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November 7, 2012

Prison factories turn into big business

  • Private firms find it hard to compete with the cheap labor of 13,000 U.S. inmates making everything from military uniforms to office furniture to electrical parts.
    • By JAY REEVES
    Associated Press

    TALLADEGA, Ala. — On the outside, Unicor, with its big oaks and magnolia trees, looks like it could be part of a landscaped industrial park. Step a little closer and it's clear the apparel shop lies in the middle of a medium-security federal prison in east Alabama.

    The factory and those like it that employ convicted felons are at the heart of a simmering debate about whether prisons should be siphoning away jobs — at much lower wages — that could be filled by those who need them during the nation's toughest period of unemployment in decades.


     
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