Only ~6% of CI’s revenue went to workers

You would need to spend 5 hours assembling furniture to afford a single cup of coffee

Washington State is no exception when it comes to forced prison labor and the unjust treatment of incarcerated people. Instead of providing fair pay or adequate resources, the state continues to dismiss these concerns. The Washington Department of Corrections works in a symbiotic relationship with Correctional Industries (CI), a system widely criticized and investigated for deceptive policies and the unfair treatment of incarcerated workers. Calling out the state’s role is essential to challenging these inhumane practices.

Testimonies from people incarcerated in WA

Micheal Jefferson (SCCC)

“They’re pricing us into prison just like they’re pricing people out of homes on the outside. We get a raise but then the prices for food and other basic goods also get raised, so what is the point of the raise? The things for sale where they bring the price down are the things that don’t go off the shelf. When they see incarcerated people ordering a certain thing, the prices go up.”

Candis Rush (WCCW)

“I wanted to focus on my education. I was reprimanded and infracted for not working.”

X.W. (SCCC)

“You can lose good time and get infractions for refusing to work. They don’t ask you if you’d like to work somewhere, they will just tell you to. Once I was told to go work in the kitchen and was threatened with a serious infraction if I did not comply.”

Sabrina Kendall (WCCW)

“CI is ethically wrong. They use inmates to do copious amounts of work, pay them very little, and make good money off of the products.”

M.b. (WCCW)

“The purpose of Correctional Industries is to maximize profit through incarcerated employees’ labor at essentially no cost. DOC endorses that purpose as cost of living is partially supported by and through CI. CI is a for-profit model that exploits the incarcerated population. They pay “slave” wages for high-expertise or high-skill jobs, then take a percentage of that money via cost of incarceration deductions. We need minimum wage and a stop to mandatory deductions.”

Quotes sourced from a report by Columbia Legal Services “Overcharged: Coerced labor, low pay, and high costs in Washington’s prisons“