Hi, my name is John Cannon. My first time going to an adult prison was when I was 16 years old. I was arrested and charged with robbery for stealing pizza and a money pouch from a pizza delivery man. I was subsequently certified as an adult by the court and sent to the Department of Corrections.

Upon arrival at the facility, I was strip-searched and immediately assigned a job position (yard labor). At the time, I needed soap, food, deodorant, etc. and I didn’t have family support or any money coming in. I was looking forward to working and making some money that I could use for commissary. That is, until I found out from an older guy that was in there with me that I wasn’t going to be making any money. He told me that our labor is either for free or we would only receive pennys an hour. I told him that I wouldn’t work for free and how that wasn’t even legal. That’s when he informed me that if I refused to work I would be punished for refusing. He also explained to me that the Constitution still allows involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.

For the next 8 years I worked for next to nothing. Sweating in the warehouses, laboring in the sun, and working almost until collapsing on a mountain fighting wildfires. While fighting those wildfires, we worked alongside firefighters who weren’t incarcerated. I remember our crew working just as hard, if not harder than the hotshot crews. Yet, they were making more money in an hour than we made in a month.

By the time I was released at 24 years old, I had a skewed view of the workforce. Needless to say, I was let out of prison with nothing but the clothes on my back. I was in an even worse position than when I went in. I was still broke, but now I was a felon with no real “experience” because those prison jobs don’t count in the “real” world. It was then when I understood that the prison industrial complex is a well-oiled machine. It works just the way it was set up to work, which is to keep more people incarcerated in order to exploit us for free or cheap labor.