The Ripple Effect of prison labor...
Two years ago a female officer working for the Florida Department of Corrections was brutally murdered while supervising inmates working in the state's prison industry at Tomoka Correctional Institution. The officer, Donna Fitzgerald was a single mother who had been with the FDOC for more than 13 years. The position taken by the FDOC is Donna was "moonlighting" that night because she was supervising inmates for PRIDE, the private non-profit corporation that runs the entire prison industries program for Florida. The FDOC believes that since her regular shift - of supervising inmates for the department - ended sometime after 3:00 pm on June 25, 2008, her staying on to supervise many of those same inmates as they worked overtime at the factory, was on PRIDE's time, not the state's.
Donna wasn't scheduled to work that night, she was looking forward to going home after her shift. She had much to do involving her son, Kyle
She was asked by one of the two fellow officers who were "assigned" to supervise the inmates that night if she would work in his place as he had a family emergency. Donna agreed but at the time was unaware that the second officer assigned to be with her was on sick leave. Donna wound up being the only staff member of either PRIDE or FDOC that was at the factory to supervise the inmate workers.
Thirteen inmates were working that night. At least 8 of those were serving life sentences. The inmate who was charged and subsequently convicted of killing Donna, was Enoch Hall. Hall was serving two life sentences at the time he was employed by PRIDE for "training." He was convicted more than once for violence; kidnapping, rape and attempted murder of women, according to his "rap sheet." His two life terms were a result of those criminal acts. Hall was sentenced to death for murdering Donna Fitzgerald.
What you won't read in the papers about the aftermath of such a terrible crime, is the impact of that single act upon the families of the victim. In the case of Donna Fitzgerald, the months following her murder were nearly as devastating to her surviving family, as the murder itself. Neighbors and friends of Donna stepped forward immediately after her death and advised authorities that she had no family except her son and asked to be assigned as guardian of Kyle and the estate of Donna (which was granted). Personal items were taken from the home, Donna's body was cremated against her wishes - and in the midst of this a grieving son sought relief through the use of drugs.
Donna's brother stepped forward and got the probate court to remove the assigned "friend" guardian from the case and he took her place. Almost immediately he was joined by Donna's surviving sister and they hired an attorney. They took over completely and over the objections of Donna's son, they sold his home, disposed of all of his mother's personal effects and took control of the estate, becoming responsible for "taking care" of Kyle. Donna's brother and sister reluctantly used money from the estate of Kyle's mother to send him to rehab after Kyle begged them for money to pay for treatment. His uncle bought him a truck out of the estate, but there was never an accounting of the funds in the estate, where the proceeds from the sale of Donna's home went.
Seeing what was happening, Donna's mother Joanne, tried to get involved, but her son and daughter would have none of that. When the grandmother attempted to help Kyle, the aunt and uncle attempted to have Kyle arrested in NH for drug use. When that plan failed is when they allowed him to go to rehab. When he returned his uncle refused to allow him to stay at his home, so Kyle stayed with his grandmother. Eventually he returned to Florida where he was out from under the thumb of his aunt and uncle's "help" that he considered domination - of him and his mother's estate.
Donna's brother and sister refused to "waste" money on a casket or formal service for their sister. Instead they took her remains back to NH and buried her remains along side of a highway in a swampy bramble strewn and wooded piece of property. They told Joanne she could either come along and take part in their "burial ceremony" or never know where her daughter was buried. Fortunately she went. Once Donna's mom saw the nasty and foul place they'd chosen to bury their sister in, she was physically sickened and vowed to return and take her daughter from that place and put her in a final resting place familiar to Donna when she lived.
Following the murder of Donna, the FDLE and FDOC conducted an extensive fact finding investigations into her murder. Of course they did the same thing just five years earlier when officer Darla Lathrem was murdered by 3 other inmates serving life or other long sentences. The Lethrem murder was also committed on a night work detail, by inmates armed with tools assigned to their work detail. The weapon used in the murder of Darla was a hammer used to beat her to death.
The murder committed by Enoch Hall not only took the life of Donna Fitzgerald, it caused a rip in the fabric of the surviving family. Certainly this kind of family disintegration happens in non-officer cases. The point is that correctional officers perform the duties of care, custody and control of those whom society has already convicted of a crime. The prisoner is serving a court imposed sentence for the commission of one or more felonies. Though most now serving time in prison are there for non-violent crimes, many are there because the genuinely represent a threat to those aground them. Enoch Hall was one of those.
I write about this today because as I have done since 2004 I argue that the use of lifers and other inmates serving such long sentences have no place within the prison industries or any industry. Especially, not in a program purportedly for "training" of inmates to give them the skills they need to get jobs when released. These people are never getting out...what in the hell is the purpose of putting them in training programs in the first place?
I raised this issue with the PRIDE Board on two occasions in 2006. In each presentation made to the Board I warned that to continue to use such inmates in the program was dangerous to the other inmates, institutional security and more importantly to staff and supervisors working around them. My reasoning is that these factories allow inmate workers access to dangerous "class A" tools; hammers, knives, box cutters, screwdrivers scissors and other implements they can use as weapons or in escape attempts. The response from the board in each case was to ignore my argument and allow their industries to continue that policy unabated.
In response to their ignoring of my concerns, I addressed that matter in an Independent Report I wrote and submitted to the FDOC, PRIDE, the NCIA and all state and federal lawmakers in 2008. Here is the finding made in that report:
"• PRIDE utilizes lifers and other inmates serving long-term sentences in key positions to increase production and shipping of products. These inmates completed their training years before but are kept on the job to decrease production hours. This also puts the most violent inmates in close proximity to dangerous tools and implements that could be used as weapons or to make weapons, presenting a serious threat to inmates and staff." (pg. #24)
Tragically I spoke on the phone with the Secretary of the FDOC on the same day as Donna's death on issues involving PRIDE and operation of the prison industry. This issue of the use of lifers in the training program was discussed at length, with the result that Secretary McNeil was non-committal on that - and other issues. Due to his holding a seat upon the PRIDE Board, I expected him to address the matter with them immediately following the murder. He did not.
As a matter of fact, following the death of Donna, the FDOC and PRIDE both stated that they were "reviewing" the program with the intent of eliminating lifers from the program...but as you probably already suspect, they did not.
Immediately following the murder, I was contacted by the St. Pete Times and interviewed about the incident and the use of lifers in the program. I spoke truth to power once again:
'Robert Sloan, a former Florida inmate and critic of PRIDE, said in a letter to the St. Petersburg Times: "There is absolutely no place in the prison industrial training programs for inmates with life or long sentences. … Most lifers will never receive a release and should therefore not be considered for such a program'."
Though all involved within FDOC and PRIDE promised to look at that policy to see if changes should be made - and the Governor's office also got involved asking why such inmates were in the program - and they in fact did promise to stop such use of lifers, they had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Their pursuit is not training, it is profits.
Last week I wrote about Governor Scott's Transition Team's finding on PRIDE. They discovered that of the total number of inmates in their prison industry training program, 16% were serving life sentences:
"Further, 16% of the inmates working for PRIDE are serving life sentences; the average sentence of the remaining workers is 15.1 years; and 28% of the PRIDE workforce has ten years or more to serve before being released. This means that few in the PRIDE workforce are being rehabilitated for purposes of reducing recommitment to prison because these workers are not being released communities at all or any time soon."
This is simply not a case of Florida or PRIDE doing this, it is happening across the U.S. as demonstrated by an article I came across yesterday in the Quad-City Times:
"The corrections agency said an alarm sounded about 10:40 a.m. Friday indicating a possible assault involving two inmates in the Iowa Prison Industries building.
"One of the inmates, Christopher Langley, 23, was treated over the weekend initially at Fort Madison Community Hospital, then transported to University Hospitals in Iowa City and was returned to the penitentiary Sunday, according to the agency. Langley sustained serious injuries but is recovering.
The other inmate was identified as David Alan Lenox, 44, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder from Grundy County in November 2000.
Langley was sentenced in October 2004 after being found guilty of first-degree murder by a Scott County jury, along with Trenton Howard of Blue Grass, Iowa, and Michael Cargill Jr. of Davenport."
As I have written, argued and been quoted on numerous occasions; "The prison industries are concerned with profits and not about training. They demonstrate this by continuing to use lifers in these programs described by industry and DOC officials as 'providing training' for inmates. They have no concerns about the safety of their staff, DOC guards, other inmates or others who come in contact with workers in the factories on tours or inspections."
This videoI've posted time and again, makes great mention of "skilled workers", "profitability", "ninety-four to ninety-six percent productivity every day", "willing and experienced workforce", "available and skilled labor" of the prison industries participating in PIECP. It is made by the National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA)with the assistance of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Department of Justice and shows operations from prison factories all over the country.
Without the NCIA and BJA serving as the "hub" of prison industries in the U.S. such slave labor would not be possible. Nor would the violations occurring in one state be emulated in another across the country. The violations are condoned by the NCIA and BJA and passed along to other participants to allow them to do the same in their state. Find that hard to believe?
Consider this: the laws of PIECP allow for "lawful" deductions to be taken from inmate wages for four (4) purposes. One of those deductions is for room and board. The purpose of this is to have inmates pay for some of the costs of their incarceration, and by doing that, repay some of the taxpayer costs of their confinement. When Florida enacted their PIE laws in 1999/2000 they responded to PRIDE's lobbying by writing 946.522 that created and Industries Trust Fund where the money is deposited. PRIDE is the only entity that has access to and use of those funds, and the money taken from the inmates is used by PRIDE to offset their operating expenses. PRIDE reports this deduction and payment into the fund as an expense on their annual reports. They also do not identify those funds as coming back into their corporate account as deductions taken from wages. Instead they lump it under the "other income" column and thus hide the fact that the inmates are themselves funding PRIDE's operations with 40% of their already underpaid meager wages. While inmates in the program are supposed to receive prevailing wages (that paid for similar work in the private sector) they only receive minimum wage.
In Minnesota, the prison industries are not run by a private corporation, they are a "real" arm of the state. They also employ lifers (15% of their industry workforce)in the training programs, pay wages far below the private sector and also deduct funds from the inmate's wages for room and board - that are returned to them by DOC. This was just caught by an audit of the prison industries by Minnesota's Legislative Auditor:
"• MINNCOR does not report all of the wages it pays to inmates in its financial statements, thereby understating its expenditures.
"MINNCOR payroll records indicate that it actually paid $3.7 million in inmate wages in fiscal year 2008, but its financial statements only show wage costs of $2.5 million. Similarly, MINNCOR’s failure to include all of the wages it paid to inmates in fiscal years 2006 and 2007 understated expenditures by $1.5 million and $1.2 million in 2006 and 2007, respectively.
"These discrepancies occur because the federal Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) requires prison industry programs to pay at least prevailing wages to inmates who produce merchandise sold to out-of-state customers. However, inmates who receive prevailing wage rates do not keep all of their wages. Federal law allows state corrections departments to deduct up to 80 percent of PIECP wages for a variety of purposes, including taxes, family support, restitution, and paying a portion of confinement costs. According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, this provision “reflects a Congressional intent to permit the use of room and board deductions to lower costs otherwise incurred by the public for inmate incarceration.” Rather than using the money withheld from inmate wages to directly reduce the cost of confinement, however, we found that:
"• The Department of Corrections has annually transferred to MINNCOR over $1 million deducted from inmates’ wages to pay for their confinement costs.
"Department of Corrections’ policy requires that it return deductions for inmates’ cost of confinement to MINNCOR, and the department returned about $1.2 million in fiscal year 2008. However, the $1.2 million that MINNCOR paid out in wages and then received back from the department is not reflected in its financial statements. As required by the Department of Finance, MINNCOR reports the $1.2 million in the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, which is prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. It is included along with the other inmate wages as an expense under the category of “purchased services” and the reimbursement to MINNCOR is included under “other income.” MINNCOR’s failure to account for inmate wages and the confinement cost funds it receives from DOC in its financial statements in the same way it reports them in the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report understates its expenditures and overstates the extent to which it is self-sufficient.
"As shown in Table 3.1, security expenses were $908,000 in fiscal year 2008, about 3 percent of sales. Security expenses are payments that MINNCOR made to DOC for correctional officers to oversee canteen operations and reduce inmate theft of canteen goods. For the most part, MINNCOR does not pay the salaries of correctional officers that routinely patrol MINNCOR work areas, except for overtime pay when an industry operates more than one work shift per day. MINNCOR management told us that DOC would need to pay for correctional officers no matter what activity the inmates were doing.
"Also, as discussed in Chapter 2, most inmate workers are paid wages
well below what private industries pay their workers, and MINNCOR does not
have to pay for health insurance, contribute to social security or pension plans, or pay for other fringe benefits that non-inmate employees often receive."
Soooooo...here we have one state prison industry operated by a private non-profit corporation in Florida and another across the U.S. in Minnesota operated by the state and both are committing similar violations (underpaying inmates and then taking at least 40% of those wages back to offset expenses spent by them in operating the factories)and both have a workforce comprised of approximately 15% who are serving life terms. Then there's Iowa, that is also employing lifers in their industries.
The common denominator? The DOJ, BJA and the NCIA. The NCIA passes along and condones these activities from state to state because all prison industries within PIECP belong to the NCIA. The BJA is supposed to oversee the PIE program and has outsourced that to the NCIA and the NCIA finds the industries in compliance...year after year. Sure, the NCIA reports some non-compliance in each assessment, but goes on to claim that they have been resolved by the time their report is issued to the BJA. However, regarding the diversion of inmate deductions of room and board back to the industries they haven't caught it, they do not report this is being done. I find this hiding of the diversion as deliberate as I have noticed the BJA on several occasions that it is being done by Florida, and it continues unabated. Now I've also reported the audit in Minnesota and am waiting for a response on that issue.
Bottom line is this - regardless of how they state their purpose; training or as an out-and-out work program, they really are operating by using slave labor. How else can one describe what is happening? Inmates are underpaid to begin with - in violation of the laws of PIECP - they are then subjected to having nearly half of their wages taken back by the employer to be used to offset the costs of operating the businesses! How can this possibly be termed something other than "SLAVE LABOR"?
The fact that prison industries in this country are expanding daily, working more prisoners and making more products impacts upon private sector sales and job losses. The undeniable fact that the entire prison industry in the U.S. is using slave labor is bad enough. The second undeniable fact that all of it is run, authorized and overseen by the U.S. Department of Justice (UNICOR is a branch of the Bureau of Prisons and is considered an arm of the DOJ and PIECP is a federal program run by the DOJ) puts our nation in the same category as China and other countries using slave labor.
Our Department of State and the White House publicly state they deplore the use of prison labor, claiming it is a human rights issue and refuse to allow products made by that labor from entering our country. Yet they refuse to acknowledge we're doing it right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. or take any action to stop it when it is presented to them with overwhelming documentation! Every office from the President on down refuses to discuss or respond to questions posed on this issue.
I'm sickened by this and at times wish I'd never started down this path. As I've followed the money that path has become rockier and more treacherous until it now widens out into the thorny underside of Washington, D.C.