you, Mr. Winn. Ms. Turner.
STATEMENT OF JENNIFER TURNER, PRINCIPAL HUMAN
RIGHTS RESEARCHER, AMERICAN
CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Ms. Turner. Chairman Booker, Ranking Member Cotton, and
distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, on behalf of the
American Civil Liberties Union, I thank you for the privilege
of testifying before this Subcommittee today.
Incarcerated labor has a long and problematic history in
the United States rooted in racial oppression. The roots of
modern day prison labor programs can be traced to the end of
the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment to the
Constitution, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude
except as punishment for a crime.
Given this gaping loophole, States turn to incarcerated
labor as a means of partially replacing chattel slavery in the
free labor force slavery provided. Today, our Nation
incarcerates over 1.2 million people in State and federal
prisons, and two out of three of these incarcerated people are
also workers.
In most instances, the jobs these people in prisons have
look similar to those of millions of people working on the
outside. They work as cooks, janitors, and groundskeepers, or
in laundries and factories.
Outside the prison walls, incarcerated people provide vital
public services such as repairing roads, fighting wildfires, or
clearing debris after hurricanes. They cultivate and harvest
crops, some on penal plantations situated on land that was
originally the site of slave plantations.
But there are two crucial differences. Incarcerated workers
are under the complete control of their employers, and they've
been stripped of even the most minimal protections against
labor exploitation and abuse. From the moment they enter the
prison gates, they can be forced to work.
More than 76 percent of incarcerated workers report that
they're required to work or face additional punishment, such as
solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their
sentence and loss of family visitation. Illness, injury,
disability, or physical inability to work often does not
relieve them of work duties.
U.S. law explicitly excludes incarcerated workers from the
most universally recognized workplace protections, including
health and safety laws. Incarcerated people sometimes work in
dangerous industrial settings or hazardous conditions that
would be closely regulated and monitored if they were not
incarcerated.
Workers are assigned work in unsafe conditions without the
standard training or protective gear provided in workplaces,
outside prisons. In numerous cases, we documented nationwide
serious injuries and deaths could have been prevented with
proper training, machine guarding mechanisms, or personal
protective equipment.
Incarcerated workers are not covered by minimum wage laws
and are paid on average $0.13 cents to $0.52 cents per hour in
non-industry jobs. More than 80 percent have maintenance jobs
that support the operation of the prison facilities and are
compensated at the lower end of prison pay scales. In seven
States, incarcerated people are paid nothing at all for most
jobs.
Even if an incarcerated worker earns pennies, these low
wages are not theirs to keep. Across the country, prisons
deduct as much as 80 percent from incarcerated people's
paychecks for room, and board, and legal financial obligations.
In the federal prison system, 59 percent of the wages
earned by incarcerated workers employed in the Federal Prison
Industries Program was deducted by the Federal Government.
Prison systems charge incarcerated people, exorbitant costs for
basic necessities like phone calls home, decent food, hygiene
products, and medical care.
Families, many of whom are impoverished themselves, spend
an estimated $2.9 billion a year on commissary accounts and
phone calls. Over half of these families are forced to go into
debt to afford the cost of a relative's conviction and
subsequent incarceration.
However, someone is profiting in the American prison
system. Incarcerated workers produce real profits for State
prisons and State governments, the primary beneficiaries of
forced prison labor. Nationally incarcerated workers produce
more than $2 billion a year in goods and commodities, and over
$9 billion a year in services for the maintenance of the
prisons where they're warehoused.
The captive labor system of American prisons hides the
staggering cost of our country's bloated prison system. The
promise of providing incarcerated people with transferrable
skills and work experience for their eventual reentry into
society often proves illusory.
In reality, the vast majority of work programs in prisons
involve menial and repetitive tasks that provide workers with
no marketable skills or training. Prison industries jobs, and
vocational training programs are declining.
Studies show that people who had some savings when they
leave prison and got jobs after their release were less likely
to recidivate than those who did not. We all have an interest
in prison work being something beyond pure punitive
exploitation. Yet, despite the potential for prison labor to
facilitate rehabilitation, the existing system very often
offers nothing beyond exploitation.
It does not have to be this way. Work in prisons could be
truly voluntary, conditions could be safe, jobs could provide
incarcerated people with marketable skills and vocational
training that will help them to find employment after release.
Incarcerated workers should be paid a fair wage that enables
them to save for the future, support their families, and sets
them up for successful reentry.
To move in this direction, we first must end forced labor
without exception by repealing Federal and State Constitutional
exception clauses, and guarantee incarcerated workers the
standard labor protections available to other workers in the
United States, including minimum wages, overtime pay, health
and safety standards, unionization and collective bargaining,
and protection from discrimination and retaliation.
These recommendations are incorporated into the legislation
led by Senator Booker and the ACLU has endorsed each of these
bills.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today, and provide
background and context for the Subcommittee's important work.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Turner appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chair Booker. Thank you very much, Ms. Turner. Mr. Lehman.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES LEHMAN,
FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. Lehman. Thank you, Senator, and thank you to the
Committee for the opportunity to address you.
As you're aware, there are some 1.2 million people in
American prisons today. Ninety-five percent will eventually
return home. A key question for today's hearing is whether
their work in prison will prepare them for that return.
I am an analyst to public policy. I am not here to speak to
the legal or normative merits of prison labor. Rather, I want
to make a simple argument. Prison labor makes offenders more
employable post-release and thus less likely to re-offend.
Consequently, prison labor should be viewed as part of
rehabilitation, not an impediment to it.
Many criminals re-offend. Among a cohort of prisoners
released in 2008, two-thirds were rearrested within 3 years.
Reducing recidivism benefits offenders, taxpayers, and society
at large.
The relationship between crime and employment is not
straightforward. Nonetheless, some evidence indicates that
employment conditions affect recidivism risk. One study of 4
million prisoners found that those released into worse labor
market conditions are more likely to re-offend all else equal.
Data on 1.7 million California releasees repeats this
finding, specifically showing employment in construction and
manufacturing reduced recidivism. Why might employment reduce
recidivism? Most obvious reason is that licit wages discourage
criminal employment. Research finds that more money reduces
risk of property but not violent crime, consistent with a model
in which property crime and work substitute.
Beyond the simple relationship, employment might impose
pro-social norms, relieve social pressures, or simply limit
opportunities for offending. The employment-recidivism
relationship is particularly important in the context of
incarceration. Incarceration's effect on recidivism is complex.
Nonetheless, when incarceration causes recidivism, it is likely
by making the offender less employable.
One widely set analysis of Texas data found that
incarceration caused significant increases in re-offending,
reduced subsequent employment and earnings, and increased
dependence on public welfare. Analysis of a cohort of Hungarian
offenders provide similar evidence on prison's effect on
employment.
Why does incarceration reduce employment? Most obviously, a
criminal record scares off employers. In one recent survey of
nearly 1,000 U.S. businesses, less than 40 percent were willing
to hire someone with a criminal record. If employment prevents
recidivism, and if prison can increase recidivism by reducing
employment, crime control policy must help those returning from
prison to get jobs.
How can we do this? One populous solution is to make it
harder for employers to discriminate against offenders. Many
States have implanted policies that automatically expunge
records and prohibit asking applicants of their criminal
background. Unfortunately, these policies do not have their
intended effects and could harm otherwise disadvantage non-
offenders.
Research on Massachusetts ``Ban the Box'' law found that it
actually decreased ex-offenders employment. The laws also
increased discrimination against Black men. Our research has
further found that ``Ban the Box'' reduced young Black men's
employment by 3 percentage points, and increased the employment
gap between white and Black applicants. The evidence is
similarly pessimistic for ``clean slate'' laws.
Our recent comprehensive analysis examining three different
clean slate initiatives finds that expungement has essentially
no effect on employment on average. Policymakers therefore
shouldn't prioritize making offenders employable.
Few interventions are as obvious for this purpose as giving
people jobs in prison. Evidence supports this approach. One
analysis of 77,000 Indiana and Tennessee prisoners employed by
private firms found that participation in prison work is
associated with significant reductions in recidivism at the one
and two year marks compared to a matched control group.
Another following a cohort of 6,000 offenders released in
Minnesota found that those who worked were 24 percent more
likely than controls to find a job, worked more hours, and had
higher total wages, and the number of hours working was
significantly associated with lower recidivism rates.
There's also benefit to prisoners working outside the
prison walls. Evidence suggests that work-release prisoners
being moved to low security facilities and being allowed out to
work during the day improves employment outcomes and reduces
recidivism for property, but not violent offenders or finding
consistent with literature previously discussed.
Other evidence comes from abroad. Research on Italian
offenders found that among those serving more than 6 months,
additional unskilled work reduced the reincarceration rate by
between 3 and 10 percentage points.
Another analysis found that incarceration in Norwegian
prisons caused a steep reduction in re-offense, about 29
percentage points, driven entirely by those who did not work
prior to their incarceration. That group also saw an increase
in future employment and earnings. To this last, some objected
Norwegian prisons are not like American prisons. The former
generally regarded as unusually humane. The latter is unusually
inhumane.
Bracket the fact that evidence from other nations and from
U.S. States indicates that prison labor reduces recidivism. The
basic problem of this view is that it assumes the quality of
U.S. prisons cannot be affected by policy. There's much we
don't know about what works in prison employment. This is a
general problem. Most federal rehabilitation programming is not
evidence-based.
Any reforms to federal prison labor practices should
incorporate a commitment to research on what works. That said,
the evidence suggests that having incarcerated people work
makes them more employable and less likely to re-offend. On
this basis alone, we ought see prison labor as part of the
rehabilitation equation.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lehman appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chair Booker. Thank you, Mr. Lehman. Helpful testimony.
Professor Armstrong.
STATEMENT OF DR. ANDREA ARMSTRONG,
DR. NORMAN C. FRANCIS
DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF LAW, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF LAW, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
Professor Armstrong. Good afternoon, Chairman Booker,
Ranking Member Cotton, Members of the Subcommittee, and Senator
Kennedy. Thank you.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
And as Senator Booker mentioned, I teach in the areas of
constitutional law and criminal law. I also research
incarceration, law and policy. I have also visited and audited
prisons and jails across the country.
In March, 2024, Mr. Farrell Scarborough, an incarcerated
worker at Louisiana State Penitentiary, died after falling from
a flatbed truck and being crushed by heavy lockers. According
to the incarcerated witnesses, there were no guard rails or
safety straps on that truck.
And unfortunately, Mr. Scarborough is not the only
preventable death that has occurred in the incarcerated
workplace. The Associated Press has documented deaths and
significant injuries, including amputations of incarcerated
workers across the Nation.
In a 2021 law review article, ``Beyond the 13th,'' I
discussed four key features of the American incarcerated labor
system. Incarcerated people are forced to work for little, or
even no pay, in some States, in dangerous working conditions
with little value for themselves, their communities, or in
fact, public safety.
Today though, I just want to highlight two features of that
system. One, the coercive context in which incarcerated labor
occurs, and two, the lack of legal protection for incarcerated
work conditions.
So let's go to the first. When you are in the 24 hour a
day, 7 days a week custody of your employer, employee
discipline looks different. It can be much more severe. If your
supervisor, who is also a prison guard, is not pleased by your
work or your job performance, he can send you to solitary
confinement. He can deny you visits with your children or with
your spouse. These prison guard decisions are really difficult
to challenge after the fact.
The Prison Litigation Reform Act makes it hard to access
federal courts, and even if you make it to court, legal
doctrines defer to prison guard decisionmaking. The possibility
of severe punishment can also deter incarcerated workers from
advocating for their own safety.
Refusing to work in dangerous conditions could even lead to
new criminal charges and new sentences in some States. And we,
the general public, have no idea because this forced labor
occurs in spaces that lack independent oversight, transparency,
and accountability.
The second point I want to emphasize is that incarcerated
workers are generally unprotected by existing employment and
workspace law. Incarcerated workers, especially those who are
working for the prison itself on prison grounds, are often not
considered ``employees'' by federal agencies or by courts. This
is in part because Congress has been silent on the matter.
The lack of workplace protection is compounded by the lack
of remedies for job-related injuries. This coercive context of
incarcerated labor, combined with the lack of protection or
remedies, makes incarcerated labor exploitative and dangerous.
Working conditions behind bars can kill and injure
incarcerated workers. It burdens families, it stretches staff
and resources, and can undermine essential purpose of
incarceration, namely, to ensure that crimes do not reoccur.
But we can choose a different path. If the goal is better
public safety through reducing recidivism, we can make
incarcerated labor look like free labor, and that will better
prepare incarcerated workers for future freedom. This could
include measures to protect incarcerated workers and
workplaces, easing access to courts and enhancing transparency,
including data on work-related injuries and discipline.
In conclusion, incarceration law and incarceration labor
touches us all. Some of us send money to support a loved one
behind bars because they only earn pennies a day. This hurts
rural, poor, and minority communities in particular.
Some of us buy goods from private corporations that were
produced with prison labor. And prisons are also our
institutions. They operate in our name with our tax dollars,
and when incarcerated labor is exploitative, it undermines
public trust and legitimacy of our criminal justice system. I
urge this Subcommittee to treat these issues with the urgent
attention that they deserve.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my research, and
thank you for holding this hearing.
[The prepared statement of Professor Armstrong appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chair Booker. Thank you, Professor Armstrong.
I'm going to defer to my colleagues who, I think, may have
other places to go. And we'll start with Senator Padilla.
Senator Padilla. Thank you, Senator Booker.
Yes, indeed. We are excited about an--I'm not going to
preempt the announcement, but some good news coming out of the
Bureau of Reclamation at Department of Interior this afternoon
for California water users. Okay, I'll leave it at that for
now, but appreciate the flexibility here. And thank you to all
the witnesses for participating today.
You know, to help address the growing wildfire threat
facing California, we have long relied on the Conservation Camp
Program, which is our State Department of Corrections volunteer
firefighting program. The incarcerated individuals who
volunteer to join the conservation camp program have, at times,
comprised of to 40 percent of the State's total firefighting
force. So it's not insignificant.
And I do want to make it a point to emphasize the voluntary
nature of this program. It's voluntary, but so attractive that
we've often see waiting lists for incarcerated individuals who
want to participate in the program.
Now, many participants in California's firefighting program
have described the experience as valuable for building real
life skills. And more than 300 formerly incarcerated
firefighters have used these qualifications and actual
certifications--it's not just the skills, the training and the
experience, but certification--to go on to earn a job with Cal
Fire, the State's firefighting force.
I think this program can serve as a model for how we help
incarcerated individuals develop useful skills and the
necessary certifications to help them find meaningful well-
paying work post-release.
My first question is for Ms. Armstrong. How can we build on
this model in California to help establish clear links between
prison labor work and opportunities for employment post-
release?
Professor Armstrong. One of the most significant features,
I believe, of the California system is the fact that legal
roadblocks to people serving as firefighters upon release were
removed, right?
And so when we think about what happens behind bars, the
things that people are trained for, it is also just as
important to look at; are there barriers to them assuming those
professions and vocations after the fact?
The second thing that I would mention about the California
program is something that I hear from other programs, and I
believe Mr. Winn also mentioned today, which is being trained
in the helping professions; teaching, tutoring, nursing. Those
professions that help others can be life-changing in terms of
the rehabilitative potential of prisons. Thank you.
Senator Padilla. Thank you. And sort of a follow up
question for Ms. Turner, can you speak to the issue of helping
incarcerated individuals obtain the necessary certifications
themselves to actually utilize the skills they're developing in
post-release work?
Ms. Turner. Yes. Thank you for your question, Senator. Yes,
this is an important feature of vocational programs that will
be successful and set people up for success upon release. But
the reality is that more than 80 percent of incarcerated
workers are engaged in maintenance work. That isn't setting
them up for those jobs.
But, certainly, the path forward requires us to expand
these vocational programs, to expand job opportunities that can
directly lead to work opportunities after lease, including
direct lines to employment, letters of recommendation, skills
training in industries that are projected to increase in the
workforce.
The reality is that many, even of our vocational programs,
are in areas of work that are declining. Legislative oversight
of prison industries programs in Texas and Mississippi, for
instance, found that they were training people in jobs that are
little to no job prospects such as garment industry,
manufacturing, or farm work. But there are examples of programs
and opportunities here to provide people with the training that
will set them up for gaining stable employment after they're
released from prison.
Senator Padilla. So I know there's different types of
vocational programs. You see examples----
Ms. Turner. Absolutely.
Senator Padilla [continuing]. In States across the country.
Coming back to California for a second. Now, California takes
steps to ensure that the wildfire work which comes with risks,
it's not easy, it can be dangerous, so it's important to make
sure that the program is truly voluntary. We're not forcing
inmates to perform this work.
But how often are incarcerated individuals recruited to
work jobs, and how do we make sure that they are not being
forced to work? Can you comment on what policies and safeguards
should be in place to ensure that it's truly voluntary and not
forced labor?
Ms. Turner. Sure. So currently nearly all States in the
federal prison have compulsory work programs and there are
clear punishments levied against people who are unwilling or
unable to perform the job assigned to them, including solitary
confinement, denial of good time credits, or opportunities to
reduce their sentence, and denial of access to call home or
have family visitation. We need to end these punishments.
We also need to amend the 13th Amendment and State
exclusion clauses that permit forced labor and slavery for
people convicted of a crime. But the implementation is
important as well, ending punishments that are levied against
people for inability or refusal to work, and ensuring that when
people are unable to work because of a disability, infirmity,
age, will receive permission not to perform the job assigned to
them, including people with disabilities.
And we need to comply with existing federal disability
laws, which most prisons are not doing so with respect to job
assignments for people with disabilities.
Senator Padilla. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Turner. And I just wanted to add, California is not
alone in using incarcerated workers to fight wildfires. It's
one of at least 14 States that does so. And not all these
programs are fully voluntary, and we have seen serious injuries
and deaths result from this work, both for non-incarcerated and
incarcerated workers.
But when people are desperate to support themselves and
need to support themselves while incarcerated and facing legal
and financial obligations--that $1 an hour, for instance, in
California is a very powerful incentive. And we see some States
truly rely on incarcerated workers to perform this work.
Including for instance, Georgia, one-third of counties rely
on incarcerated firefighters to respond to motor vehicle
accidents, wildfires, and house fires, and these workers are
not paid a cent for their work.
Senator Padilla. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I appreciate the
accommodation.
Chair Booker. Thank you very much. Senator Cotton.
Senator Cotton. Ms. Turner, in your opening statement you
called the so-called Exception Clause of the 13th Amendment,
``a gaping loophole.'' Do you believe that is a loophole?
Ms. Turner. I do. I do. It is the foundation of prison
labor programs today, and it led to the labor programs we have
today that we have truly have forced labor.
Senator Cotton. So you think loophole implies it was
unintended, or accidental, or omission. You think the people
who drafted the 13th Amendment and ratified it didn't know what
they were doing?
Ms. Turner. Oh, I think it was absolutely intentional, and
it allowed for the use of incarcerated people to replace this
free slave force provided by chattel slavery. And we saw in
some States, for instance, in Texas, following the passage of
13th Amendment, the State of Texas purchased 10 plantations and
began running them as prisons, some of which still run today.
Senator Cotton. Did prisons use labor before the 13th
Amendment was passed?
Ms. Turner. Yes. So it was just continuing a longstanding
practice. It wasn't replacing anything.
Ms. Turner. It expanded. It expanded. It allowed for the
expansion of prison labor programs, and in fact, became so
lucrative that it led to passage of laws such as the Black
Codes that encouraged the reincarceration of Black men on
specialist charges to continue to work in prisons and to
provide profit for prisons both in the North and in the South.
Senator Cotton. So, and it's your testimony that we need to
have a constitutional amendment to repeal that clause?
Ms. Turner. Yes----
Senator Cotton. Okay okay.
Ms. Turner [continuing]. There's no place for forced labor
in the United States.
Senator Cotton. Mr. Lehman, as I already mentioned in my
opening remarks, in 1930, this Committee, ``unanimously
conceded that idleness in prison breeds disorder and that
prison jobs help maintain orders in prison by reducing idle
time.'' Does modern day research back up that assertion from
almost 100 years ago?
Mr. Lehman. In generally, yes. Although I think it's an
undervalued question. The Minnesota study, I said it earlier,
finds that there's a strong association between the fraction of
time that's spent working and the level of misconduct
declining.
That study cites prior research including, I believe, a
study of the federal prison employment system, then called
UNICOR, which finds that compared to matched controls, people
who work are less likely to engage in misconduct in prisons.
And the causal story is pretty straightforward. If you're
working, it's hard to engage in misconduct.
Senator Cotton. Okay. And the Committee back then also
found that prison jobs help inmates acquire, ``the habits of
industry.'' Is that still the case today?
Mr. Lehman. Yes. And I think the strongest finding in the
evidence is that prison labor, even unskilled prison labor--and
this goes back to the study of Italian workers--even unskilled
prison labor increases labor force involvement, increases
wages, increases earnings following incarceration. That to me
says if it does nothing else, prison labor is a way to improve
people's labor market outcomes after they leave prison.
Senator Cotton. Okay. Senator Booker has a bill that would
require prisons to pay inmates the same federal minimum wage
that law abiding American workers outside prison are entitled
to receive. I want to explore the financial pressures that
Americans face today, thanks to Joe Biden's inflationary
economy. Do prison inmates have to pay for rent or mortgage?
Mr. Lehman. Not to the best of my knowledge, Senator.
Senator Cotton. Pay for grocery bills?
Mr. Lehman. I don't believe so, Senator.
Senator Cotton. Car payments?
Mr. Lehman. No, sir.
Senator Cotton. Insurance payments?
Mr. Lehman. No, sir.
Senator Cotton. Gas to drive to work?
Mr. Lehman. Not to the best of my knowledge.
Senator Cotton. Any other daily expenses that most law
abiding American citizens have to worry about?
Mr. Lehman. With certain conspicuous exemptions in some
States in general, no, prisoners are not responsible for those.
Senator Cotton. Okay. If prisons were forced to pay inmates
those higher wages, probably a lot higher than what the current
minimum wage is, given other democratic proposals, who is
ultimately going to be paying for those higher wages?
Mr. Lehman. In context where they're employed by the State
or other public entities. The taxpayer ultimately funds those
public entities. If they're employed by, indirectly, by private
employers, then the people who are paying for those private
employers. But that makes their labor much less competitive in
that context.
Senator Cotton. Thank you. I yield back.
Chair Booker. Mr. Kennedy.
Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Turner, I want to be sure I understand your testimony.
You think prison labor should be voluntary? Is that the ACLU
position?
Ms. Turner. Yes. The majority of workers----
Senator Kennedy. Okay. And do you think----
Ms. Turner. I'm sorry, my microphone was off. If I may
answer on my----
Senator Kennedy. Yes, ma'am. Did you answer yes?
Ms. Turner. My answer is that the majority of incarcerated
workers wish to work, but it is vital that that work be truly
voluntary, and that there is no place to force labor in the
United States.
Senator Kennedy. So that's yes?
Ms. Turner. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. And you think that prisoners who do
work are underpaid? Is that the ACLU position?
Ms. Turner. They are underpaid or unpaid. In your State
many of those workers are unpaid.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. Let's take a maintenance worker,
which I assume includes people working in the kitchen. What do
you think the starting pay ought to be, in my State for a
prisoner?
Ms. Turner. Workers should be paid the minimum wage of the
State where they live. And there are true fiscal arguments in
favor----
Senator Kennedy. Minimum wage?
Ms. Turner. Minimum wage, yes.
Senator Kennedy. Do you think prisoners should have a
401(k)?
Ms. Turner. My opinion is not what we're asking about. I'm
here to provide information and context for the Committee.
Senator Kennedy. Ma'am, do you think prisoners should be
provided with a 401(k)?
Ms. Turner. If I may answer, the reality is that if we paid
incarcerated workers a minimum wage, it would have net fiscal
benefits for the United States.
Senator Kennedy. Yes, ma'am, I'm trying to ask you about
benefits.
Ms. Turner. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. Do you think they should be provided with
a 401(k)?
Ms. Turner. Workers should be eligible to earn into the
social safety net. If they're paid minimum wage, workers will
be able to earn into Social Security benefits to support
themselves.
Senator Kennedy. Is that a yes or no?
Ms. Turner. That does not include a 401(k), but I'm talking
about basic social safety net.
Senator Kennedy. You think prisoners should be entitled to
paid vacation?
Ms. Turner. Workers should be entitled to workers'
compensation when they're injured or maimed on the job, which
happens all too often.
Senator Kennedy. So they should be covered under our
workers' comp law?
Ms. Turner. Yes, absolutely. Prisoners----
Senator Kennedy. Should prisoners----
Ms. Turner [continuing]. Are working in dangerous
conditions.
Senator Kennedy [continuing]. Be allowed to unionize?
Ms. Turner. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. You believe that too? Okay.
Ms. Turner. It's vital that workers be able----
Senator Kennedy. Should prisoners be provided with health
insurance matched by their employer?
Ms. Turner. Workers should be covered by workplace health
and safety guarantees.
Senator Kennedy. Yes, ma'am, what about health insurance?
Ms. Turner. Incarcerated people are already guaranteed a
basic standard of healthcare, so they don't--that is already
guaranteed by U.S. law.
Senator Kennedy. So they don't have health insurance?
Ms. Turner. They're already guaranteed that even though the
medical care they receive is usually substandard and when
they're injured on the job, they often receive substandard
care. They are already guaranteed by law, basic healthcare
protections while incarcerated.
Senator Kennedy. Mr. Winn, just to when what crime did you
commit?
Mr. Winn. Second degree murder and attempted second degree
murder.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. Who did you murder?
Mr. Winn. Jeffrey Owens.
Senator Kennedy. Jeffrey Owens?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. Why did you murder him?
Mr. Winn. I was a 16-year-old kid. Me and Dejuan had a
confrontation, and Jeffrey was an innocent bystander.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. So you shot Jeffrey by accident?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. You intended to murder somebody else?
Mr. Winn. I was defending myself against Dejuan Lewis.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. You shot at Mr. Lewis?
Mr. Winn. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. And you missed?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. And you hit Mr.--what was his name?
Mr. Winn. Mr. Jeffrey Owens.
Senator Kennedy. Mr. Owens? Okay.
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. Did Mr. Owens have a mother?
Mr. Winn. I think everybody born in the world has a mother.
Senator Kennedy. Yes. But was his mother alive----
Mr. Winn. Yes.
Senator Kennedy [continuing]. When you killed him?
Mr. Winn. She's still alive.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. Did Mr. Owens have a father?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. He was alive when you killed him?
Mr. Winn. I don't know about his father's----
Senator Kennedy. You never checked?
Mr. Winn. I mean, as a prisoner in Louisiana, you cannot
check on those type of things.
Senator Kennedy. Did Mr. Owens have any brothers or
sisters?
Mr. Winn. Yes, he did.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. How many?
Mr. Winn. I don't know.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. You mentioned that your mother cried
when you were sent to Angola. Do you know how Mr. Owen's mother
felt? Have you ever reached out to them?
Mr. Winn. May I ask you a question, Senator?
Senator Kennedy. Well, answer mine first.
Mr. Winn. I would answer yours.
Senator Kennedy. Okay.
Mr. Winn. And you're asking me questions that an
incarcerated person cannot answer. I don't know what Jeffrey
Owen's mother did, but human anatomy tells me that yes, his
mother had to cry because she lost a son that she brought into
the world. His father, if he was living, he should have cried.
His brother cried.
Senator Kennedy. Did you ever reach out to Mr. Owens'
family?
Mr. Winn. Sir, you're a Senator from Louisiana? If a person
like me that was incarcerated reached out to any person that's
a victim, that's a sentence. You go to prison for that. And I
was already in prison, so that's a different sentence.
Senator Kennedy. So you couldn't----
Mr. Winn. No.
Senator Kennedy [continuing]. Even write?
Mr. Winn. By law, you cannot reach out to the victim or the
victim's family.
Senator Kennedy. Well, I will tell you. I came today
because I thought we were going to have a--and I hoped we were
going to have a rational discussion based on empirical evidence
on a very complex, nuanced subject. And frankly, I'm
disappointed, you know, Ms. Turner, Professor. I just don't
think these emotional arguments are at all productive in us
trying to solve a problem.
You know, people are in prison for a reason. I believe in
free will. I get the impression that the ACLU position and the
professor's position, I don't know about Mr. Winn's position,
is that you feel sorry for these folks who are in prison. I
wish they weren't there too, but they're there for a reason
that really hurt somebody.
In Mr. Winn's case, he murdered somebody. He actually
killed somebody by accident. He meant to kill this person, and
he shot this other person. He could have killed two. And I'm
kind of disappointed in--we're going to solve this problem with
emotional arguments from people who don't believe in free will
and responsibility. That's just my point of view.
But I thank you for being here, and I'll say this
Professor. I was struck, Professor Armstrong, you keep talking
about coercive context. That the prisoners are working in a
coercive context. It's prison. Prison is a coercive context,
and people are there for a reason. And I think you're in la-la
land if you don't recognize that.
Professor Armstrong. May I respond to that?
Senator Kennedy. Sure, you can respond.
Professor Armstrong. Thank you so much. So I think the
point is in fact that it is prison, but it is when prison is
combined with being forced to work in certain environments that
it can lead to dangerous conditions. And so I think about----
Senator Kennedy. But you have no empirical evidence of
that.
Professor Armstrong. Actually, I think that I do. So
another life of mine is----
Senator Kennedy. We can all cherry pick--I mean, people who
work get hurt sometimes----
Professor Armstrong. Yes.
Senator Kennedy [continuing]. Whether you're in prison or
you're out.
Professor Armstrong. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. Okay.
Professor Armstrong. So I agree. What I'm talking about,
and I think is really important to remember, is that our
incredible system of justice will sentence somebody to a
certain number of years. But what they're not sentenced to is
to lose a limb or to lose a finger because they're working on
defective equipment. Equipment that isn't subject to the same
rules, simply the location of a printing press, whether it's
behind the wall or something that is out in the free world. Its
location should not determine to what extent it is a regulated
piece of equipment.
Senator Kennedy. And you make a valid point. But I've read
some of your writings and some of your work, and I just get the
impression that that that you almost think we shouldn't have
prisons. That people there is no free will that that people
don't choose to commit crimes. And then if they do, they
shouldn't be held responsible for them. And I just don't think
that's--you're entitled to that opinion. It's America.
Professor Armstrong. I don't think I've written that
anywhere.
Senator Kennedy. Your entitled to teach your kids that. But
I don't think most fair-minded Americans agree with you, and
that's just my opinion. I'm happy to have this discussion. I
thank my friend, Senator Booker for calling it. But you all
seem to forget the fact that we're talking about prison folks,
and people are in prison for a reason, and they're there--no
ma'am, Ms. Turner, I'm going to have my say. I understand the
ACLU position. I'm glad you're not in charge because we'd have
a lot more people hurt in this country.
Professor Armstrong. I'd love to continue the conversation
with you, Senator Kennedy.
Chair Booker. You can continue the conversation with me.
I'm grateful for my friend and his sincere questioning. I want
to just jump right in on some of the things that he brought up.
And let's just talk about the workers' safety rules that we've
done for Americans. It's called OSHA.
And there are certain things we've done that we think it's
horrific if we don't do them to protect people from everything,
from the off-gassing of chemicals, to as you said, a printing
press that might have unsafe safety features. When you go into
prison, those basic worker standards that protect people from
all kind of injury, do they apply in prison, Professor
Armstrong?
Professor Armstrong. So the general rule is we don't expect
them to apply, especially for things that are happening behind
the wire. Now, there are limited circumstances where a State
which has adopted its own OSHA Act can in fact choose to cover.
But even then, we see according to research by the National
Employment Labor Project, that those States have also made a
choice not to cover incarcerated workplaces. And so, it really
does lead to this anomaly where the same activity, the same
equipment, is regulated when it's outside, but not inside.
Chair Booker. So what statutory protections in general are
there for people that are behind bars when they're working?
Professor Armstrong. Well, I don't think that we have a
specific statutory protection, federal or State, for people who
were working behind bars.
Chair Booker. And so, again, I agree with some of the
general statements from my colleagues that if you have done a
crime, there should be a related punishment. But work in some
environments, like Mr. Winn was describing, where there's no
regulation for heat exhaustion, for access to water, or access
to facilities, things that we would consider putting workers
out in those conditions almost torturous to just a human being.
That's why the advocacy that we're hearing is that there
should be some kind of protections against that kind of extreme
punishment. Is that right?
Professor Armstrong. That's correct. And I would just
mention two additional things. One, is thinking about the
provision of safety gear, right? And so, for example, there are
cases where people have fallen off of roofs because they didn't
have safety belts, or toe holds, or knee pads. And so thinking
about not just what rules govern the equipment, but also are
they being provided with safety glasses and safety gear?
I think the other part of it is really thinking about the
ways in which what we sentence people to, we sentence them to
years, not particular injuries, and certainly not to
amputations.
Chair Booker. Okay. And Ms. Turner, I just want to say that
you tried to say a few things. I just want to give you an
opportunity to more fully respond just for the record----
Ms. Turner. Oh, thank you.
Chair Booker [continuing]. To some of those issues.
Ms. Turner. Yes. Thank you. Well, Senator Kennedy raised
the issue of wages. He also raised the issue of victims of
crime. And there's a true fiscal argument for paying
incarcerated workers minimum wage. To pay them a fair wage
would actually generate revenue over the long term, and it
would benefit victims of crime who would be paid victim
restitution.
Currently, incarcerated people are saddled with debts for
victim restitution. They're unable to pay back when they're
released from prison, maintain those debts, and struggle to pay
them back. If incarcerated workers are paid a minimum wage,
they'll be able to pay restitution that will put money in the
hands of victims of crime.
It will also allow them to pay child support and support
their families who are currently going into debt to support
their loved one while they're incarcerated. It will allow
incarcerated people to become self-sufficient and to have some
savings to set them up for success upon release. Studies do
show that some savings upon release sets people up for success
and reduces recidivism. It allows them to gain stable housing,
stable employment that in addition, generates tax revenue when
this income is taxed.
Chair Booker. And Senator Cotton came off very common
sense. Well, we make a minimum wage for law abiding citizens,
and they have to pay rent, they have to pay this. How do you
respond to that? Really what sounded very logical.
Ms. Turner. The reality is incarcerated workers are
currently paid pennies per hour, and they don't even see that
much. As much as 80 percent are deducted. And in the majority
of States, room and board is one of those deductions.
In the Federal PIECP Program, in which incarcerated workers
are employed directly by private corporations and are paid a
prevailing wage by law--it's a very small number of workers--
but over two-thirds of their wages are deducted for room and
board.
The reality, too, is that incarcerated people are forced to
pay incredibly extortion sums to stay in contact with loved
ones, to buy warm clothing, medication, medical copays. And
these fees buildup. And their family members who are already
impoverished or struggling from the loss of the income from
their loved one who's incarcerated, have to step into the
breach. And more than half of them go into debt to support
their loved ones in incarceration.
Chair Booker. Right. And that's what I wanted to clarify. I
want to shift to Senator Durbin in a second, but that
incarcerated people actually do pay, are charged for rent.
Ms. Turner. Absolutely.
Chair Booker. They actually are charged for numerous things
on top of that. And should they be making a minimum wage, those
charges now seem much more rational. Yet, at the same time,
from sanitary napkins to telephone calls. I've been stunned on
my visits to prisons how much it costs to buy a tampon in
prison, a bar of soap, or to call a child. It's, as you said,
usury rates.
And so this idea that paying minimum wage would be, in some
way, giving them lavish resources is just not true. In addition
to the fact that you are citing the evidence that from victim
restitution, child support payments, and more, how many times--
and I know this--where a man goes to prison and has children
from a divorced or separated mother who has no help whatsoever
and raises that child in poverty.
I'm very grateful that I'm going to go back to--I will
resume because I really--Mr. Winn, I thank you for enduring
that. I want to give you some more chance to talk. But I do
want take a break for the Chairman of the entire Judiciary
Committee. And I'm grateful that he's here, and I want to let
him have his questioning.
Chair Durbin. Thanks, Senator Booker, for this hearing. And
thank all of you for attending. I apologize. I was down one
floor with the Secretary of State, Blinken, talking about the
situation in our foreign policy and these conflicts are
maddening because I wanted to be here, too. And it's difficult
challenge.
I've tried in my time on the Judiciary Committee in the few
years that I've been Chairman to have a focus on incarceration.
Much of it stems from an article, which I read many years ago
by a man named at Atul Gawande, a medical doctor who now is
working in the administration.
He wrote about the impact of incarceration and particularly
solitary confinement on prisoners, what impact it has on them
as human beings. Who have on many people. And I've kind of
taken up that cause with some success, limited success. I wish
I would've been more. But Mr. Winn, as I read your life story
and what you've been through; 30 years of incarceration, is
that right?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Chair Durbin. Starting at the age of 16?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Chair Durbin. And now, how long have you been out of jail?
Mr. Winn. July the 1st, it'll be 4 years.
Chair Durbin. Four?
Mr. Winn: Yes, sir.
Chair Durbin. And I see that you're actively involved in a
project to try to help others that face that challenge?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Chair Durbin. Tell me about that.
Mr. Winn. Oh, I have an organization called PIPE, which
stands for Priorities, Intentions and Practical Exchanges. And
we do wraparound services for guys that's incarcerated coming
home. We also speak on parole board hearings. We assist in
filing risks for guys, and we do letter writing campaigns.
We do prayer vigils, and we also mentor kids that's facing
incarceration or are on the trajectory of going to prison. And
we try to recorrect the way that they're thinking so that they
don't make the bad decisions that we made to go to prison. So
we just offer them programming so that they could be better
human beings and more productive human beings.
Chair Durbin. What is the highest priority for the ex-
offender? What are they looking for when they're finally
released?
Mr. Winn. Mostly a job. Nothing else really matters because
you playing catch up. So the average person--no, everybody just
coming home, they're trying to take care of themselves. They
come home, a lot of them come home, if you're coming home on
parole, you're coming home with a debt, a debt that never
stopped. So you've got to pay parole fees.
So you need employment to pay those fees so that you don't
go back to jail. So then you need transportation. You need a
phone for communication, to see that whether or not you have a
job. And it's hard, especially where I'm from in Shreveport,
where second chances are really not fitted for you. It's like
if you've got that ex-offender on your back, you don't really
get a job. So a lot of times we have to make our own jobs.
Chair Durbin. Ex-offenders in Chicago have some helping
hands. We have a Congressman Danny Davis, who's one of the best
in terms of finding ways to give incarcerated people a second
chance. Many of them flock to the neighborhoods around where he
lives. Many of the churches there are dedicated to it,
organizations as well.
Some of these people basically need identification cards so
they can prove who they are because they've been gone for so
long, they don't have a driver's license, they don't have
anything they turn to in that regard.
And I think we ought to go out of our way, if they want it,
to give high praise to those employers who employ the ex-
offenders.
Mr. Winn. Yes
Chair Durbin. I've got some friends of mine who are real
estate developers in Chicago who look like high rollers, who
could care less about the little guy. And they're the first to
offer jobs for these people. And I think they deserve
recognition. Many of them probably don't want to advertise it.
They just want to do it, and that's the most important part.
Have you seen that kind of cooperation from businesses?
Mr. Winn. It's certain businesses that does the same thing.
You know, you really have to just put them a part of your
network so that they could give them. But a lot of times, the
job industry, I could speak specifically for Shreveport because
New Orleans is--it's much better in New Orleans because New
Orleans is more of a city of a second chance. But in Shreveport
it's just becoming a part of understanding the needs of guys
that's coming home.
So most people get a yard mowing yards or a lawn service
job. It's easier for you to get, or the trucking industry opens
its arms to people. So guys will go try to get their CDLs if
they can pass that test, because that test in Louisiana is kind
of hard. But guys will go out their way to try to get a
trucking job.
Chair Durbin. Let me just say--my time is finished here and
I want to wrap up--I've kind of had this position for many
years, and I stated every chance I get. I believe that every
Member of Congress every 2 years should do two things. Visit a
foreign country.
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Chair Durbin. Because I don't believe you come to
appreciate your home until you leave it. And second, visit a
prison.
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Chair Durbin. Visit a prison. We make so many decisions,
particularly in the Judiciary Committee about crime and
enforcement of crime, enforcement of law, and that sort of
thing, and how we're going to teach somebody a lesson or make
our country more safer.
And we're doing it based on an image we saw in a movie
somewhere instead of actually visiting a prison, and sitting
down, and talking to the women and men who are there. It'll
change your attitude instantly.
I'm glad I had a chance to have a conversation with you
today. Thanks, Mr. Winn.
Thanks, Senator Booker.
Chair Booker. Mr. Chairman. Before you leave, I just want
to share something for the record, and I just give you so much
credit for it. I came here a decade ago and the Chairman
generously put me under his arm, and let me work with him on
criminal justice.
Chair Durbin. That's a lot to put under your arms.
Chair Booker. Yes, it's a lot.
[Laughter.]
Chair Booker. Brought me to the White House in the first
weeks I was here to sit around a table with then President
Obama. So from its peak, just over a decade ago when I walked
in to the Senate, over the last 10 years, our prison population
is now down in America, 20 percent, representing 40 million
fewer people who've experienced prisons or jails annually. The
Black incarceration rate has been halved in those 10 years, and
Black men now are more likely to graduate college than go to
prison, which is a reversal from a decade ago.
And this, which again, I want to say for my Republican
colleagues, often, you know, correlation, causation, who knows.
But during that same time, crime rates fell farther in the
States that experienced the deepest declines in incarceration.
Your leadership has been extraordinary on that; the fact
that amidst a busy day with a lot of significant things going
on. Thank you for taking the time.
Chair Durbin. Thank you.
Chair Booker. Thank you, sir. Thank you.
I want to jump back in, Mr. Winn, with you because I just
didn't feel that your voice was coming through in the previous
questioning about your experiences. And I appreciate that you
sort of enduring that questioning, and with good nature.
You clearly know that you committed an awful violent crime
at 16 years old. You were not tried as a 16-year-old. You were
tried as an adult, and you got sentenced. Not for 30 years, you
got sentenced to life until a supreme court advocated by
Republicans and Democrats changed this idea that children
should not have a lifetime imprisonment. And so you walked out
after spending--coming in at 16, and then spending almost twice
that time of your life behind bars.
And you've dedicated your life, as many people I know in
Newark, and he knows in Chicago, some of my most effective
people in helping to lower recidivism rates are people who are
like you, who come back with a determination to serve the
lessons you learned, the struggles, the pain, the hardship, the
shame that you went through.
You are doing everything you can through your organization
to try to make sure that others don't walk the same path as
you. Is that correct, sir?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir.
Chair Booker. Thank you. Now, there's one thing that's very
clear to me, and I'm going to ask my colleagues about this as
well, is that we, unlike prisons that we imagine in countries
that we demonize sometimes, we don't believe in torturing
prisoners. Is that correct, Mr. Winn? I said believe, not in
actuality. We can discuss this in a second.
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir. That's true.
Chair Booker. No. Because I know that a lot of our peer
nations call solitary confinement for juveniles torture because
it is proven to have very negative effects on brain
development. The majority of children like you were when you
entered who commit suicide in prison, are those who have served
time in solitary confinement. Our own psychological
associations call it torture.
And so for you to spend this time that you were, iterated
to me, in the whole, as you called it, that I imagine as you
said, hearing those screams and the challenges, I imagine that
that was to you a very unbearable existence.
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir. Oh, it was very unbearable. It makes
you question yourself. Because the first time I was in the
hole, which was for a work-related offense, and I was thinking,
``Man, how am I going to survive this?'' Because it was real
dangerous at that time. But just those cells and people don't
realize that being in solitary confinement, your mind tends to
eat off itself because it's nothing to do. There's no one with
you, you're by yourself.
And so as a 17-year-old kid, you got to understand how to
live with yourself because you really don't know yourself as
17. So you're looking at walls, and these walls starting to
close in, but you know, these walls aren't closing in, but they
are closing in on you and you losing your breath and you have
to call for help.
And when security comes, it's like, ``What's wrong?'' You
are like, ``Man, these walls are closing in.'' He's like,
``Man, you're losing your mind.'' And you know that you're--you
don't think you're losing your mind, but in actuality, you are
losing your mind because those walls aren't closing in, but
they are closing in.
Chair Booker. So this is a hearing on work. And, and I
guess the reason why I'm asking you that is because this idea
of the line between work, building skills, creating soft
skills, and habits, all of the things I often know working with
young people, that if they don't develop the grit, the
determination, wake up at a certain hour, go to work. Those are
very valuable skills. I think the other three folks have said
that, and it prepares you for life.
I guess I brought up the issue of solitary confinement
because it seems like you're making a choice between two
tortures is standing out in the heat without the proper rest or
the proper hydration. Did you see visibly people pass out? Was
it on a regular basis or every so often?
Mr. Winn. Oh, this was like daily. The heat and the
exhaustion, it's going to do something to you.
Chair Booker. So you witnessed people, regularly, through
the heat and the exhaustion passing out. They wouldn't stop the
line. They would keep working. Only when a horse would pass
out, they'd realize at that point, when that beast did that,
this was a time to stop?
Mr. Winn. Yes. And so in your calculation, because you went
into solitary confinement because you refused to pick cotton in
those conditions, am I right, that you felt like this was
inhumane treatment and you are trying to decide what is worse;
the hole or those work conditions?
Mr. Winn. Yes, sir. Yes.
Chair Booker. So then, so I will say, Mr. Lehman, again,
your testimony, I was like cheering parts of it because I think
you and I would agree. And again, you work for an organization
that I've had a lot of agreement with at times, and your data
is unassailable, that in the sense that and, I love that you
pulled in Italy, and I think it was Norway.
The Avera Institute takes groups over to visit some of
these prisons to look at why they might have better recidivism
rates than us and why they might have better--you weren't
affirming here on the record that that kind of work versus--as
I visit prisons, again, my faith is a foundation of who I am.
So I think of the prodigal son, I think of in Matthew 25.
So, I visit prisons all the time, and I see oversubscribed
people trying to get into some of these work programs that are
connected to it. I interview prisoners. What do you think about
these works? But, but there must be for you a line between
what's constructive, and what's dehumanizing, degrading, and
potentially dangerous to your health.
Mr. Lehman. I mean, almost certainly I would be sort of
hard pressed to draw your bright line, Senator, but that seems
reasonable.
Chair Booker. Yes. And so I would imagine if I put you in
charge--and God, you're thinking to myself, thank God you're
not the President of the United States and didn't call me up to
do this job. But if I put you in charge of the Bureau of
Prisons, I imagine from the research that you've done, you
would try to design programs--like we did in a bipartisan way
in the First Step Act--that really are connected to the best
evidence of what lowers recidivism rates.
Mr. Lehman. Yes. And, you know, I'd underscore the First
Step Act when it was passed, there was a review of literature
commissioned by the criminologist James Byrne, by that I cite
in here, to figure out which federal prison rehabilitation
programs are evidence-based. And his answer was essentially
none of them.
Chair Booker. Right.
Mr. Lehman. I agree. You want to pick--and, you know, I'm
potentially more sympathetic than other people in the panel to
the idea that menial labor, that helping to keep the prison
clean has a rehabilitative function. I'm less persuaded by the
importance of high wages.
That said, yes, you want to order prison labor toward those
benefits. There's a lot that we don't know. And I think there's
a lot of space for bipartisan collaboration on the question of
what can we know? Because in principle, Senator, left and right
should be able to agree that work is a thing that makes people
better, if it's good work.
Chair Booker. Right. And I wonder, Professor Armstrong, do
you sort of agree with what Mr. Lehman's saying? Where would
you draw the lines? He doesn't want to draw any bright lines,
but I imagine you would?
Professor Armstrong. I think there's a lot of scenarios in
which work can actually be something that is valuable and also
can help create order and security within a facility.
I think what's really interesting is in my audits and
visits behind the wire, people actually do not want to sit in
their cell for 23 hours a day by themselves. That is not what
they want to do. Instead, the program that is the most
oversubscribed at Angola is the one where they are training
dogs to be helping dogs to assist folks with disabilities who
might need additional work and assistance.
So I think when we think about labor behind bars, one line
that I would draw is, is there the possibility of that person
being able to apply for a job to be able to have some agency or
choice in which job they are training for or learning. And
then, thinking about the connections between that and the
market outside, as Mr. Lehman talked about.
Chair Booker. And, Ms. Turner, I just want to get to this
issue of recidivism, which you've studied, and want to give you
an opportunity from your data when you look at educational and
training programs, that they're one way to set people up for
success.
But I don't think we're considering how earning a wage and
saving money while incarcerated is also a part of that in
lowering recidivism rates. Can you talk about that combination
between constructive work and actually making some of a wage as
well?
Ms. Turner. Yes, absolutely. And I do want to say that the
studies on recidivism largely focus on the very narrowest
category of workers; people employed in prison industries, jobs
who account for only 6.5 percent of incarcerated workers
nationwide. There really aren't studies showing reduced
recidivism rates for the types of maintenance work, janitorial
work, kitchen work, laundry work that the great majority, more
than 80 percent of incarcerated workers are engaged in.
Many workers are tasked with tasks like digging ditches and
cutting grass, and that's not necessarily going to help them
get employment after they're released in prison. And so it's
important to distinguish the data here. And in fact, when we
talk about forced prison labor, a great majority of this is not
helping people. And people are earning very little, very little
money. Pennies per hour, in 7 States, no money at all.
But studies do show that gate money or some savings when
people are released from prison, will improve outcomes for
people. If people are paid minimum wage, not only are they able
to support their families and be self-sufficient while
incarcerated and their families won't be resulting in going
into debt as more than half of families with a loved one do.
But instead, we'll have some savings to pay first and last
month's rent and have stable housing, be able to potentially
start a business support themselves while they seek out
employment and higher paid jobs that provide meaningful skills.
Vocational training will lead to better employment. This is a
reality. This is what the study shows. This is at least what we
know so far. But both are vitally important.
As it as it is now, workers not only cannot support
themselves while they're incarcerated, but they leave prison
saddled with debts that attach to their criminal conviction,
legal, financial obligations that they can't pay while they're
incarcerated, and struggle to obtain employment after the
release.
I also want to mention, we talked about licensing
restrictions that bar people from employment. And California is
one example where people working battling wildfires were
initially barred because of their criminal conviction from
working as firefighters.
But the reality is that State licensing restrictions bar
many formerly incarcerated people from engaging in work
directly related to the work that they learned and took on
while incarcerated. And these State licensing restrictions
often aren't related to their crime of conviction.
It's one thing to say you can't be involved as an
accountant if you have a white collar embezzling conviction,
for instance. But someone who's worked as a hospice aide in
prison who's learned, who's worked for years tending to dying
and sick incarcerated people may be barred in many States from
achievement, from obtaining work as home healthcare aides or
hospice nurses. And that's a problem as well.
And while we look to the solutions that ensure people can
succeed when they reintegrate into their families and their
communities, we also have to consider ending these barriers to
employment for people after they're released.
Chair Booker. That's excellent.
And Mr. Winn, you can give firsthand insights of
distinguishing between work. You had said, I think very
compellingly in your testimony, that your experience, you had
working your fears, but you worked other jobs including a tier
walker, a culinary school, and a nurse's aide.
And you said something really profound in your testimony
about the nurse's aide position. You said, I think you used
words, had a transformative impact on your life. Can you
explain that differentiation and the value of working jobs that
have an impact on people after prison?
Mr. Winn. When you working in the field, you don't feel
like that has any value. You don't feel like you're going to
get out. You know that you don't want to get out and do that
anymore. When you working in culinary, you know that you're
setting yourself up to get a good job after incarceration. When
you get a nurse's aide, you would like for that--if you have a
compassion for it, you would like for that to open up the
doors.
But like Ms. Turner said, in Louisiana being an ex-
offender, you really can't get a job in that field even though
you have the skills to do it. That door isn't open for you. But
people in prison work, they try to get the skills that'll get
them a good job when they come back into society.
Chair Booker. And what do you say to Senator Cotton who
said that cleaning toilets and mopping floors, that it seemed
like he was trying to indicate that there's some kind of
dignity in that, or it's important to do. And maybe we as
Americas have no problem with thinking people who've committed
heinous crimes would have to do that stuff. How do you speak to
that?
Mr. Winn. It's kind of hard to speak to it because he has a
fixed mindset. But anybody that's open-minded know that that's
kind of like a degrading job, but it's a job that people need.
And so, you know, when you go in a hotel, you want to walk into
a clean hotel room. So we know that someone that cleans
toliets, cleans rooms, that's a job for them.
But when you're coming from incarceration for doing for
committing crime, right, that's not a job that you have asked.
You have aspirations to come home and you want to do something
more worthwhile?
Chair Booker. And I imagine the sense of I am paying my
victim compensation, I am paying for my children's well-being.
Mr. Winn. Yes.
Chair Booker. So if those were attached to a salary that
was more commensurate with the work, I would imagine people
would want to find that pathway to redemption through that
work. Is that correct?
Mr. Winn. Oh, yes. Because the average person does work
working in Angola, that I can speak specifically about, because
I did 30 years of my life there, when a guy moves from making
$0.02 cents an hour to making, let's say, $0.16 cents an hour,
a lot of those guys be saying, man, I'm going to save this
little money to send my daughter something. I'm going to save
this to buy my kids some tennis man. So don't ask me to buy you
nothing from canteen because I'm not buying you anything. I
want to send my mama something.
So they'll save, save, save, save. It might take them a
month to buy whatever it is, 2 months, 3 months to do it, but
they feel a sense of being a man because now I can provide
something to my kid or I can provide something to my mother.
And that's big for a person in prison.
Chair Booker. Thank you.
Professor Armstrong, as we get ready to close, I just want
to ask is there some points that you came here to make that you
weren't able to make yet?
Professor Armstrong. Thank you for that opportunity. So I
think one thing that's really important is to understand the
ways in which we kind of harm our own goals and our own
intentions, right? So if the idea is that a person by the end
of their sentence has paid their debt because that is what they
are sentenced to, then when they leave the prison, they should
be able to earn a living and return as someone's neighbor.
So there was a reference, I believe, to programs in Norway.
And what I think is remarkable about those programs is that
they are really looking at who comes back to us as a neighbor,
right? And so we can have debates about, you know, what an
appropriate sentence is, but in no democratic and transparent
society, do we sentence people to a term of years and then say,
yes, but it's okay to kill them or to injure them, or for them
to have amputated limbs, right? That can't be a part of our
judicial sentence. And any sentence that would include that we
would say is barbaric.
And so it's worth thinking about the ways in which we can
make incarcerated labor look as close as possible to free
labor, and that will serve all of the goals and purposes that
have been mentioned today. Thank you.
Chair Booker. Mr. Lehman, I'm grateful for you taking time.
I know this is not easy to come here but do you have any final
words to say?
Turn on your microphone.
Mr. Lehman. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate the
opportunity. You know, I think that the reality that we have to
deal with is that it is easy to wish that people can
reintegrate into society. It's much harder to accomplish that.
I talked about, in my testimony briefly, ``Ban the Box''
laws or ``Clean Slate'' laws, and the surprising non-effect on
employment following release. And a straightforward explanation
for that is that it is not necessarily the criminal record
alone that makes it harder for people to get jobs afterwards,
that employers are seeing something different in ex-offenders.
Similarly, it's great when vocational-led works. On average,
vocational-led doesn't work. It's very hard to get vocational-
led right in an incarcerated context.
That doesn't mean that there aren't strategies. One
strategy, you know, if I have 20 seconds for your attention,
Senator, the thing I would recommend you think about is
employment insurance for ex-offenders which in surveys increase
willingness to hire them by 25 percent.
And I think it's a totally underexplored policy idea. There
are options on the table. They all start with admitting that
the problem is a lot harder than removing impediments. It's
about taking people who are often profoundly dysfunctional and
trying to get them into a position where they're less
dysfunctional. That's an extremely challenging problem. To be
honest about that, there's really no room for success.
Chair Booker. Thank you, Mr. Lehman. Ms. Turner.
Ms. Turner. Thank you. I just want to underscore that
prison labor is a unique arrangement. The employer is the
jailer. The employer has complete control over incarcerated
workers, and incarcerated workers are uniquely vulnerable
workforce.
They've been stripped of basic workplace protections. They
have no say in the work assigned to them, and there's no
oversight or regulation over workplace conditions. And this
leads to predictably awful outcomes, including permanent
disability and deaths.
And we also have a tremendous lack of information and data.
I spent years researching this, and we filed for Freedom of
Information requests with every State Department of Corrections
and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And only about half of the
States responded.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons could not even refuse to tell
us the number of incarcerated workers in federal prisons who
are working maintenance jobs. We know a lot about prison
industries programs, which as I've mentioned before, is about
6\1/2\ percent of incarcerated workers job assignments. We know
very little about how many people are working.
We are extrapolating from surveys conducted by the Bureau
of Justice Statistics. But there's really a need for more
information about injuries workers sustain. For instance, AP
filed FOIA requests for California Prison Industry Authority.
We know that 600 injuries were reported over a 4-year
period, but most of those records are redacted. We know a fair
amount. We know a lot of people were injured suffered eye
injuries because they weren't provided safety goggles. But we
don't really know about everything that's happening in prison.
We need both legal protections work, standard workplace
protections, wage and hour protections, the right to unionize,
and the end of forced labor. We need to end forced labor, and
we need to protect these workers because what is happening
today is for many workers, purely exploitative and violates our
human rights commitments.
Chair Booker: Thank you very much.
So, Mr. Winn, this is how we're going to do this. You're
going to say your final words. I'm going to say my final words,
and then I'm going to submit for the record, unless there's an
objection, and I don't see any of my colleagues objecting, a
section of a documentary that I think will give more color to
your words, frankly, and then, I'm going to gavel out.
Chair Booker. Does that sound good, Mr. Winn? You, me,
video, we're done.
Go ahead, Mr. Winn.
Mr. Winn. Okay. We need to separate punishment from
exploitation because to sentence a person to life that's
punishment. You exploit a person by sending them in the fields
for no money because there are people behind those walls that
are mothers and fathers. We understand it. Victims have been
left, but those people behind those walls could work, pay the
victims.
That's paying the debt to society because we never factored
that in. It's all about punishing, punishing, punishing,
punishing. And it's all about let these big businesses get free
labor from these guys in prison. But that's exploitation.
But just look at it from a different angle. That the guys
and the women in prison work, and they can pay the victims
back. Let them and they can take care of their families. We
need to understand that those are humans.
But a lot of people don't look at it as those guys and
women being humans. They're prisoners. So we dehumanize them in
ways by just saying prisoner, instead of saying, Senator Cory
Booker is now incarcerated. No. 413, whatever his number is,
that's who it is so now don't have any emotional attachments to
him. He's no longer a part of the human race.
But we'll put a dog behind a cage. If we leave a dog in our
car and go in the grocery store and come back with the windows
up, we're going to incarcerate the person that left that dog.
So we give more care and concern about that dog than we do that
human being that's trapped inside of a cell when the
temperatures are 110 degrees, and that tier doesn't get any
ventilation, and he's falling out or he dies behind those bars
because he committed a crime.
So the crime takes more precedence over the human. So
there's no human decency when you become a convicted felon. So
we need to just start separating that punishment and that
exploitation. And we need to start understanding, and
realizing, and not forgetting the fact that those are human
beings.
Like Senator Kennedy was asking me about, do I think about
the mother of the victim? Of course. So that's a punishment
that I live with every day of my life that he would never
understand. Because when you commit a crime, and you really
change, and you're really remorseful for it, that's a
punishment that you would never, ever overcome. So I live with
a daily punishment that no one can see, that no one can
understand, but a person that did it. So should I be punished
for the rest of my life by society, also? Thank you.
Chair Booker. You know, Mr. Winn, I felt uncomfortable when
he was questioning you. And I think it's because exactly what
you're saying. I've watched so many young men, young Black men
at these terribly young ages get engaged in a world that just
has them end up dead or has them end up in prison.
And we deny them, as you said, it almost sounds like a--
just their number. We deny them their humanity, and we reduce
them to the lowest, worst day of their lives. That's their
entire definition. That one moment that he replayed with you,
that becomes the totality of their being. And we don't see the
full human being.
There's not a person in this vaunted Senate Chamber right
now who hasn't desperately needed grace in their lives. And
grace, by its very definition, is unmerited love and kindness.
You didn't deserve this. And the quality of our grace in this
country worries me sometimes because we don't extend it to even
an individual like you who spent decade after decade after
decade in prison for a heinous act you did when you were 16.
The sum total of who you are is not that crime. You are every
day working to define the totality of who you are and these
ideals of redemption, these ideals of grace and rehabilitation.
And ultimately, the quality that we manifest in our society
is as much of a reflection of the people who are incarcerated
as those who are doing the incarcerating us. What story are we
telling about ourselves?
And so, I just want to say in particular to you today, your
voice here mattered. Your voice added a lot of clarity. You are
a firsthand person to experience this at a time, as my
colleague said, where most Americans do not go into prisons to
see what's really going on, don't sit down to listen to people
we incarcerate. Well, I don't believe there are any throwaway
people.
So I'm grateful for your presence here as I am for all
three of the--all four of the witnesses. It is a very important
conversation. And evidence suggests we could do a lot better
toward empowering people to recidivate--excuse me, to return
home and not recidivate. And that we could have a prison system
that does not torture people, harm people, injure people, make
them more likely to be sexually assaulted or discriminated
against.
That's what we're striving for. And anyone who looks at
American prisons and jails today, and says this reflects the
best of who we are and doesn't need any improvement, is just
wrong, deeply wrong, and is implicated, in my opinion, as a
barrier to trying to create more substantive evidence-based
reforms.
I want to play the video, please.
[Video is shown.]
Chair Booker. I want to thank the Ranking Member, Senator
Cotton. I want to thank each of our Subcommittee Members who
came today. I want to thank our Subcommittee Members that may
be submitting questions for the record. I want to thank the
witnesses for testifying today.
I want to remind Members of the Subcommittee that questions
for the record are due a week from today, Tuesday, May 28, at 5
p.m. And I ask the witnesses, I know this is a burden with all
that you-all do, but I ask the witnesses to respond to those
questions. Not just in a timely manner, what it says here, but
as thorough as possible.
Chair Booker. All of you are extraordinary in your capacity
to illuminate this situation. I ask you to do that.
I want to again thank you for this hearing. I thought the
conversation was constructive and meaningful.
With that, I gavel out. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:20 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows.]
A P P E N D I X
Submitted by Senator Booker:
American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), Prison Labor in
America....................................................... 91
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), An Examination of Prison
Labor in America.............................................. 103
The Center for Law and Social Policies (CLASP), The Unethical Use
of Captive Labor in U.S. Prisons.............................. 109
National Employment Law Project (NELP), 2024 Report Incarcerated
Workers Disasters............................................. 115
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), State Sanctioned Slavery
Examining Forced Labor in Prisons............................. 144
Worth Rises, An Examination of Prison Labor in America........... 154
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