Incarcerated People Built Your Desk

As students at the University of Virginia, we traverse a Grounds steeped in history, where the echoes of forced labor resonate through every single brick and pillar. The Rotunda, the Serpentine Walls, the Academical Village–each reflect the horrors and violence of chattel slavery. Amidst UVa’s supposed reckoning with the history of this historic campus, however, there exists a hidden truth: here, in Virginia (and throughout the United States), we are repeating the mistakes of history through a loophole in the 13th Amendment and a system of forced prison labor. 

Have you ever thought about the source of the furniture in our dorms, dining halls, libraries, and classrooms? Public universities, like ours, are mandated by Virginia law to procure a portion of their goods, primarily furniture, from Virginia Correctional Enterprises (VCE), a state-owned corporation. Ostensibly, VCE’s mission is to “strengthen future employment opportunities and marketable skills for inmate workers.” However, the reality is starkly different. While incarcerated people struggle to afford basic necessities such as phone calls to loved ones or hygiene products from commissary, VCE, and, by extension, the Commonwealth of Virginia, profit from the goods they produce. Individuals labor within a system of violence and confinement, receiving next-to-nothing in compensation and lacking workplace protections afforded to those outside of prison. Upon release, formerly incarcerated people face a system of legal segregation and severe discrimination in the job-seeking process, negating any supposed ‘benefits’ of VCE’s on-the-job training in allegedly marketable skills. 

The laws of the General Assembly make the University complicit in perpetuating cycles of incarceration and exploitation, once again benefiting from forced labor– a system in Virginia that traces all the way back to Thomas Jefferson’s beliefs and writings on the rehabilitative and, paradoxically, punitive potential of labor and punishment. But this system extends beyond Virginia. Nearly every state in the Union participates in schemes like this to obtain cheap goods from the individuals they imprison, creating perverse incentives that fuel mass incarceration. While pay differs from state to state and across jobs, the 1,300 incarcerated people employed by VCE in Virginia are paid anywhere from $0.55 to $0.80 per hour for their work.

At this point, you may be wondering how this is legal. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, while abolishing the horrific institution of slavery, includes an exception allowing involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Though signing up to work in Virginia is technically voluntary, the severity of the exploitation and the fact that individuals are paid less than one dollar an hour would qualify as involuntary servitude in any workplace that wasn’t a correctional facility. This exception enables the perverse exploitation of incarcerated people to the benefit of the State and private companies, and every state takes advantage of it. Save for Alaska, every state has laws on the books requiring public enterprises, including universities, to purchase goods from incarcerated laborers paid significantly less than minimum wage. 

Still, there are avenues for change, no matter how difficult they will be to accomplish. Advocates of prison reform have long called for fair wages, legal protections, and an end to systems of workplace discrimination and other forms of systemic exclusion following people’s release back into society. By paying incarcerated people fairly, the Virginia taxpayer will lose some of that revenue created in exchange for a more just and moral society that does not depend on prison labor, and a system that does not force prisoners’ legally innocent loved ones to foot the bill for communication and necessities. To truly reduce recidivism, the State should also provide more robust access to job-matching and reentry programs, enabling individuals to truly make use of whatever skills they may be able to learn while imprisoned.

All UVa students and students throughout Virginia must be outraged by the exploitation embedded within our own institutions. Pushing for radical change in the General Assembly is the first step in our journey towards creating a better University and world–one that is truly great and good.