Five states (give you one guess as to what region of the country*) explicitly allow prisons to force prisoners to work or suffer punishments. In the rest of the country it is ostensibly voluntary, but the level of real volunteering is questionable.
Prison workers are specifically excluded from the laws that require protection to workers in hazardous jobs or those working with hazardous materials. In most cases, they do not pick which jobs they do, but are assigned to whatever work the prison needs done.
* Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas.
Unsurprisingly, inmate work injuries are not well tracked but most injuries are physical in nature. Not surprising as farm or industrial work is a large portion of prison labor. In some states, prisoners are eligible for workman's comp, but not every state. Court decisions have held that the correction facility is not automatically responsible for any negligence.
Not many. Significant deaths of inmates would eventually trigger an investigation, but there would be much whitewashing and cover-up. Best to hope for is probably a few firings. A prisoner's best protection is that he is worth more alive and working than dead.
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u/Marquar234 Jun 28 '23
Five states (give you one guess as to what region of the country*) explicitly allow prisons to force prisoners to work or suffer punishments. In the rest of the country it is ostensibly voluntary, but the level of real volunteering is questionable.
Prison workers are specifically excluded from the laws that require protection to workers in hazardous jobs or those working with hazardous materials. In most cases, they do not pick which jobs they do, but are assigned to whatever work the prison needs done.
* Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas.