Labor, Power, and Inmate Consent: Work as an Apparatus of Control in the American Prison

• In Event: Correctional Programming

Abstract

Past literature on social control in prisons reveals how administrators and staff rely on informal relations and negotiations with inmates as a way to maintain order behind bars. The present study illustrates another apparatus of control in this setting: the prison employment system. Ethnographic observations of prison work programs and in-depth interviews with inmates and complex staff suggest that today’s penal institutions rely on a hierarchical inmate labor market to manage offender populations. The prison levies “good” and “bad” work assignments as carrots and sticks to influence inmate practices. Good jobs operate as “pull” factors—encouraging good behavior by enticing inmates with higher pay and greater freedoms which can only be maintained by adhering to prison regulations at work as well as on the yard. Bad jobs operate as “push” factors—frustrating workers with low pay and poor working conditions, capturing the noncompliant in a “prison within the prison.” As the centerpiece of a larger system of hegemonic control, the prison employment system rewards inmates who embody the interests of the institution. Yet, not all inmates possess the human, cultural, and social capitals necessary for securing desirable positions. This system reproduces these inequalities among an already disadvantaged inmate population.

Author

• Michael Gibson-Light, University of Arizona