“An inmate sews pieces of a Maryland flag together for the Maryland Correctional Enterprises in Jessup, Md.
Operating under the trade name of UNICOR with over 100 factories at 75 locations across the continental United States, Federal Prison Industries (FPI) produces a wide range of market-priced goods and services to the US Federal government and the private sector.

From manufacturing office furniture to recycling electronics, FPI operations even include a one-stop shopping call center staffed by inmates to speed processing of orders. Boasting ISO 9001:2000 certification and Lean Six Sigma processes in its factories, the FPI even makes helmets for the US military, using convict labor earning from $0.23 per hour up to a maximum of $1.15 per hour.

With a diversity of products and services from ADP (automatic data processing) and telecommunications services to XML (extensible markup language) tagging, the FPI is a huge government-run corporate entity, which not only sells to civilian federal agencies, but also to the US military.

Originally created in 1935 during the Great Depression under US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the FPI was the brainchild of Bureau of Prisons Director Sanford Bates, who conceived of the idea as a way to abate growing prison unrest, which he attributed to inmate idleness. Products manufactured, which included cotton duck cloth, shoes, brooms and brushes, were exclusively sold to the US government.

The FPI flourished and by 1937, in spite of the depression, the federally-owned enterprise boasted profits of $570,000.00, which is approximately $9.5 million in 2014 dollars. By the time of the Second World War, the FPI was operating 25 factories and producing over 70 products. By 1941, FPI factories, with a workforce totaling 18 percent of the prison population, were turning out war material from bomb fins and casings to parachutes and TNT on a 3-shift, around-the-clock basis. Many ex-convicts, who had become skilled in welding, aircraft sheet metal work, shipbuilding and aviation mechanics, were able to find jobs in war industries immediately upon release.

Following WWII, the Korean War generated more sales for the FPI, whose profits reached $29 million (about $260 million in 2014 dollars). Business was so good that the FPI initiated a $5-million expansion program, which resulted in improved production capacity just in time for the US war on Vietnam. By 1974, the FPI had grown so much that it was reorganized into seven industry specific business units: Automated Data Processing; Electronics; Graphics; Metals; Shoe and Brush; Textiles; and Woods and Plastics. The FPI’s focus shifted to marketing and in 1977, the government-owned entity inaugurated the UNICOR trade name and introduced new product lines in stainless steel, thermoplastics, printed circuits, modular furniture, Kevlar-reinforced items such as military helmets, and optics. By 2001, UNICOR sales of goods and services to the US Department of Defense (DOD) had climbed to $388 million.”

Source:Prison Reform Movement’s Weblog

The United States has a high convict recidivism rate, i.e., a large percentage of our prison inmates come back to prison after they finish their sentences.   70 % of ex-convicts return to prison. We also have a relatively large prison population.  About 1 of every 100 Americans is either in prison, on parole, or under some other type of supervised probation.

Because of these factors, we have high prison costs.  Prisons, as they are currently structured do not pay for themselves. There are a few exceptions to that among state prisons that are like family farms.  There are a few prisons in Louisiana where inmates work full-time producing food and other products for the institution but also to sell on the market and to other government agencies.

This post is about how to reduce the recidivism rate, the prison population and the associated  high costs.  The first step is educating the inmates who’ve decided that they want to improve themselves and end their criminal careers.  Once they have marketable skills, they can  work in prison factories and other prison business’s and make a living for themselves and their families.

We should make prison industries real enterprises producing products for the prisons but also for other government agencies and the open market as well.  Local business could manage these industries  using the inmate population as their staff.  Instead of paying the inmates 20 cents or a dollar an hour, as is done now, they could pay them the local going rate for the work that they do.