The thirteenth amendment to the US constitution states that slavery and involuntary servitude be abolished, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” This one phrase is what allows for slavery to legally continue in United States prisons, and is what makes it possible for people to continue to profit off of slavery today. This system of modern slavery has inevitably become an industry built upon racist policies that disenfranchise those whom the system oppresses, and contributes to the success of the oppressors, their business partners, and those who are financially invested in the system.
People who are convicted of crimes, whether they have committed them or not, end up in prison, while those awaiting trial or have committed petty crimes end up in jail. On paper, this may seem like a good idea: someone does something wrong, they are caught, and they go to prison for a certain amount of time to repay their wrongdoing. In reality, it is much more convoluted and is one of the most racist systems that still exists in America.
Prisons can be public and owned and run by the government, or private. The rise in private prisons has not only maintained but also increased the racism and injustices in prisons. Here’s how it works: state governments and the federal government contract out their prisons to a private company, meaning that its goal is profits. This takes a burden off of the government because the building, staff, guards, and other factors become the responsibility of the private company. All the government has to do, then, is supply the prisoners and pay the private prison company a fee.
Like any company, private prisons make money through growth and by cutting costs. In this case, growth means increasing the number of prisoners who are incarcerated through racist laws such as the three strike law and mandatory sentencing, that target communities of color. Cutting costs means putting sentenced individuals in increasingly appalling conditions, and subjecting them to slavery by forcing prisoners to work for no wages, or in the best case scenario, for less than two dollars per hour. This is also before any deductions are taken out, which can leave prisoners with half of their total earnings.
In addition, some of the companies that are hired to provide services to prisoners have such long contracts that there is a lower incentive for them to provide a good service. With longer contracts, the money is guaranteed for a longer period of time and there will be lower incentive to do a good job immediately because the contract would still exist for a much longer time, even if something is not done well or goes wrong. This situation only worsens when you add more prisoners to the mix.
This all contributes to what is called the Prison Industrial Complex, or PIC. The PIC describes the “overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.” In essence, it helps keep power in the hands of rich white people and oppresses anyone else.
This oppression includes the products made by enslaved prisoners for companies such as Victoria’s Secret, Stabucks, Walmart, and Microsoft that are ever-present in our consumerist society today. Prisoners that manufacture these items make on average between $0.33 and $1.41 an hour at prisons owned by the private companies Corrections Corporation of America (aka CCA/CoreCivic, Inc./NYSE:CXW) and GEO Group (NYSE:GEO). Unincarcerated Consumerist America can pick up underwear from Victoria’s Secret usually for between $10 and $36. Your own underwear, coffee, computer, and more are made possible by the exploitation of the inmates enslaved in our justice system. The people that are least likely to be in prison are directly profiting from the bad ethics and heinousness of the PIC. This is all without mentioning the perpetual oppression public trading of private prison companies like CCA, GEO, and their suppliers has on BIPOC, and without mentioning the direct profits investors see coming from the backs of BIPOC.
The role of higher education in PIC investments is one of the most glaring aspects of this whole topic. Colleges and universities invest their endowments as a way of making money on the return that can then be put towards various areas within the school. Many schools have directly invested in the PIC, including Harvard, University of Chicago and University of Florida. These schools pride themselves on being diverse, yet, are complicit in a racist system that quells diversity. They maintain a system that unequally punishes people of color more than white people. They profit off of racism and the PIC while touting themselves as being diverse. They also make it more difficult for incarcerated people to participate in higher education if they ever get out. School and job applications ask if someone has ever been convicted of a crime, which continues to label formerly incarcerated people as outcasts in society. Not only are people being locked away unjustly, but if they are set free, they remain prisoners of society, and this culminates in a waterfall effect on their families. They have repaid their debt but must still suffer because we do not allow them to ever be truly liberated. There have been movements that have led to successful divestments from CCA and GEO. One of the most successful movements occurred at Harvard and started a wave of protests across the country. Thankfully, at present, Skidmore does not hold any shares of CCA or GEO in its investment portfolio for the endowment.
Donna Ng, the Vice President of Finance and Administration and Treasurer at Skidmore, relayed to me a much stealthier aspect of the PIC. A company that is a supplier of a private prison is complicit in the PIC, but it is difficult to segregate the “revenue generated by sales to prisons as these companies also provide their services to many other organizations (hospitals, museums, US military and airports).” Investment in these companies are just as egregious as direct investment in private prisons since the companies are contributing to the continued incarceration, oppression, and enslavement of BIPOC. Skidmore, and others in higher education may be investing in these companies and profiting off of slavery and the PIC, without even knowing it.
Part of the difficulty of knowing where your money lies, comes from the investment packages that investment management companies put together for clients. Skidmore has used programs like this, specifically for retirement funds, but Ng has said they do not invest in CCA or GEO. The stocks included in these packages are not always made public, so it is difficult to know where the money is going, and where profits are coming from. Vanguard, which Skidmore uses, is one example of an investment management company that does this. It is also a member of the million shares club, or a company that owns over one million shares of CCA and GEO, and one of 29 US-based companies that collectively own two-thirds of CCA and GEO. This is a massive amount of collective investment that allows for private prison corporations to have huge lobbying power and influence the making of laws. It allows for CCA and GEO to continue to make profits by exploiting and dehumanizing those who are incarcerated.
Although this all seems very bleak, Ms. Ng informed me of something that adds a sliver of hope: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies. Some investment managers use these to determine if an investment portfolio is ethical or not. Investment managers with high ESG policies are more likely to invest in as ethical a way as possible, and “the Investment Committee [at Skidmore] is consistently reviewing new investment managers that have extremely strong ESG policies.” More attention to high ESG policies will reveal injustices, and make the stock market more transparent. This is not a total fix, but it is a patch that can staunch the wound as we make our way towards total divestment from the PIC. Divestment leads to a change in investment practices and a change in how companies run, which leads to less lobbying and less power to continue the racist and unjust acts of enslavement.
Slavery and racism have become stealthier and hide in places they think they can’t be found. Racism is no longer an overt act in the public eye, so much as it is covert and systemic. We cannot let this go on any longer. White people need to stop profiting off of the exploitation of BIPOC bodies and labor. Companies must be more transparent about where their products are made, tand where their products are being used to oppress BIPOC. Schools and other organizations and institutions must be aware of where their investments are going, and where their returns are coming from. Only then will we be able to make progress towards ending all slavery and abolishing the PIC as a whole. This means dismantling our current justice system and investing in our communities to create more humane and healthy alternatives to imprisonment. This is just one step towards becoming an anti-racist society, but it is prudent to our success.
Sources:
The Thirteenth Ammendment to the US Constitution: https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=40
The Business Model of Private Prisons: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062215/business-model-private-prisons.asp#:~:text=A%20private%20prison%2C%20on%20the,a%20stipend%20from%20the%20government.&text=A%20private%20prison%20can%20offer,%24150%20per%20day%20per%20prisoner.
How much do incarcerated people earn in each state? https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/
The Prison Industrial Complex:
http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/
Victoria’s Secret Bestsellers:
https://www.victoriassecret.com/us/vs/panties/best-sellers?scroll=true
Over 14 Campuses Across Nation Protest on April 10th to Demand Universities Invest in Community Resources, Dives from Prison Industrial Complex:
Million Shares Club: 29 Major Private Prison Investors:
https://prisondivest.com/2014/06/12/million-shares-club-36-major-private-prison-investors/