South Carolina’s prison-labor programs remain a debated issue

COLUMBIA – When state Rep. Joe Neal, a Richland County Democrat, stood on the steps of the Statehouse last month and described inmate work programs in the state as “slavery,” he was repeating a charge made for years by black leaders, not only in South Carolina but across the nation.

Black leaders argue that the state’s prison system and others “lease” prisoners to private companies, which use the labor to package or make goods and provide services in an arrangement that benefits the companies and the prison system, but does not adequately compensate the prisoners.

And because 62 percent of the state’s inmates are black, the issue is one of interest to the black community.

“Slavery has not gone away,” Neal told a group of NAACP marchers in August. “We criticize China for using prison labor to manufacture goods that are then sold cheaply on the world market. We are doing the same thing in South Carolina.”

But Bryan Stirling, South Carolina’s director of prisons, argues the programs are positive for inmates and communities.

Prison work programs, he says, are voluntary. They benefit inmates, he says, by training them in a marketable skill; benefit communities because those in work programs can be hired upon release; and benefit the prison system because it improves safety.

In fact, he told The Greenville News, prisoners in the state’s work programs have a 10 percent lower recidivism rate than other prisoners. Also, the wages they earn help pay for child support, victim restitution and leave them with savings they can use when they are released.

“It provides a skill, it provides institutional safety and it also pays victims back,” he said. “And the recidivism rate speaks for itself. This is an avenue for us to help these offenders during the day make the institution safe and also teach them hard work, a skill, and they get a pay check, which many of them may not have had before.”

There are 1,305 of the state’s 21,251 inmates working in one of the state’s three prison employment programs. In the traditional work program, which has 205 prisoners, inmates produce office furniture, mattresses, apparel and picture frames for sale, mostly to state and local agencies, as well as school districts. Inmates earn between $6.75 per hour and $18.75 per hour.

In the service program, which employs 330 prisoners, inmates rebuild or upholster furniture for private and public sector customers, make license plates, refurbish golf carts, recycle textiles and assemble meter parts, among other services. Because the work is not considered manufacturing, inmate wages do not fall under federal minimum wage requirements. Inmates earn between 35 cents and $1.80 per hour.

The third program is the Prison Industry Enterprise Program, which involves manufacturing and pays inmates between $7.25 and $10 per hour. There are 801 prisoners employed in that program, according to the prison system, making signs, flooring and other items.

Inmates in all three programs pay deductions for taxes, room and board, and victims compensation, as well as for child support. The law also requires a 10 percent deduction for savings, available to the inmate upon release. Those serving life sentences can leave the savings to their estate or designate a beneficiary.

According to the National Correctional Industries Association, since the Prison Indusry Enterprise program began in 1979, South Carolina has paid out more in gross wages to inmates - $134.6 million – than any other state. Inmates netted $57.3 million of that, 42.5 percent. By comparison, North Carolina inmates netted about 46 percent of their wages; while inmates in Georgia, which had much less work than its neighboring states, netted almost 64 percent.

Neal told The News he has for years been studying the relationship that has evolved across the country between manufacturers and prisons.

“It provides an incentive to the courts and law enforcement and the prison itself to sometimes skew justice to fill the ranks for profit,” he said.

He particularly objects to prisoner leasing, in which inmates earn less than minimum wage and the state is paid several dollars an hour more for their services. After deductions, he said, there is little left.

“To me that is a form of slavery,” he said. “Where this person is worked for profit but isn’t allowed to profit for him or herself. I think that is a system that needs to be undone.”

The discussion comes as Gov. Nikki Haley is portraying the state as progressive in its race relations, telling an audience in Washington last week that the way South Carolina handled the aftermath of shootings this summer of nine blacks by a white gunman in Charleston offers “lessons from the New South.”

It was Haley, the state’s first minority governor as a woman, who led lawmakers in removing the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds in the wake of the shootings.

And, she told the audience, South Carolina was the first state in the nation to enact a law this year requiring police wear body cameras. That move came after the shooting death of a black man by a white North Charleston police officer.

“What we saw in the extraordinary reaction to Charleston was people of all races coming together,” she said. “We didn’t have riots, we had vigils. We didn’t have violence, we had hugs.”

Both Haley and black leaders in the state acknowledge there is work left to do. The racial disparity in the state’s prison system remains a sore issue in the black community.

Jesse Jackson, whom Haley describes as a friend, calls it the “agenda of separation,” issues that deal with racial disparities.

He notes that while South Carolina’s population is about 30 percent black, the state’s prison population is more than 60 percent black. He talked of the state’s “industrial-prison labor camps,” during a recent interview with The News.

“We should not be profiting off of prisoners,” he said.

Dr. Lonnie Randolph, president of South Carolina’s NAACP, said he has respect for Stirling and what he is trying to do, especially his focus on work for prisoners. But prison industries, he said, which have been around America for many decades, are exploitive.

“It is slavery in the 21st Century,” he said. Industries “have done quite well with slave labor.”

“Just as the state did quite well and America did quite well with slave labor,” he said. “And America has become accustomed to getting something for nothing. It’s hard to detox the system off of how lucrative the industry is. They don’t want to be detoxed.”

Stirling says he would welcome discussions with any black leaders on the issue and allow them to see the programs first hand. He said the work programs offer inmates a chance at doing something other than sitting and watching television all day.

“We don’t have the resources to do education for everybody,” he said. “This provides a great program for offenders. The proof is that these folks are less likely to come back to prison and commit another crime.”

The state prison system’s work programs have been criticized before.

In 2003, the Legislative Audit Council issued a critical report of the prisons work programs, finding in part that the use of inmate labor may create a competitive advantage for companies that employ prisoners because inmates are paid low wages, companies do not pay them fringe benefits and the companies receive subsidized rent and utilities.

The prisons director then, Jon Ozmint, responded to the audit with a six-page letter stating much of what the audit alleged was not true and that the work programs were a model for the nation.

In 2004, the state Supreme Court decided two cases involving inmates’ complaints of underpayment in prison work programs. In one case, the justices found that inmates did not have a private cause of action to sue the prison system over wages in the work programs.

In another case, the justices found an inmate properly filed a grievance and pursued his complaint through the state’s Administrative Law Court, which found that the prison system had no right to pay him a “training wage” of 25-75 cents per hour for 320 hours before paying him a prevailing wage of $5.25 per hour.

In 2007, the justices ruled against a group of inmates suing a private company and seeking “lost wages.” The court found the company paid the prison system $4 per hour for each inmate’s wages and the inmates said they received much less. While describing it as a “novel issue,” the court found the prison system, not the companies, is responsible for payment of wages.

Associate Justice Costa Pleicones dissented, noting that the law requires companies to pay wages to the prison system and that the agency “merely acts as a conduit.” He said both the agency and the employer are subject to the inmates’ claims.

Stirling, hired by Haley in 2013, said companies come to the agency if they are interested in using inmate labor. They operate inside the prison compound in buildings built or designated by the prisons and then leased to the company.

Companies pay rent and utilities, and also for the presence of prison officers on the work site.

Inmates must apply for the jobs and not have any disciplinary actions on their records. Stirling said there are many more applications than jobs.

“Obviously they know the benefits, they know they can get paid; it makes their time go by faster and they can save up money for when they leave,” he said.

By law, the jobs for inmates cannot displace jobs in private companies.

Stirling says he does not believe the program offers companies using inmate labor a competitive advantage, “because any company can take advantage of it.”

Anderson Flooring remains the biggest employer of inmates, using 579 prisoners at Tyger River Correctional Institution in Spartanburg County, according to the agency.

“If you walk into that facility, you feel like you’re in a production facility,” Stirling said. “They’ve got industrial equipment in there that these guys can run. They can say ‘I did it while I was incarcerated and I can do it now.’”

Marie Ragghianti, who produced a 431-page doctoral dissertation on the state’s prison work programs in 2008, talked to private companies, prison administrators and inmates in the program, including those at Tyger.

Anderson Flooring executives, she wrote, loved the program. The Tyger operation then was one of 10 prison operations in the country for the company and its largest. An executive said they had hired six South Carolina inmates following their release.

Another inmate worker had a college degree and was serving a life sentence.

“A lot of guys really do take pride in being able to send money home,” he told Ragghianti. “A lot of child support does go out. I think what’s going on here really does have a positive effect.”

A second inmate said the job at Tyger allowed him to send home $150-$160 a month and to save $5,000 for his release.

“Every inmate in the state is working hard to get into Tyger River because they’ve heard about” the Prison Indusry Enterprise program, she quoted him as saying.