From Hard Labor to Market Discipline: The Political Economy of Prison Work, 1974 to 2022
中文摘要
一个悠久的社会学传统一直在考察国家强制如何为劳动力的“自由市场”提供支撑。然而在当代监狱中，有迹象表明这一关系已被颠倒过来。过去，国家强制帮助监狱为私人市场创造利润；如今，市场观念则日益被用于监狱内部，以协助实现国家控制。我利用对七轮“州惩教机构囚犯调查”（Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities）的分析，以及对州监狱管理者、监狱产业倡导者和曾有监禁经历者的61次访谈展开研究。尽管监狱劳动产品的市场已经萎缩，且被监禁者的平均工作量较以往任何时候都更少，但工作分配以及工作回报的不平等却加剧了。监狱劳动结构的这种变化，与人们对其理解的转变相关联。监狱管理者，以及在某种程度上被监禁者自己，会用市场观念来解释监狱劳动的新组织方式，并为人们在其中的位置提供正当性辩护。这种组织方式与这些观念解决了监狱内部的管理问题，并暗示着当代监狱与社会福利政策之间存在相似之处。
Abstract
A long sociological tradition has examined how state coercion undergirds the “free market” for labor. In the contemporary prison, however, there are signs this relationship has been turned on its head. Whereas in the past, state coercion helped prisons generate profit for private markets, today market ideas are increasingly used within prisons to facilitate state control. I draw on an analysis of seven waves of the Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities, as well as 61 interviews with state prison administrators, prison industry advocates, and formerly incarcerated people. Although the market for the products of prison labor has declined, and incarcerated people, on average, are working less than ever before, inequality in the distribution of work and rewards for this work has sharpened. This changing structure of prison labor is associated with a changing understanding of it. Prison administrators, and to some extent incarcerated people themselves, use market ideas to explain the new organization of prison labor and justify people’s places within it. This organization and these ideas solve managerial problems within the prison and are suggestive of parallels between prison and social welfare policy in the contemporary era.