[This article first appeared in the Independent Monitor Issue 91 May 2007 and the title was provided by the AMIMB editors]
This year sees the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery with a collective bout of mutual backslapping. However there are voices off reminding the celebrants that there are still millions of men, women and children around the world today forced to lead lives as slaves: the sex-trafficked women and children who are bought and sold like objects; the ‘sans-papiers’ fleeing persecution from around the world end up in this country and, having been denied asylum, working in shitty jobs for a pittance, constantly in fear of arrest and deportation.
THE NEW SLAVE CLASS?
Another group of people that are increasingly being treated as modern day slaves are prisoners. Under international treaties, such as those on Human Rights and, for example, the 1930 Forced Labour Convention, there are exemptions that specifically allow for the enslavement of individuals within any state’s prison systems, where they often provide cheap (if not free) labour for corporations - all legal by the laws of almost all states.
In the US prisoners has long been a source of free labour, everyone recognises the image of the chain gang, but prisoners and the institutions that house them are also big business. Many large American corporations have grown increasingly fat on the cheap labour provided by the sprawling US prison-industrial-complex.
PRISON PRIVATISATION
In de-industrialised post-Thatcher Britain, ‘New Labour’ have sought to follow the American model. They have introduced the Private-Finance Initiative prison-building programme and pursued a wholesale liquidisation of Prison Service assets, handing large sectors over to private companies, many of them American (such as Aramark now running large sections of the prison canteen system). The ever-increasing British prison population has not escaped their attentions either and is now seen as a bountiful source of cheap captive labour that can help maintain British competitiveness against countries like China.
The source of a key component of this was prison rebellions and riots of the late 70’s and 80’s, which necessitated a radical reorganisation of the prison control and discipline system. This resulted in the introduction in 1995 of the Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) Scheme., which has proved an essential tool in the putative industialisation of British prison labour.
THE INCENTIVES AND EARNED PRIVILEGES (IEP) SCHEME
The objectives of the IEP scheme are “to encourage hard work and other constructive activity” [all quotes from the relevant documents] by introducing a system of privileges that are “earned by prisoners through good behaviour and performance and are removed if they fail to maintain acceptable standards”. At the core of this scheme is the concept of paying prisoners "to encourage and reward their constructive participation in the regime of the establishment". Rates of pay vary depending on resources, the amount and type of work available at each prison, and the level reached on the IEP scheme. At present the minimum ‘wage’ in EPS prisons is set at £4 per week and if you are willing to work but are unemployed because no work is available, the basic rate is £2.50 per week. Most of the work available itself, by the regime's own admission, "provides little training, qualifications or resettlement activities for prisoners."
The scheme operates on three tiers: basic, standard and enhanced;* and which tier the prisoner is placed on depends on how well she or he tows the line – “If the prisoner’s behaviour or lack of progress demonstrates that he or she cannot sustain his/her current privilege level, he or she may be downgraded to the level below (as an administrative measure, not as a punishment imposed at adjudication).”
