Where Does Your State Fall When It Comes To Paying People in Prison Hourly Wages?

Date:  04-14-2017 Some states pay as low as four cents an hour for a non-industry job

From Prison Policy Initiative: How much do incarcerated people earn? In 2003’s The Prison Index, we included wages reported by an obscure publication in 2001. Those numbers remain among the most searched-for and cited statistics we have published, although they are now almost twenty years old. Prison wages come up again and again in the context of prison conditions and policies, and were even at the center of the nationwide prison strike last fall. And no wonder: wages allow incarcerated people to purchase personal items not provided by the prison, pay ever-increasing fees, and bridge the gap after release. So, we set out to find the most up-to-date information available for each state. For this update, we combed through the policies of state correctional agencies and any other available sources, and found information for almost every state. Despite the inaccessibility of data for some state prison jobs, this is the most comprehensive list of wages paid to incarcerated people available today. Continue reading >>>