Doug:
>> *Though, as LBO subscribers know, if you count the incarcerated
population
>> as unemployed - almost 8% of all black adult males - then the
unemployment
>> rate for black men would rise from the reported 6.7% (in December)
to 16.5%.
Michael:
>some guy named Marx said more than fifteen years ago that prisons
>under capitalism are dumping grounds for the industrial reserve
>army
but what happens when this reserve army is no longer entirely 'in reserve', but working, as in prison labour? i don't know what the extent of prison labour is in the US, but here every prison has it (with the exception of the refugee and children's prisons), though getting figures on time worked, pay, numbers of people working is almost impossible because of the confidentiality laws which apply to private prisons (most of which are owned by ACM, a subsidiary of Wackenhut).
from prison to workhouse?
and, the collapse of the fiction of wage labour as free labour, but now under bureaucratic authority?
angela