by Daniella Dane, LSPC Policy Fellow
In May, we celebrated International Workers’ Month to honor the struggles and victories of labor movements during the Industrial Revolution, yet these celebrations often fail to acknowledge that, during this same era, Black people in the United States remained enslaved—excluded entirely from the rights and protections being fought for by the labor movement. In June, we celebrate Juneteenth, the emancipation of Black people from chattel slavery in 1865. However, the struggle for freedom is far from over. That is why, this month, this issue seeks to highlight the many ways in which slavery continues through the carceral system. Millions of people who are disproportionately Black and Brown are caged and forced into labor without rights, dignity, or fair compensation. The fight for justice must continue. We must dismantle the systems of oppression that continue to exploit Black and Brown life.
In the year 2025, job access for formerly incarcerated people remains a huge challenge. These challenges are exacerbated for low-income, Black and Brown people due to the afterlife of slavery, racism, and ongoing exploitation of marginalized communities. Formerly incarcerated Black and Brown individuals must combat racism and discrimination, including denial of employment due to their criminal record. Studies by the Prison Policy Initiative show that formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at levels higher than Americans during the Great Depression. They suffer from worse unemployment than any other demographic group.
State-sanctioned violence in this country is engineered to exploit incarcerated people. People in prisons are often forced to work for incredibly low, frankly dehumanizing, wages: most incarcerated workers make less than $1 per day. The labor movement and labor resistance is a critical factor in the story of mass incarceration. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us, the state disciplined a surplus labor force through punishment during the rise of prison building. Upon returning home, this same labor force is unable to find stable employment, despite this being a regular condition of parole. Formerly incarcerated individuals not only face systemic barriers to securing employment essential for the survival of themselves and their families, but they are also frequently denied access to both private and affordable housing— even when close family members, whom they rely on for housing, emotional, and other forms of support, are committed and able to provide shelter upon their release. Not only are people ripped away from their families when they become incarcerated, but they continue to be forcefully separated from their loved ones when they are finally free. These exclusions and conditions create an environment where overcoming recidivism is more than difficult. It is a recursive loop of dispossession and racialized class warfare.
Racial capitalism is a term used to describe the system in which we live: one where racial domination and economic exploitation are fundamentally intertwined, sustaining profit and power through the subjugation of marginalized communities.
In the United States, this began with the enslavement of Black people and the colonization and genocide of Indigenous peoples. In the US today, mass incarceration functions as one of its most enduring and violent expressions. Black and Brown communities are systematically targeted by the state through policing, surveillance, and criminalization. These tactics were not created as a means of responding to or preventing crime but rather to perpetuate the imprisonment of Black and Brown people for the purpose of labor extraction. Incarcerated individuals, who are disproportionately people of color, are routinely forced to work for pennies under threat of punishment, such as not being able to have visits or phone calls with their family members or loved ones.
The system of mass incarceration generates billions in wages for police, corrections officers, and more. Both state agencies and private industries benefit as well. This involuntary labor is legitimized by the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery “except as a punishment for crime,” allowing carceral institutions to reproduce slavery in a legally sanctioned form. Upon release, formerly incarcerated individuals continue to be economically excluded, denied access to employment, housing, and basic civil rights. This produces an environment where those who are formerly incarcerated as well as their families continue to experience class and wealth inequality.
Though many believe that mass incarceration is a broken system which needs to be improved to ensure the rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals, the carceral state is working precisely as designed to maintain racial hierarchies and ensure capitalist profit through the criminalization and exploitation of Black, Brown, and poor peoples’ lives. Parole and probation are just two of the many tools that demonstrate this goal of mass incarceration. Systems of parole and probation operate as extensions of the carceral state and function as mechanisms of state-sanctioned violence as a means of ensuring the continued coerced labor of Black and Brown people. Research conducted by the Prison Policy Initiative shows that more than 1 in 10 people sentenced to state prisons every year have committed no new crime; they have simply “violated” one or more of the many conditions, or rules, of their probation. Roughly 2.9 million people under correctional control are on probation, surpassing the 1.9 million people currently incarcerated. The strict rules and conditions of parole and probation are strategically designed to ensure recidivism.
Technical violations often result in imprisonment, regardless of whether a new crime has been committed. This reinforces cycles of control and punishment under the pretense of rehabilitation. Moreover, parole and probation frequently impose financial burdens on individuals through fees for drug testing, ankle monitors, and mandatory programs. This criminalizes poverty and extracts economic value from those already marginalized and oppressed. By denying full civil rights, restricting autonomy, and perpetuating racial disparities, these systems extend the reach of the carceral state beyond prison walls.
Not only are probation and parole weapons of the carceral state, and thus capitalism, so are the restrictions on employment and housing for formerly incarcerated people. While there have been policies enacted to mitigate the barriers formerly incarcerated individuals face when it comes to employment and housing markets, we need to continue to fight for the restoration of human and civil rights for people who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated and their families.
San Francisco’s fair chance ordinance is a policy that has been enacted to protect tenants from discrimination from affordable housing providers based on their criminal information history. Before checking criminal history the housing provider must determine eligibility for housing by reviewing all other qualifications and provide the prospective tenant with a copy of their rights before performing the background check. Housing providers are barred from taking into consideration an applicant’s criminal history such as arrests that did not result in a conviction, a conviction that is 7 years old, juvenile records and records that have been expunged.
Ban the Box is another initiative that seeks to restore the fundamental right to work for all, so that people who are formerly incarcerated only have their background checks performed after a conditional offer of employment, and on the application itself they do not have to provide any information pertaining to their criminal record. Initiatives like Ban the Box are more than policy changes, they are acts of resistance against a system designed to permanently punish and exploit Black and Brown labor. As we celebrate these victories, we must continue to push for transformative justice that fully restores the rights, dignity, and futures of all those impacted by incarceration. And we must do so in solidarity and community with each other!
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