Unionizing America's Prisons--Arbitration and State-Use
![handle is hein.journals/indana48 and id is 499 raw text is: UNIONIZING AMERICA'S PRISONS-ARBITRATION AND
STATE-USE
[O]ne first step to take with respect to the prison system is to
mute talk of rehabilitation and concentrate on another somewhat
different question: how much harm is the system doing and
how much harm can we stop?'
Attempts to answer Dean Paulsen's question have resulted in cries
for sweeping reforms.2 Even among those who desire eventual aboli-
tion of the prison system,' it is recognized that there exists a need for
immediate changes in certain aspects of the present prison structure.
Prisoner employment has become one of the most critical problem areas
needing improvement. Enforced idleness, low wages, lack of normal em-
ployee benefits, little post-release marketability, and imposition of mean-
ingless tasks are all examples of present harms existent in American
prisons. At various penal institutions throughout the country, prisoners,
ex-convicts and other persons are organizing prisoner labor unions5 as a
possible means of securing improved employment conditions. An exam-
ination of the demands made by such unions illustrates the need for a
general restructuring of the marketing and manufacturing of prison goods.
THE PRISONER As A PUBLIC EMPLOYEE
Courts no longer consider the prisoner a slave of the state.0 The
1. Paulsen, Prison Reform in the Future-The Trend Toward Expansion of Pris-
oners' Rights, 16 VILL. L. REv. 1082, 1083 (1971).
2. See, e.g., AMIERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE, STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE (1971).
3. Id.
4. [S]ometimes two or three inmates are assigned to do a task that would
require only one worker in private industry. . . . In all prison systems idle-
ness still obtains for a large part of the inmate population.
. . Skills learned by the inmates are seldom marketable when they are
released. . . The work done . . . produces skills that can be applied only
by men who have returned to prison.
. . The whole operation lacks efficiency, incentives, production norms
and the complex of operational goals and attitudes that are the hallmark of
successful industrial endeavor.
National Council on Crime & Delinquency, Policy Statement on Compensation of Ilmoate
Labor, 34 Aie. J. ComcnoNs 42, 42-43 (1972) [hereinafter cited as Policy Statement].
5. See notes 52-58 infra & text accompanying.
6. The prisoner is [not] a temporary slave of the State, . . . and prison
officials are not now such masters of their own domain as to be free of . . .
[constitutional] restraints.
Gilmore v. Lynch, 319 F. Supp. 105, 108 (N.D. Cal. 1970). See also Holt v. Sarver, 309
F. Supp. 362 (E.D. Ark. 1970), aff'd, 442 F.2d 304 (8th Cir. 1971). In Holt, the court
declared Arkansas' incarceration system to be violative of the eighth amendment's pro-](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/indana48&div=36&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Unionizing America's Prisons--Arbitration and State-Use
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most