Were it not for this captive labor force, the military could hardly meet needs ranging from weapons production and apparel manufacture to transportation servicing and communications infrastructure. US soldiers are well-equipped with guns to fire, clothes to wear, vehicles to drive, radios to call and maps to help them navigate, thanks in large measure to the 21,000 inmates working for Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 2002, the company sold $678.7 million worth of goods and services to the US government, over $400 million of which went to the Department of Defense.
Over the years, FPI has grown exponentially, now ranking as the government's thirty-ninth largest contractor – in no small part due to the quantity and diversity of apparel items it manufactures for the Department of Defense. The company has churned out more than 150,000 Kevlar helmets in the past 24 months, more than $12 million worth. Aside from the battle-dress shirts sewn at Greenville, the company is also a major supplier of men's military undershirts, $1.6 million of which it sold to the Pentagon in 2002. In that year, FPI made close to $3 million fashioning underwear and nightwear for the troops. Inmates also stitch together the vestments donned by military pastors and the gowns cloaking battlefield surgeons. If an item of clothing is torn in combat, it will likely be sent to the prison shop in Edgefield, South Carolina, where it is mended at a cost of $5 per shirt and or pair of trousers. In 2002, 700 prisoners based at FPI laundry facilities located in Florida, Texas and Alabama washed and pressed $3 million worth of military apparel.
The prisoners' work extends to military hardware:
FPI factories produce a variety of components for weaponry ranging in size from 30mm to 300mm, the caliber of battleship anti-aircraft guns. FPI is there to help with more sophisticated hardware as well.
There's lots more. Prisoners are being forced to work against their will. They are employed in sensitive areas and there is no security. Two of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing defendants are among those forced to do such work who successfully challenged the assignments:
As an experiment, Middle East Report contacted three of the men convicted for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Two had not only worked in FPI factories, but also reported being compelled to do so. Mohammad A. Salameh put up a long legal fight before he was finally excused from working for the company. Salameh pointed out that since he, along with more than 29 percent of the total federal prison population, is not even a legal resident of the United States, he should not be legally permitted – much less forced – to work for the company. Ultimately, when the Bureau of Prisons released Salameh from the job, they admitted in court documents to having forced him to work for FPI. Officials argued that the compulsory labor was justified since higher-risk inmates were easier to monitor if they were kept busy.
Why haven't we heard much about this? Call it "the politics of prison labor"--or, if you prefer, "the politics of exploitation."
With American casualties mounting in Iraq, and little good news about domestic employment either, even the Bush campaign must understand that a reprise of such photo-op moments would be in poor taste. So the 21,000 inmate employees of FPI, despite their vital importance to Bush's wars, remain distinctly behind the scenes.
