Going Dark: Can Creating Garments in Prison Be Considered Ethical?

One of the difficulties of prison life is the solitude that comes with it. Resources are limited and boredom easily strikes, causing mental health disorders for many completing their sentences, including depression, mania, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Schedules are rigid and relentless, with mail calls, phone calls, laundry time, and sick calls being all at the same time per week with no exceptions. Part of prison life also includes working, depending on your sentence severity. Jobs include making furniture, electrical engineering, and creating garments in prison workshops, earning money that can be spent on privileges such as chocolate, deodorant, or even extra cash for family and friends outside of prison. With approved weekly spending, prisoners can have a daily income that makes their lives doing time easier to digest, but how ethical actually is this practice? Is it okay for fashion companies and brands on the outside to employ prisoners on the inside for a fraction of the wage? There is no simple answer to these questions.

In her article, “The Ethics of Fashion Brands Made in Prisons”, journalist Chiara Gabardi discusses the new influx of prison-related fashion companies and how their ‘ethical’ models of production hover on a blurred line between prison-inclusivity and forced labour: “Sure, it can be argued that it’s a good idea that prisoners create their own bedding and uniform, and there are various benefits of working for those imprisoned. They can learn various skills that can be used later; it keeps them busy and even pays them a nominal fee, sometimes. They gain a sense of dignity and self-worth, and benefit from teamwork. But that totally depends on the context.” Indeed, the benefits of this practice vary depending on the prisoner and their contribution, but with the questionable wage level, is it ethical when the product being made will most likely be priced at a profitable margin? “Given the fact that prisoners only earn an average of between 23 cents and $1.15 per hour in the USA, paired with the fact that more people now are imprisoned than ever before in history in that country, something about the ethics of fashion brands made in prisons smells fishy here.”

This ‘wage’ is significantly lower than any sort of legal wage given elsewhere - the similarities between sweatshop wages and prison wages is undeniable. While it is true that prisoners are serving their sentences as a form of punishment, the circumstances under which they work are surely unjust. Punishment isn’t justifiable when it comes in the form of becoming a slave to the system. According to Gabardi, work schemes are not intended to reform prisoners and boost their skills, “instead they’re mainly aimed at saving money for corporations. There’s a long list of well-known companies that exploit prisoners for their labour. These include Victoria’s Secret, IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Nordstrom, and many more.” Since many prisons are filled with inmates who have been incarcerated under ethically questionable circumstances in the first place, with sentences that are disproportionate to their crime (for example, selling drugs or being accused of introducing drugs to someone can lead to a minimum of 10 years), it’s unsurprising to consider that prisons function as profiting businesses rather than rehabilitation centres. In most countries, taxpayers fund prisons, but private prisons also exist. Understanding that not all prisons exist for society’s benefit is important when considering how they can be used to make money. In the world of the prisoner, basic items reach a level of luxury, with their prices heightened.

But if we give prisoners a decent wage, won’t the cost of these items in prison inflate as well? What about those who have sentences severe enough that they can’t work? Won’t a class system emerge in prison cells? Well, yes, inflation would naturally happen if prisoners started getting excess cash on hand, but when did we decide that basic items (say, a book) should be inaccessible to prisoners? This is, of course, a much bigger conversation on prison reform, but to strip basic items away from inmates is fundamentally unethical. Prisons are in place to rehabilitate inmates and allow them to come to terms with their crimes; they should not be crippling prisoners to the poverty line, such that when they return to the outside world, they are at a complete loss as to what to do. This actually leads to a considerably higher percentage of re-offenders.  

Where do we draw the line on this unethical practice?

There are a few clothing lines being produced in prisons that go straight back to the prisoners, so not all production lines are unethical. The streetwear line Project Pietà, founded and managed by Thomas Jacob, manufactures its garments in a trio of jails in Lima, Peru. These clothes are of high value and intricate design, with items made from organic pima cotton, ecological Andean highland wool, leather, and baby alpaca. “People think we are exploiting the inmates, but that’s not true at all. Pietà has been created by the inmates,” Jacob says in an interview with Refinery29. “Inmates earn a nice salary and feel very engaged and responsible to do the work. They feel free!” As part of their contributions to the work, the prisoners also partake in workshops on cutting, embroidering, sewing, leatherwork, serigraphy, and knitting, as a way of honing their skills for future opportunities outside of their sentence. Working on large projects like this gives them vocational opportunities, and provide a sense of purpose and motivation, as their wages can then be used to provide for their families. For companies like Project Pietà, inmates can earn up to 400 sol (£92) per week, with many sending their proceeds to their families and children. The business has around 50 workers across three Peruvian jails and makes around 1,000 garments a week. A not-for-profit enterprise, the prisoners earn a commission from the sale of each item they make. In this business, prisoners are making the minimum wage in Peru.

There are also questions to be asked with regard to sustainability. Even though companies like Pietà use sustainable materials and recycled plastic, how can a company be sustainable when its brand depends on people being in prison? “Prison labor is a very complicated and opaque topic” says Peter McAllister, the executive director of the Ethical Trading Initiative. “There are big questions to be asked around whether inmates should ever form the mainstream product of a profit-driven label.” Though brands like Pietà are pushing for prisoners to have their sentences shortened and lives bettered, it still encourages an unsustainable model that relies on the turnover of inmates.

The question of what punishment a prisoner deserves depends heavily on the perception of the judge analysing it and where the prisoners are based. For inmates working for companies like Pietà, their job helps them reduce their sentences, make a wage, and provide for their families outside of prison. Daniel Rojas Palacious, 25, has a five-year sentence but is trying to get out faster by studying. By working for Pietà for a few months, he has been able to help his daughter outside of prison while also using part of his money to pay to study textile design. This is an example where work has given him stepping stones towards a better future. On the other hand, there are also prisoners who work relentless hours, earning mere pennies in poor conditions, only to receive certain luxuries in prison which mostly go towards private enterprises. This leads to their leaving prison on the poverty line with an outdated perspective on freedom, after which the path to re-offending is often the only familiar one. This is an example where forced labour is the wrong solution.

The ethical dilemma surrounding this practice resides in the outcome of the garment. If the product is made in a private prison, don’t purchase the garment. Giving money towards private prisons allows them to create more laws, funding loopholes to create more criminals. With what we are seeing in the Black Lives Matter Movement, parts of the world today are more similar to our dystopian fantasies than we initially realised. This is the by-product of a world in which human rights come secondary to profit, driving prison populations skyward and corrupting the political and judicial process. Forced labour is unethical and should never used in prisons as an exploitative measure. Rather, “the motivation of the prisoners is to make money, and learn a profession, and with the money they can shorten their prison time. When they come out we can hopefully also change their attitudes.”