Inmates Draw Income From Inside PrisonEssay Preview: Inmates Draw Income From Inside PrisonReport this essayPrison art continually adds to the curiosity of society and is gradually being sought after for many different reasons an individual may have. It does not matter if one is a first timer or a lifer, a correctional officer, the warden or a member of society, the visual language of art in prison cannot be escaped and is everywhere. “Prisons are full of people with great potential. Its sad that so many are not allowed to cultivate it, but are just discarded like toxic waste.” Tommy Silverstein, Leavenworth Prison, quoted in North Coast Xpress Newspaper (April-May 1996). As a former inmate my intention is to educate, enlighten and encourage the importance and significance of sales of prison art to the public through my own personal experiences. I was incarcerated from 1986 to 1990, when there were not any opportunities to sell the art to the public known to me, whereas now there been a few organizations that have been created successfully.
For an inmate to be able to draw and submit their work for sale to the public builds responsibility and a sense of worthiness because they are able to acquired necessities from the commissary. They can send money home lessening the burden their incarceration has placed on those tending to the needs of the inmates family; therefore directly assisting financially. More importantly, creating and selling art instills a sense of self-esteem which is a very important element in reentering society. The sales would serve the dual purpose of helping the rehabilitative process and providing an avenue for offenders to show remorse for their crimes by supporting crime victims programs with a percentage of the sale being donated.
Art is one of the engines that drive prison culture, its economy, level of respect and the relationship between cellmates and of being in custody. Like the surrounding coils of razor wire, the place of art in prison is constant, silent and never sleeps. Throughout prison, the air is thick with a kind of creativity that cleverly gets a person through the day. Here a good memory is essential, an important survival and art making tool. Images are remembered, for what they store in the memory is the only thing that belongs to them that cannot be stolen. Artwork seems to be a great way for an inmate to spend his-her time because in order to produce such artwork one must think and contemplate about his-her past which is exactly what prison is for. In fact, the very product of prison labor can even “moralize” convicts, turning them into “real” people with real ambitions and work schedules, real income, and real motivation.
I was incarcerated for four years and drew many cards for myself as well as for fellow inmates made from what was considered contraband. According to the prisons policy because the materials used were not included on my personal item list. The materials were considered illegal and many times were confiscated. I “employed” a group of women for a various “jobs”, including acquiring needed materials such as manila folders and coloring pens and pencils, even extracting the color from jelly beans and kool-aid. Some colored, some took orders, while some delivered and collected payments in form of commissary items or from favors such as using someone elses telephone time. (Patrysha Freniere, personal communication, October 17, 2007)
Art supplies can be tiresome and time-consuming for inmates who more frequently turn to scavenging the trash and even stealing from offices where they were assigned. The arts served as one of the strongest economic exchanges in prison. Respect in the general prison population is equated with what a person is capable of doing. Small frail body types who can produce lifelike, hand drawn portraits on envelope sized cards or even on typing paper can attract as much respect and power as a body builder covered with tattoos. In a way considered almost magic, the artist can unlock the mysteries of reason, escape the confines of the cell and bring loved ones into focus. To copy something with photographic fidelity is highly respected and considered an exceptional talent. An inmate talented in photorealism has a skill compared to that of a magician.
Ed Mead, founder of the Prison Art Project (2001), wrote “Im a former political prisoner who was sending money in to those left behind when I came up with the idea of lessening my burden by providing progressive prisoners with the means to sell their crafts and artwork on the Internet.” The Prison Art website, www.prisonart.org was created to provide an online outlet for the sale of crafts and artwork created by prisoners.
Currently, the largest employer of convicts in the United States is Federal Prison Industries (Unicor), with 18,000 prisoners making some 150 products, including safety goggles, air force jet wiring, and body armor and road signs. Combined with the nations entire fleet of private prison industries, the number of convict laborers across the country reaches 72,000. Unicors products are considered poor quality, and consistently inferior to the private sectors products. They cost more to make, have higher defaults, and take longer to procure (Parenti 1999), even in Texas, where prisoners do not even get paid to work.
Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT and T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstroms, Revlon, Macys, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours
The Prison Workforce Survey at the University of Chicago, on the other hand, is an attempt to shed some light on the dynamics of the prison labor industry as a whole, a field that has been plagued by a growing list of misdiagnoses and misstatements.
In 1980, a survey of prisoners found that 60% of state prisoners had been physically assaulted at least once or repeatedly. Twenty years later, by 2010, that number had fallen to less than 7% of states with the most prison labour workers. Although the survey is small, it shows that state prisoners in the prison workforce were on average much more likely to be beaten and even killed in the military. In 2010, a national survey by a dozen state prison labor organizations found that almost three quarters of state prisoners have known at least one police officer or civilian who was sexually assaulted. These findings suggest that more than half of the population will be sexually assaulted during a prison term.
In 2005, a nationwide survey of 16,300 state prisoners found that 44% of state prisoners had been physically assaulted before, 10% before they were caught and 11% after the end of the term.
The survey findings suggest a growing interest in prison contracting, the most widely practiced forms of prison labor since the 1970s. As the prison workers reported in 2005, the prison industry employed more prisoners in 2006 than any other type of institution, but almost half did not report any prison-related violence. Prison-related violence is more widespread outside of prisons. For example, only five states reported inmate deaths in 2006 compared to 40% of workers in the overall prison labor field. (As a result, only 10 states (18 percent) reported inmate deaths within the prison industry during the 2008-09 period.) (Incidents in which the prison sector responded to reports of prison violence and forced labour were less than 1% of inmate deaths reported. For more on this and other prison-related incidents, see this report by the National Prison Labor Council.)
In 2012, the Prison Workforce Survey at the University of Chicago found that the largest prison construction and management firms held a total of 23.2% of the $19 trillion US private prison workforce. (A large number has been replaced by private prisons. For more on prison construction and management jobs, see this report.) That’s a large number for such low-wage labor as construction, administration and retail.
The prison workforce has been growing increasingly in size steadily over the past decade, partly because of increases in the number of prison construction and management positions and the availability of more effective and long-term correctional options for the workforce, and partly because of increased use of non-prison services and staffing as inmates increasingly have more access to health care, social assistance and the courts outside their state. Since 2000, prison workers have been employed at rates that are lower than in any other sector in the same period in the study’s history. There have been sharp jumps in the percentage of state employee positions created in this field—from 12% in 1993 to 50% by 2000 and 55% in 2011.
While labor trends have shifted, the prison workforce continues to grow. Between 1990 and 2011, the number of inmates in the current labor force was 7.4 million. By 2013, that number would have tripled, to 12.5 million. The number of new prison