This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
The Prison Industrial Complex
PIA (Prison Industry Association) and Slave Labor

America has sweat shops located just inside its concentration kamps (u.s. prisons) where slave labor is the order of the day. While some prisons have different methodical methods, they all use prison labor to gain revenue. Companies set up shop just inside the walls and prisoners are routinely called out of the buildings early for a day of manual labor which wage earnings so pitiful that it amounts to induced servitude. A prisoner who submits himself can earn 65, 75, 85 and 90 cents an hour if he enlists. The workload is heavy and has a consistent momentum.

Prisoners are granted no perks, only the usual access to phones, weekend yard, visits, and canteen, as well as an opportunity to be a consumer in the accumulation of the material made good that are sold via catalogs. Prisoners who work in these factories are routinely subjected to dehumanizing strip cavity searches going and coming out. I just could not bear being exploited and never could subject myself to the subtle molestations of strip searches.

Many prisoners whose families have, through the course of their sentences, either passed away or are under tight economic strain in society from the teeth of this capitalist structure, have enlisted themselves as laborers. Some who have scaled the pay wages hold their positions and are encouraged to be like slave drivers, and often do. But the flip side of this is those prisoners who resist being preyed on. But those who have and continue to give their cooperation for the PIA industries will fight fiercely against any strike or work stoppage.

As often occurs, riots and disputes erupt and that shuts down the yards, etc. When this happens, as I've heard you often hear prisoners on their doors yelling hey open my door for work (industries release). State (CDC) has come up with a remedy by calling these workers "critical workers" when lock down's happen. The CDC doesn't want the making of goods and production to be halted. This is the reason for this deceptive tactic.

Prisoners are being productive of profits and are being economically exploited. For instance, if you didn't have any family you would have no way to provide for yourself. The state only provides tooth powder, lye soap which cracks your skin, just like the tooth powder, and toilet paper. Not to mention the food you're served you often would go hungry, and the combination of these factors would drive, as it has drove many, to enlist into slave labor contract. Then when you make your average $60-90 a month, as have many, they go shop at the canteen or buy the newly introduced packages which companies connected to the prison sell for a profit.

So it's a self generating system that continually loops. What drives cheap labor and huge profits. If socialist consciousness can be instilled inside the minds of the mass prison populations then we could shut down these sweat shops and request/demand true education, that will assist us in progress and development.

-- a CA prisoner, December 2003