HITCHED TO THE POST: PRISON LABOR, CHOICE AND CITIZENSHIP

Abstract

The current neo-liberal trend in the United States insists that citizens must be self-supporting and are free to choose how they will involve themselves in the labor market. However, with the hardening of poverty in the inner cities, it is difficult to maintain the idea that everyone can choose to work. The collision between neo-liberal ideologies and economic crisis is evidenced by contemporary prison labor. The incarceration boom and use of prison labor suggests that work and unemployment is a matter of character, thus helping to maintain the idealization of labor as a marker of rationality, disciplined free will, and hence citizenship.

Citation

McBride, K. (2003), "HITCHED TO THE POST: PRISON LABOR, CHOICE AND CITIZENSHIP", Sarat, A. and Ewick, P. (Ed.) Punishment, Politics and Culture (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 107-124. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)30005-5