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  About CAPS


The Campaign Against Prison Slavery (CAPS) was formed in 2002 by ex-prisoners, prisoner support groups and activists to campaign against compulsory labour in UK prisons and for the abolition of the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme (IEP).

Compulsory labour is a feature of most prison systems a round the world, whether it be forced hard labour as punishment, direct 'reparation' for the costs of imprisonment, prison jobs such as kitchen or cleaning work that keep administration costs down or workshop jobs where prisoners manufacture the cell doors and prison bars for the jails that house them.

However, the modern prison has also developed into a system for generating capital from a section of society that up until now has largely been held to have no intrinsic labour value, the marginalised elements that tend to be trapped on a roundabout of regular incarceration, never to hold down a 'proper' job or become a 'productive member of society'. Thus we now also have in the modern prison system the prisoners who are used to create capital for private sector companies, either through labour in prison workshops manufacturing and packing goods for these companies or those prisoners handed over wholesale to the global outsourcing and security companies that run the private prisons, to do with as they wish, often 'sub-contracting' them out to third party companies.


From Article 2 of the International Labour Organisation's Forced Labour Convention No. 29

1. For the purposes of this Convention the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.

2. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this Convention the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include:
c ) Any work or service exacted from any person as a consequence of a conviction in a court of law, provided that the said work or service is carried out under the supervision and control of a public authority and that the said person is not hired to or placed at the disposal of private individuals, companies or associations.

 
 Companies Lists

 

The information on these pages has been supplied to us either by Prisoners, their Families, Prison Staff and Members of the Public or from Freedom of Information applications. We have tried to check the veracity of all the information presented here. However, if any of it is inaccurate, we will more than happy to correct any posting.

The companies listed fall into two main categories; those who use prison labour via Contract Services, the Prison Industries sector that uses prison workshops to produce and/or package goods on behalf of outside private businesses, and the companies currently providing in house training, some of whom also use the prisoners they train to generate profits for their organisations. We also provide information on some of the companies operating private prisons and there also directly profiting from the labour in the prisons they operate.

If you have any current information on any companies using prison slave labour or the prisons that supply such labour we would like to hear from you. Please send your information to: CONTACT US

 

  

It should be noted that the two Prison Services are structured differently and this has important effects on the way prison workshops and Contract Services are run.

The 300 plus prison workshops in the 121 public sector prisons in England and Wales are under the overall control of HMPS Enterprise and Supply Service (ESS). They are responsible for the internal procurement of everyday Prison Service items such as clothing and cell furniture. They also directly manage certain types of workshops and projects such as the 9 Prison Service print workshops.

Individual prison Governors however have a tremendous degree of autonomy within the overall structure of the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme and in negotiating contracts with outside firms for work carried out in their individual Contract Service workshops. Details of all these contract must be forwarded to ESS but the wages and pricing details are usually in the hands of individual Governors. This has made it difficult for us to track down details of individual contracts and company details above and beyond the reluctance of the Ministry of Justice to follow the Open Government policy.

The 11 private sector prisons in England and Wales operate differently and the prison Directors have even more autonomy, having no links with ESS and not having to supply contract details to central records. They are not obliged under the Freedom of Information Act to answer our enquiries unfortunately.

The Scottish Prison Service is much smaller,with only 16 prisons to manage, and is therefore structured differently. All contracts for works in prison workshops in Scotland are centrally controlled by a body called SPS Industries. This, and the fact they have in the past been much more open to FOI requests, has made it much easier to obtain details of contracts, though SPS Industries have not always been quick in supplying answers to questions posed and those answers have not neccesarily been as full and frank as we had hoped. More details of the structure of SPS Industries can be found in the article: The Crisis in Scottish Prison Service Industries.

  Prison Facts


According to Inside Time it is not just the companies running private prisons and exploiting prison labour for profit that are making a killing. There are currently more than 600,000 people making their living out of the criminal justice industry in England and Wales:

50,367
Prison Service staff

17,540
National Probation Service staff

330,000
Police Officers

3,000
Judges

136
District Judges

29,500
Justices of the Peace

21,535
HM Court Service employees

8,770
CPS employees

90,000
Solicitors

10,000
Barristers