Circle K prices, privatization, pennies on the dollar: Arizona’s prison wages perpetuate despondency

May 2023

License plates, street signs, bus stops, park benches, construction materials,  furniture for offices and dorm rooms: These are some of the everyday objects made by Arizona’s prisoners, whose labor benefits various government agencies — and the general public. 

Incarcerated people fight wildfires, pick up street-side litter, clean bathrooms in public schools, wash state-owned vehicles and landscape outside state-owned buildings. They help set up and clean up state-hosted events. They unload truck beds of portable toilets at Country Thunder, a country music festival held six miles from the Arizona State Prison Complex  in Florence. Most recently, they unfolded dozens of rows of chairs and propped up hand held flags in preparation, then were loaded back onto buses as attendees arrived for Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs’ inauguration in January.  

Everywhere they work, they’re dressed in bright orange. They do these jobs either under a critical public eye or hidden from the public all together. And they do it all for about 50 cents an hour — or less. 

The 13th amendment and the economy 

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” the 13th amendment reads. 

Arizona’s prison population is one of the largest in the nation by percentage. In 2022 the Department of Corrections requested $1.5 million from the state for their 2023 fiscal year projections. Of the $27.8 billion taxpayers gave back to the state last year, $417 million of it went to the DOC. Despite a decrease in prison population, the state increased spending for the DOC in 2021 and since 2018. Spending included expanding officer retirement plans and benefits. 

It’s difficult to quantify the numerical value using prison labor saves the state. Daniel Rosen, a campaign manager at Worth Rises, a nonprofit advocacy organization, says nationwide, the real cost is unknown too. 

“We tend to talk about the morality of the issue a lot — about the fact that slavery is still legal,” Rosen says of his advocacy work. “But I think the conversation quickly turns to economics. There are a lot of economic interests in favor of keeping the status quo.”

Rosen works on the End the Exception campaign for Worth Rises. The campaign intends to amend state constitutions that allow forms of slavery to persist in modern day prisons, he says. The campaign specifically focuses on the middle clause of the 13th amendment. The word “except,” and those following it, have allowed systemic racial and economic inequities to be perpetuated within prisons across the country for decades, he says. 

“The exception of the 13th amendment was sort of, explicitly, in the minds of a lot of people, a continuation of slavery by other means, a way to continue slave labor practices after slavery was, ‘abolished,’” Rosen says. 

Sixteen states have exceptions to the 13th amendment written in their state constitutions. Eight states have voted to remove the exception as recently as the 2022 election cycle. Arizona is one of 26 states that has no mention of slavery or involuntary servitude in its constitution. Rosen thinks it’ll be a long haul to get anything passed, even on the state level. 

“It's a very long-term thing. We're not going to … get rid of the exception of the 13th amendment easily,” he says. “There's just a lot of people lined up against it and I think you'll see on the state level some of that happening.”

In California, ending the exception had support from across the aisle, but according to Rosen, economic interests — like the state losing upward of a billion dollars — interfered. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom shot down the bill in June 2022. Rosen says advocates saw that and knew better answers surrounding economic actors in prisons and fair wages for prison labor were necessary to achieve the goals of the campaign. 

Economic interests interfere everywhere, he says. In Arizona, a joint investigation by the Arizona Republic and KJZZ found that the people lined up against reform were representatives of the Department of Corrections. The DOC, the investigation found, has tried its best to keep talk of labor and goods produced by incarcerated people away from the public. 

The DOC did not respond to an interview request.

In 2022, the ACLU published an expansive report alongside the University of Chicago Law School titled Captive Labor. After studying prison labor conditions, wages and attitudes surrounding work and rehabilitation, the study found that people want to work — but need to be compensated fairly to survive, both within the prison and once they are released. 

Former inmates and employees agree: The issue isn’t the work they’re required to do, but the wages they’re paid to do it.

“People who are incarcerated and the overwhelming majority of folks on the outside want people to work, it's simply a matter of what they're being paid,” says Joe Watson, a media consultant and lobbyist who was formerly incarcerated. “Pennies on the dollar is just not right. It’s not right in terms of human fairness and dignity and justice, and it’s also not right in terms of lowering recidivism rates.”

Recidivism — the rate at which formerly incarcerated people break the law and are imprisoned again — is accepted as a measure of success in the criminal justice system, the Marshall Project wrote. An article by the Stanford Social Innovation Review put it this way: By confronting financial troubles of people leaving prisons, recidivism rates may lower. 

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, three-quarters of inmates released are rearrested within five years and 55% are incarcerated again. 

After being released from prison, Fabricius created Arizonans for Transparency and Accountability in Corrections where he lobbies the state government for better conditions inside which he says will lower recidivism rates. He says a lot of it starts with giving inmates a liveable wage. 

“The problem is that people are working and working and working and there’s no benefit [for them] coming from it at all,” Fabricius says. “It’s a really, really bad system and a lot of it starts with the exploitation of labor and with low rates of pay.”

The three buckets of prison labor

Fabricius explains that there are three types — or buckets — of labor that incarcerated people do while imprisoned. 

About 80% of incarcerated people nationally do some sort of maintenance work to upkeep prisons, the ACLU report found. It varies state-to-state, but generally these jobs include cooking and kitchen prep, laundry, janitorial duties, grounds maintenance, administration and education programs. These jobs, typically called Work Incentive Pay Programs, have been the longest-standing and most common types of work people have done for decades in prisons.

In 2020, Arizona spent $8 million on WIPP. Inmates who are employed through this bucket are paid anywhere from 15 to 45 cents an hour, Fabricius says.

As incarceration rates increased, combined with longer sentencing, more people were in prisons and needing jobs. Prisons then began outsourcing labor, meaning jobs were found outside prison walls.

The investigation by The Arizona Republic and KJZZ primarily focused on the second bucket — incarcerated people working for private companies. Arizona Correctional Industries, the state-run company that leases prisoners to private institutions, has generated millions of dollars by having incarcerated people work on farms, telecommunication companies and more. These “elite” jobs typically pay better — anywhere from $2 per hour to the state minimum wage — but they’re few and far between and typically don’t benefit prisoners much besides the pay increase. 

The investigation found poor work conditions and work-related injuries to be rampant in the program. Through the 13th amendment’s exception, private companies are not subject to labor laws because inmates aren’t considered employees.

The team’s investigation found that a vast majority of goods and services implemented outside of prison walls were used by the third bucket: the state government, including law enforcement, courthouses, schools, universities, parks and recreation and other state entities. 

These intergovernmental agency agreements (IGA) are just that — agreements between the Department of Corrections and another state agency where incarcerated people are employed. At the betterment and benefit of the state, they’re paid about 50 cents an hour, Fabricius says.  

Under the umbrella of IGA jobs, inmates are leased out by the state to prepare for events. Incarcerated IGA workers recently were hired to unload portable toilets at Country Thunder, the country music festival hosted annually in Florence in April. A few months prior, they were contracted to unfold chairs, place them in rows and prop up hand held flags at Governor Hobb’s inauguration in January. 

Her use of incarcerated labor for her January inauguration, whether intentional or not, was a shock to community members. Both a random tipster and staff photographer for The Arizona Republic captured photos of inmates dressed in orange setting up for the event before sunrise. 

Jimmy Jenkins, a criminal justice reporter for The Arizona Republic, who has ten thousand Twitter followers, shared the photos of inmates setting up for her inauguration on the app. Jenkins reported that they were loaded back onto buses and driven away before volunteers and attendees showed up. 

According to Stacey Barchenger, a reporter for the Republic, Hobbs and her team were asking for money from lobbyists, businesses and social interest groups to fund her inauguration events. Hobbs and her team haven't released the total number of money raised for her week of inauguration events. 

There was some online outrage in response to the politician’s blatant use of prison labor but people like Joe Watson aren’t surprised. It happens all the time, he says.  

The Hobbs team likely didn’t know prisoners were going to set up for the event, Fabricius said. Hobbs and her team have not responded to a request for comment or an interview.

“Those images are a real story in the juxtaposition of how easily we use prison labor here, the expectation that they will just show up, do what we want, and not complain and walk away,” Fabricius says. “It's just an abhorrent reflection on our society, related to this acceptance of slavery via the criminal legal system … There are much better ways to benefit the incarcerated through work opportunities that actually benefit them and aren't just there to clean up the mess of the rich and the powerful.”

From enforcer to advocate 

Mindi Kracinski never wanted to work in a prison, but after circumstances left her needing to provide for her family, she became a correctional officer in Arizona’s Department of Corrections. 

It took more than 10 years and a promotion for her to see issues — both physically and monetarily — that surround and are embedded in the carceral system. After being an officer, she was a case manager and a WIPP officer, meaning she got more one-on-one time with inmates. 

“I became much more invested in their welfare,” she says. “And as that process evolved, within my thinking, I began to see a whole lot of abuse.” She is now retired and hopes to advocate for incarcerated people. 

Kracinski, Fabricius and Rosen all agree that at the root, low wages for inmates comes from a profit-seeking mindset because everything inside prisons is privatized. 

Everything in prison is controlled by private companies. From phone calls to family, the commissary, medical visits, the banking company, electricity for personal TVs, to educational and rehabilitation programs, there are ways to profit, Kracinski says. 

“Those companies only exist if there are as many inmates as possible and as long as possible,” she adds. “It's a very, very bad use of state money, which comes from taxpayers.”

Paychecks, purchases & paying it back

It’s important to consider what prisoner’s paychecks look like — and what they do with them. If an inmate owes restitution, it’s withdrawn from their paycheck. Each inmate has a dedicated discharge account, meant to stow away $250 for their release. If they’re required to pay child support, that also is withdrawn. Building renewal fund, transition fees, among other fees leave inmates with very little left over in their bi-weekly paycheck to make purchases from the commissary. 

Fabricius calls it “Circle K prices.” William Saunders, who was formerly incarcerated, says it taught him good money management. 

Saunders says in Arizona it’s approximately, $2 a month for electricity if you have a personal TV to plug into the wall, $4 each medical visit if you need to go, $2 for a bar of soap, $3 for a bottle of shampoo, $3 for a bag of coffee, $3 for a pack of cigarettes if that’s your vice — which Saunders says everyone had one, $6 for a pair of boxers, $5 if you want to splurge on a beanie, $2 for a pair of socks, $15 for a pair of pants and $12 for a T-shirt. These are generalized prices and may vary depending on prison location in Arizona and other states.

“You’re paying street prices but you’re getting paid 50 cents or less an hour,” Saunders says. 

Deodorant, toothbrushes and toothpaste are necessary purchases, too. Fabricius says an inmate can get time added if they don’t upkeep proper hygiene. Inmates are responsible for purchasing a few pairs of clothes. Once they’re worn or the DOC logo has rubbed off, they’re considered contraband and confiscated by officers. The inmate must purchase another pair themselves, Saunders says.  

The mess-hall food — which was cooked and prepared by other inmates on the clock — was inedible most of the time. Honeybuns, brownies and small soups were delicacies if there was any money left over. 

“You’re starving to death and you're watching people around you that are able to eat something decent because their family sent him some money, or maybe they've been there in prison so long that they've saved something up,” Fabricius says. 

Fabricius says he knew that one inmate was beaten to death by another over a $10 debt for purchasing brownies from another inmate. This statement cannot be independently verified through DOC records at this time. The DOC publicly reports when and where an inmate dies but does not disclose the cause of death online. 

“What are people going to do? They're going to go out and get a loan and go to the inmate store or get in trouble,” Fabricius says. “And it's this whole cycle that just gets people in problems constantly.”

Saunders says that he and his fellow inmates were required to be in bed by 7:45 p.m. If they were lucky, they had a TV or something to read. Most of the time, he says, he would sit there and think. Fabricius says the cycle makes people despondent.

“It makes you angry, it makes you frustrated and makes you hate authority, all of it is bad,” Fabricius says.  

Saunders has been in prison twice — for drugs and possession of stolen property. After first being released, he was out for 365 days to the day before reentering the prison system for a total of 15 years. He was released in 2019. 

“It sucks to say, prison, yeah, it did save my life because I was down a wrong path,” Saunders says. “It did help me build structure.”

While incarcerated, Saunders knew he needed to apply for an IGA job, or a “town job,” as they call them, where he’d be able to leave the complex and not go stir crazy. While nothing close to the feeling of release, it still was something. 

“By them allowing us that little bit of freedom, we did not want to lose that,” he says. “I've had it taken from me and to sit on the yard for six months after doing the job for a year and a half … it's boring, it makes you do things that will get you in trouble.”

He worked for Arizona’s Department of Transportation cleaning trash off the side of roads and digging ditches; he worked for the Golden Valley Fire Department, clearing grasses in prevention efforts; and he washed and maintained state-owned cars — but he had to earn it. 

At first, like Fabricius and Watson, Saunders cleaned prison bathrooms and picked up cigarette butts around the complex for 15 cents an hour. He applied to the IGA job and was required to take classes — that he paid for. Luckily, his Public Institutional Risk score was low enough, which meant he was considered stable and safe enough to venture into the public.
He says he wishes more people knew about the Public Institutional Risk score. 

“When we’re out there working, we’re not bad people,” Saunders says. “I’m not a bad person but people look at us like we’re murderers.”

While incarcerated, “You stick with your race,” he says of the brotherhoods on the inside. Now, stripped of the orange, he’s made a different kind of brotherhood. He works for a company with a union, a company that didn’t care that he checked the box marked felony conviction. 

Local prisons hold job fairs for companies willing to hire former inmates, and Saunders attends them to build connections for the inmates about to be released. He knows what it’s like to be in the system, to work an IGA job, to long for release yet feel hopeless and on edge when it actually happens. He hopes the public grows to show more compassion towards the system as a whole. 

“You’re a human and that’s all we want to be classified as,” he says. “Yeah, we screwed up, but we’re trying to make it right.”

At the state level, Fabricius hopes his work lobbying will help lawmakers see inmates in a more humane way, too. 

Changing legal fiction

Change starts with legislation, specifically with the way legislation is worded — or lack of wording, Fabricius says. He calls it “legal fiction,” where exploitation and corruption meet opportunity and privatization through wording. 

According to Fabricius, the current legislation doesn’t provide strict enough regulations for the DOC to follow but it also leaves room for ambiguity, which allows the DOC to interpret their own meaning from the words. 

“You change the words on the paper, the buildings change,” he says. “And to that point, if we want to change these prisons, then we need to change those words in those books.”

It’s been a challenge, Fabricius says, for lawmakers to see past partisan ties. In a world of hyper-partisan politics following several grueling election cycles in Maricopa County, he hopes to create change for the people still in orange. 

“We need lawmakers to be serious, to be adults, and to not be tribalized or partisan and to think about this as a function of government,” he says. “And to think about it in terms of what it would be like if their son or daughter was in the Department of Corrections.”

Mindi Kracinski, a former DOC employee herself, thinks change needs to happen from within. 

“It's not just in the black and white of the policy, it's something in the makeup of the people who are drawn to this kind of job,” she says. “Maybe the job itself has a way of bringing out the worst flaws in our characters or maybe [it’s] a combination of those factors. On both sides of the fence, you get exposed to the worst in people.”

Nationally, Rosen sees an issue worth addressing, so he’s assembling a team of economists. There hasn’t been a widespread analysis that encompasses the ways mass incarceration — and specifically prison labor and wages — affect so much more than the inmates, he says. 

“There are a lot of costs that are not specific monetary costs, there are costs to people's dignity, to their family, relationships,” he says. “We need better cost benefit analysis of these issues like … what does that do to communities? What does it do to the families? What does it do to the public benefits infrastructure system?” 

Rosen argues that, right now as it stands, the economic cost analysis of underpaying prisoners is hindering his team’s — and other advocates — work. People are too willing to brush it aside if they can’t see the entire economic impact mass incarceration has, he says.

“On our [Gross Domestic Product] level, I think it’s going to be very difficult [but] it’s too easy to say we can’t afford to pay people inside,” Rosen says.

In February, Fabricus’ spoke to a crowd gathered to watch the documentary The First Step, which chronicles CNN commentator Van Jones’ work bringing people together across the aisle for prison reform. The First Step Act, which was passed with bipartisan support and signed by former President Donald Trump in Dec. 2018, attempts to lower recidivism rates through a risk and needs assessment for each individual. 

In the film, Jones and his colleagues note that prison reform in the past has failed because it’s been overarching legislation that has failed to gain bipartisan support. The First Step Act, to them, was a way to chip away little by little at the intertwined system and gain traction towards future legislative action.

Locally, advocates are also trying to untangle state legislation. Fabrcius and ATAC, along with Dream.org and the local Arizona chapter of the ACLU, work to oppose proposed legislation that restricts rights of incarcerated people at the state level and attempt to pass their own ideas after being on the inside. 

Together they are working on passing a bill amendment, SB 1304, that will release many incarcerated people and place them on house arrest if they can stay out of trouble and purchase and upkeep the costs of their own ankle monitors. The bill requires that inmates have been charged with a non-serious felony such as low level drug offenses, credit card fraud or theft, served at least one year of their sentence, not have violent disciplinary infractions during imprisonment and be employed or looking for a job. 

The bill currently has bipartisan support and will likely pass through the Senate and onto Hobbs’ desk. 

Local advocates say they weren’t thrilled to see Governor Hobbs’ use of incarcerated workers on her inauguration day, but her creation of an independent oversight committee, outlined in her executive order earlier this year, and acknowledgement of Arizona’s correctional issues is a step in the right direction. It’s unknown what Hobbs’ committee has done since the Jan. 25 announcement.

Arizona communities of formerly-incarcerated people say SB 1304 is a stepping stone. They will continue to fight for better conditions for those still on the inside. They say, a lot of change starts with empathy. 

“We cannot leave people in prison, the way that we are leaving them in there now,” Fabricus says. “We cannot expect them to come out of that system better than when they went in by the way we're running it.”