Act to end slavery on Anti-Racial Discrimination Day
From Joanna Ewart-James, Freedom United
Today is International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination – a day dedicated to combatting racism and racial discrimination. The UN notes that discriminatory practices are widespread, particularly affecting migrants and refugees as well as people of African descent.[1] Today is a perfect day to join our campaign and tell CoreCivic that forced labor is never acceptable.
A private immigration detention center in San Diego run by CoreCivic holds migrants who allege that they have been subjected to forced labor and threatened with solitary confinement or restricted visitation rights if they refused to work.[2] They say the company that owns the prison, CoreCivic, pays $1 per day, and sometimes nothing at all, for their work as kitchen staff, janitors, barbers and in various other roles.
The San Francisco Examiner recently highlighted the case of Luis Mora, a Berkeley student, who came to the the US at age 11. Without papers, unable to delay deportation, Luis was arrested and detained in the same CoreCivic-run center, where he was forced to work as a translator.[3]
Let’s show CoreCivic that we believe that this system of forced labor must end.
We will use our power to urge one of the largest private prison companies in the US, CoreCivic, to denounce forced labor in its Human Rights Policy Statement[4] and verify it is enforced.
Reports of forced labor are not isolated to immigration detention centers. Shockingly, the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which intended to end slavery, permits its use as a punishment for crime.[5] Among those incarcerated, more than 60% are people of color. And Black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. Entire communities of immigrants and people of color have been criminalized.[6]
In Oklahoma, offenders sentenced to rehabilitation end up forced into labor on chicken farms, without any recourse or access to an actual recovery program.[7] Prisoners in California are forced into labor, reportedly made to risk their lives fighting the state’s wildfires for a dollar an hour[8] or considerably less,[9] helping to generate an estimated US$58 million in profit.[10]
It’s clear that forced labor in prisons is not an immigration issue, it’s an American one, that is being replicated worldwide. This system of mass incarceration – at a rate per capita that surpasses every country on earth – is inherently discriminatory, disproportionately affecting communities of color while creating a never-ending pool of people to be exploited through forced labor in prisons and detention centers across the country for corporate gain.
Even more unsettling, President Trump has called for a massive increase of prisons and detainment centers, perpetuating and embedding a system that exploits people of color for private benefit.[11] Following the announcement of this policy change, CoreCivic’s share price shot up 43% in a single day.[12] It is undoubtedly a lucrative business.
On this anti-discrimination day, let’s urge CoreCivic to take a stand against forced labor.
A recent New York Times article set out a prison labor work program that meets these standards,[13] showing that work in prison does not have to be forced labor and can meet standards set out in international law.
[1] http://www.un.org/en/events/racialdiscriminationday/
[2] https://www.thenation.com/article/ices-captive-immigrant-labor-force/
[3] https://www.sfexaminer.com/undocumented-uc-berkeley-student-released-detention-center-returns-bay-area/
[4] https://www.sfexaminer.com/undocumented-uc-berkeley-student-released-detention-center-returns-bay-area/
[5] http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/amendments/’ofslavery
[6] https://aflcio.org/2016/4/5/lets-get-serious-about-mass-incarceration
[7] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-bc-us–reveal-recovery-centers-forced-labor-20171004-story.html
[8] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/how-much-longer-will-inmates-fight-californias-wildfires/547628/
[9] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/how-much-longer-will-inmates-fight-californias-wildfires/547628/
[10] http://solidarityresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Prison-Strike-in-California-10-07-16.pdf
[11] https://www.thenation.com/article/ices-captive-immigrant-labor-force/
[12] https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21718897-idaho-prisoners-roast-potatoes-kentucky-they-sell-cattle-prison-labour
[13] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/business/economy/labor-market-inmates.html?referer
