Putting Reentry Out of Business
Unions must think beyond reform and seriously consider abolition—the elimination and eradication of carceral institutions that exacerbate violence and underprepare people for reentry.
Calvin John Smiley
About a decade ago, Richard Trumka, then president of the AFL-CIO, told a crowd gathered at Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles that “the theme of this event is mass employment, not mass incarceration.”
A year earlier, the AFL-CIO had committed to addressing mass incarceration as a labor issue. In his speech at the jobs and reentry organization, where he was introduced by labor leader María Elena Durazo, Trumka described why: “When some people are forced to work for close to nothing, all workers’ living standards are pushed down.”
Then, Trumka repeated the refrain “it’s a labor issue because,” followed by explanations about mass incarceration’s impact on families, communities, the economy and voting, among others, until finally: “because labor rights and social justice and civil rights are intertwined.”
A decade later, the terrain around mass incarceration and labor has shifted significantly, and it is critical that unions think beyond reform and seriously consider abolition — the elimination and eradication of carceral institutions that exacerbate violence and underprepare people for reentry.
Abolition posits that these hellscapes known as jails and prisons must be replaced with institutions that provide basic needs, such as housing, healthcare and employment. Unions are indeed best positioned to recruit, train and provide skills as alternatives to incarceration. To get there, we need a radical social movement that can bring labor and reentry together for, as I call it, “abolition reentry.”
We know that strong labor organizing and unions are fundamental to protecting workers’ rights and democratic values. Yet incarcerated and formerly incarcerated workers have, historically, generally benefited least from this framework because of draconian “tough on crime” policies entrenched in the United States.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the average incarcerated worker makes between $0.14 to $0.63 per hour. Additionally, folks “doing reentry” are marginalized from the workforce upon release. Formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of more than 27%, higher than during the Great Depression. Criminal records, compounded with other social factors (such as poverty and white supremacy), create mounting barriers to meaningful and stable employment after incarceration. Recidivism rates also continue to hover around 62%, highlighting the absence of a social safety net.
The modern prison rights movement began in New York with the Attica rebellion in September 1971. Inspired by the teachings of George Jackson, whose writings underscore how people in prison are intrinsically linked to surplus labor, the rebellion was a call for better prison conditions and an expansion of vocational and academic training. “Real union activity,” Jackson wrote, “will eliminate the corporative ties between the regime-ruling class and labor.”
A year later, in 1973, incarcerated folks at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Walpole organized the National Prisoners Reform Association, a vehicle for prisoners to engage in collective bargaining for better wages, healthcare and food.
More recently, the Free Alabama Movement, which began in 2013, published “Let The Crops Rot in the Fields,” calling for work stoppages in prisons as a strategy to end mass incarceration and prison slavery. This national movement was assisted by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a prison-led section of the Industrial Workers of the World.
In the wake of the summer 2020 social movement commonly referred to as “Defund,” organizers and activists reaffirmed the fundamental links between police and prisons, calling for the reallocation of funds into other sectors of society. That summer, the 2-million strong Service Employees International Union passed a resolution in support to end the War on Black People, stating: “The Movement for Black Lives has been the driving force behind the protests that have spread to all 50 states and across the globe.” As longtime organizer Jasson Perez, formerly with Action Center on Race and the Economy and organizer against mass incarceration, tells me: “Defund is combating ‘crime wave’ propaganda…It’s about the sustainability of organizing, not the flash in the pan.”
Ultimately, the tools for grassroots labor organizing within jails and prisons are already here, including the Abolish Slavery National Network, No New Jails and G.A.N.G.S. Coalition.
An important next step is a national reentry union that combats under- and unemployment, fights for fair wages, combats perpetual punishment post-incarceration and provides networks for skills-building.
Ultimately, abolition reentry would put “reentry” out of business.
Calvin John Smiley is associate professor of sociology at Hunter College and author of Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, & Abolition and Defund: Conversations Towards Abolition.
