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Freeing Prisoners' Labor, Stephen P. Garvey
Freeing Prisoners' Labor, Stephen P. Garvey
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Although labor was central to the internal life of the early penitentiary, it has virtually vanished from today's prison. In this article, Professor Garvey proposes making labor once again a key part of the prison regime. During the decades surrounding the turn of the century, organized labor and business successfully lobbied for protectionist state and federal legislation that prohibited private firms from contracting for prison labor and selling prison-made goods on the open market. This legislation abolished the old "contract" system of prison labor and replaced it with the "state-use" system. Under the state-use system, inmates work only for the …