SALT FACT SHEET: Prison Pay Reform
Virginia prisons pay inmates rates from $0.27 per hour to $0.80 per hour. Pay rates have not increased in more than 30 years The rates are so low that they punish prisoners and demean the value of their work. These low rates of pay are legal only in developing countries around the world.
Paying prisoners a real wage would give them incentive to pay their court imposed fines, restitution orders and child support. It would permit savings for the inmates’ eventual re-entry to society. The benefits in successful re-entry, lower recidivism and reduced human suffering, would benefit the community. The lower future costs for warehousing inmates would offset the higher budgetary requirement to increase prison pay.
Incarcertation should not be a reason for failing to pay a reasonable wage to the inmates who work. The current situation can best be described as counter productive for rehabilitation and re-entry purposes. Mandated labor without just compensation is a human rights abuse and a holdover from Jim Crow laws that perpetuate poverty. We can begin to end this human rights abuse by raising prison pay rates to a more reasonable level
Imprisoned people are perpetually in debt trying to obtain basic necessities. It can take hours of work in a Virginia prison to save enough money first to pay mandatory fees and fines that are automatically deducted from gross pay, then to afford co-payemts for medical services or to cover the costs of medicine,. In addition, inmates do not have purchasing options like the rest of us, forced to pay inflated prices for commisary items, personal care products and convenience items available only from a single source.
In Virginia, prisoners must pay a $5.00 copayment to seek medical care. This may not be a burdensome expense for someone earning a living wage. However, an inmate working in the state prison system is paid between $0.27 and $0.80 per hour. Those rates require 6.25 to 18.5 hours of work just to see a doctor for medical treatent guaranteed by the fifth, eighth, ninth, and fourteenth amendments to the U. S. Constitution.
The net wages earned by inmates invoke the notion of slavery because state deductions — “LFOs,” or legal financial obligations, such as taxes, restitution, room and board, and other costs associated with the prisoner’s criminal processing and incarceration (which the prisoner can be made to repay), may reduce as much as 80 per cent of a prisoner’s gross pay.
The inability to make a living wage in prison lowers the chances of success after release. Paying imprisoned persons low wages leaves no funds to cover the immediate outside costs for food and housing. We are essentially preventing any chance at successful reintegration on release, by failing to pay prison workers fairly. One study found that increasing a prisoner’s access to cash on release reduced the first-day recidivism to zero, with no increase in crime later.
(November 20, 2019)