The Idea of Prison Labor Abolition

Is prison labor morally permissible in a society that fails to be reasonably just? Our paper engages with Tommie Shelby’s recent qualified defense of prison labor in The Idea of Prison Abolition. For Shelby, both voluntary and mandatory prison labor are permissible in a reasonably just society. In an unjust society, Shelby only argues against mandatory prison labor, while remaining silent on whether voluntary prison labor is permissible. Our paper is devoted to this lacuna. Focusing on the United States, we detail the history of unfree Black labor in four eras: enslavement, convict leasing, chain gangs, and contemporary prison labor. We then argue that contemporary U.S. prison labor practices involve at least three interrelated wrongs. First, current forms of prison labor are often wrongly coerced. Second, prison labor can be expressively wrong. Third, prison labor can amount to the state not meeting its reparative duty of non-repetition. From there, we draw on Du Bois’s idea of "abolition democracy," arguing that prison labor should be replaced with offender rehabilitation programs. There are better uses of incarcerated persons’ time than spending 40-60 hours per week staffing the kitchen, cleaning the showers and toilets, and washing prison uniforms—even if this is voluntary and incentivized by carrots rather than sticks. Ultimately, the paper argues that prison labor abolition is a view more consonant with Shelby’s overall framework than prison labor reform.