Episode 12: 34 Cents an Hour

Johnny Perez worked hard throughout his 13 year prison sentence. He sewed sheets and facilitated classes, met demanding quotas and helped other men prepare for life on the outside. The highest wage he was ever paid was 34 cents an hour. Meanwhile, prison labor generated $14 billion last year.

So why do so many people like Johnny leave prison empty handed?

In this Season Two finale, we’re going back to 1865, to understand how a key exception written into the 13th Amendment paved the way for the modern prison industry. From convict leasing to prison plantations, exploited labor is part of the DNA of this country, and more than two-thirds of people behind bars in America labor throughout their incarceration. Their average day wage? Just 86 cents.

But: there’s a growing movement to end the exception, and end slavery once and for all in this country.

Learn more about the movement to End the Exception here, and be sure to check out Worth Rises’ incredible study on prison labor, and UNICOR’s phone bank video. You can also learn more about Johnny’s work for NRCAT here.

Read Episode 12 Full Transcript Below

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: This is Into the Mix, a Ben & Jerry’s podcast about joy & justice, produced with Vox Creative. I’m Ashley C. Ford.

[AMBIENT: DISTANT BIRD SONG FOR A FEW BEATS]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Johnny Perez is a father of two, and a new resident of Jersey City, just outside of Manhattan.

[MUSIC IN: DUSTY CONSCIENCE REMIX SYNTH STEM. TENDER SWIRLING SYNTH]

JOHNNY: Yeah, I moved here in April. You know, um, it’s pretty spacious. It’s a two floor loft, two bedrooms, two bathrooms. Lots of windows.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: On this quiet October morning, every window in his corner unit is thrown open, filling the space with bird song and a breeze. And outside of them: horizon, in every direction.

JOHNNY: Yeah. Yeah, um, you know, it’s, it’s like, *sigh.* What makes me emotional is there are times when I wake up and I’m just like, grateful. Like, eternally grateful, you know?

And then, yeah, there are times when I look out and I’m like, shit, like *laughs*, I’m here.

[MUSIC PAUSE]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: These windows are a protest.

JOHNNY: I spent three and a half years in a cell with no windows, you know, um, so to go from no windows to too many windows, you know, like really, it wakes me up differently.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: These windows are a prayer.

[MUSIC RETURN: SWIRLING SYNTH IS JOINED BY GENTLE PIANO.]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Johnny spent 13 years waking up in prison cells, starting when he was 21.

And he spent a total of three and a half years in solitary confinement throughout his conviction. His longest stretch was 10 months – in a six by eight cell.

Johnny says that a lot of the time, solitary was used as punishment for something so normal, so innocuous... it’s hard to comprehend the cruelty leveled against it.

Not showing up for work. Or something else we’ve all done on one work day or another: performed at less than 100%.

JOHNNY: In 13 years, I went to 9 different prisons in New York State. And the amount of times that I saw people go to the box or solitary for work related, um, misbehavior reports, probably was about 40 percent of the time,

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Two thirds of the 1.2 million people in American prisons don’t *have* jobs – they’re assigned to them. And they generate over $2 billion a year in goods like license plates, bedding and desk chairs... and more than $9 billion a year in the services that keep the very prisons that incarcerate them running.

Across the country, people are digging graves, fighting wildfires, cleaning toilets, sewing sheets, building mattresses and running phone banks during their incarceration.

And what do they earn?

JOHNNY: The highest wage that I was paid while I was incarcerated was 34 cents an hour.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

And that 34 cents was special – double his standard 17 cents an hour... a bonus for meeting a demanding quota.

JOHNNY: No days off, no sick days, no, no bereavement time, no vacation time. And then if you refuse to go, if you decide to say, “well, I don’t want to work in the kitchen,” then they still assign you. And day of, when that cell door opens and you don’t walk out, then they put you in solitary for refusing program. And you will not come out of solitary until you say that you are ready to go back to program or ready to work.

[MUSIC OUT]

JOHNNY: Now if you refuse to go to solitary, you will be picked up and carried and placed inside of a six by nine cell with no windows, you know, until you decide that it’s better to work than to be locked inside of this closet-sized space, you know that has driven many people crazy.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Putting people who are incarcerated to work for little to no compensation isn’t a new practice: it’s as old as the nation itself.

And while the 13th Amendment is credited with ending slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, a key exception written into its DNA has been exploited for the last 159 years.

So: how does the legacy of slavery show up in prison labor? And what might it take to achieve true abolition?

Let’s get into it.

[MUSIC: THEME IN]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: All season we’ve examined the origins of modern injustice of all shades — from the Roman roots of voter disenfranchisement, to the mechanisms of the war on drugs — to understand how those systems are still at work today, defining the gap between justice and injustice, survival and joy, for so many of us.

You know we love a history lesson on Into the Mix... and this Season 2 finale is no different.

[MUSIC IN: HOLLOW HAND DRUMS WITH A HAUNTING LOW REVERB ]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: In 1863, in the throes of conflict, President Lincoln’s control of the Civil War was slipping.

So: he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a military measure, designed to turn the tide of war in favor of the Union by inspiring all Black people, especially those enslaved by the Confederacy, to support their cause.

And it worked.

But because the Proclamation only freed enslaved people in rebelling states, we needed a constitutional amendment to pass universal emancipation.

An early version was proposed by Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist from Massachusetts.

It would have made absolute equality under the law the rule of the land... but it was rejected, for fear that it might lead to something crazy… like voting rights for women.

So instead, in 1865, legislators ratified a de-fanged version of the 13th Amendment.

It reads: “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.”

Baked right into the middle of it, is that major exception… one that experts agree amounts to exactly what it was meant to abolish:

[MUSIC OUT]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Slavery.

BIANCA TYLEK: I like to ask people, under what circumstances would slavery be okay?

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Bianca Tylek is the Executive Director at Worth Rises.

BIANCA: And Worth Rises is a national criminal justice organization that works to dismantle the prison industry and end the exploitation of people who are incarcerated and their loved ones.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Bianca says the exception clause was instrumental to the passage of the 13th Amendment – and agreed to by moderates.

BIANCA: There’s no doubt, right, that the 13th Amendment was absolutely an important moment in our history, right? One which we know that put an end to chattel slavery, and that’s no small thing. Um, but it didn’t abolish slavery for all, by any means. Right? Uh, it continued slavery, and in fact, it moved slavery behind, um, sort of prison walls.

It obscured slavery to the point that we, in many ways, and many Americans don’t even recognize what’s happening behind prison walls as slavery.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: And that’s by design.

BIANCA: Too often, I think, the concept of slavery today is reduced to an economic system.

ASHLEY: Mm hmm.

BIANCA: And the reality is that slavery is a political and social system as well, that relied on the denial of the humanity of a certain subgroup of people, right? And, and you can’t enslave people without thinking of them as less than you.

ASHLEY: Right.

BIANCA: And so it’s that part of slavery that is about subjugation, is about dehumanizing people. It’s about denying people basic human rights. And so when you put somebody behind bars and you say, you no longer have the right to be protected from slavery, something that all of us know to be our basic human right, then what you’re really saying is, “you’re no longer the human that I am.”

You know, often people want to say, “well, it’s contemporary slavery, it’s modern slavery.” Sure, but it’s just slavery.

Everything that we’re seeing practiced today in our carceral system has its roots in chattel slavery.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: The language is the same.

BIANCA: If somebody who’s incarcerated refuses to work, they can be put in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement, that fancy term, is still called “the box” or “the hole” by people who are incarcerated – which are terms that actually derived from chattel slavery.

ASHLEY: Right.

BIANCA: When people who were enslaved, you know, were, uh, disobedient or whatever, they would be put in the hot box, right, or the hole and left there in darkness and isolation without food, without all, you know, their basic needs met.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: The mechanisms are the same.

BIANCA:Think about, you know, people’s denial, um, of contact with families. Well, back in the day, they used to just sell off families to different people, right?

ASHLEY: Right.

BIANCA: Or they would threaten mothers to take their children and sell them off to someone if they weren’t obedient to whoever was their enslaver, right?

I mean, today, in the middle of the night, people are told to pack up one bag and shipped across the country to another facility with no notice. No notice to them, to their families, to their loved ones. Anything. Or no regard for whether a child could visit that far away.

Like, those practices are not new practices.

ASHLEY: Right. No, they are continuing practices, and I think that’s the thread we have to pull on, you know, this isn’t a resurgence of anything. It is a, it is a continuing practice that falls in and out of visibility.

What has prison labor looked like over the years?

BIANCA: Prior to 1865 when chattel slavery was still, you know, sort of, uh, practiced or the law of the land, the population that was incarcerated was 99% white. Why?

Because Black folks were on plantations in our country, right, and didn’t have rights. And so there was no reason to incarcerate them because, uh, they could suffer worse abuse, right, at the hands of those who were enslaving them.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Chattel slavery describes the system that captured, sold, and enslaved twelve and a half million Africans in the Americas between the 17th and 19th centuries.

It was ended, in theory, by the 13th Amendment in 1865. But immediately after its ratification, Southern states passed a series of laws known as Black Codes. They were designed to do two things: limit the newfound freedom of survivors of slavery… and capitalize on that exception clause to ensure a forced labor pool.

Under the Black Codes, vagrancy was an arrestable offense – literally not having a permanent address – as was loitering. Freedmen and women couldn’t travel without a permit in some states, or gather with other Black people in public.

Put simply: Black codes criminalized Black life.

And so within 10 years of the passage of the 13th Amendment, the prison population in southern states was 90% Black.

BIANCA: That’s all it took. It took 10 years to completely invert that system on its head.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: And thus: a new industry was born.

Professional crime hunters were paid for each person they arrested for a Black Code violation. And arrest rates often escalated when more labor was needed in lumber yards, factories, and on railroads.

The newly incarcerated were often loaned right back to their former captors.

BIANCA: During this time of, um, this practice of leasing incarcerated people out, what often happened was that people, um, who were picked up, largely black folks who were picked up because of these black codes, criminalized, incarcerated, and then they were re-enslaved. They were actually leased to, um, private businesses, sometimes back to the very plantations they were freed from just a few years earlier.

And convict leasing, that practice, was in some ways even more brutal. And that sounds incomprehensible, right? To be more brutal than slavery. But the reason for that was, is that, when something is your quote-unquote “property,” you take care of it in a different way than when you’re renting it.

[MUSIC IN: BASS SOUND] <<Mux in: There For U upright bass stem>>

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: The largest maximum security prison in the U.S. is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. A reference to the homeland of its previous inhabitants.

BIANCA: Angola was itself a plantation before it was a prison. So that’s something that people have to remember, right? It is 18,000 acres of a former plantation that today is a prison, and it’s not the only one.

There’s ones in Texas, in Mississippi, in Alabama, in other parts of Louisiana that are former plantations, and today often advocates refer to these prisons as “plantation prisons,” because that’s what they are.

And at Angola, people are still picking cotton. People are still working in the farms. And in Louisiana, you don’t get paid anything for the first three years that you work. And after that you get paid 2 cents an hour.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: 74% of the population at Angola is Black. A new lawsuit alleges that Black men often labor there under the watchful eye of armed guards mounted on horseback, picking cotton by hand in extreme weather. “This labor serves no legitimate penological or institutional purpose,” the suit details. “It’s purely punitive, designed to ‘break’ incarcerated men and ensure their submission.”

And they report being put in solitary if they don’t work quickly enough.

BIANCA: n Texas, people are are also picking cotton and they are in fact doing it at a loss to the state. The state doesn’t even make money on it. Why? Because cruelty is the purpose. Brutality is the purpose. Dehumanization is the reason. It’s not for anything else, other than to remind people, Black and brown people, who are in those places, of where things started and where it could go back.

[MUSIC OUT]

ASHLEY: What role did race play in your work experience?

JOHNNY: I saw it play out in work in terms of positions, you know, the, the higher paying foreman, and cushier jobs are going to the white incarcerated men, while the cleaning the toilets, um, more grunt, dirty jobs are going to young Black and brown men who are just coming into the system. You know, the good jobs, like working in the officer’s mess hall where you get fresh fruits and vegetables, are mostly, almost always going to white folks inside. And porter jobs, cleaning the toilets, the sweeping and mopping the tears, you know, coming in direct contact with other incarcerated people, which a lot of times puts you in danger, like cleaning blood spills, for example, are given to, you know, mostly my experience that I saw with my own eyes after 13 years, nine different prisons… to Black and brown folks inside.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

JOHNNY: And the consequences are also different. You know, so when my white counterpart decides that, “well, I’m not going to work today because I’m just tired. I’m not going to meet my quota” and just sit around and kick their feet up all day. I don’t have that luxury because it’s 10 people trying to take my spot at 34 cents an hour.

I’ll add this last thing – that many of the prisons that I went to were actually also centered in mainly white towns. So now you have the staff that is mainly from these mainly white towns that are given care, custody and control over the people in it that are majority Black and brown people that are not from these neighborhoods.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: 99% of adult public prisons and almost 90% of private prisons run programs that employ people who are incarcerated.

The national average day wage for this labor is 86 cents a day.

But if you’re unlucky enough to be incarcerated in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina or Texas, you probably aren’t getting paid at all for your labor while you’re there.

Meanwhile: your captors are making bank.

[AMBIENT SOUND: UNICOR PROMO VIDEO]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: In 2021, a federal prison industries program called UNICOR reported $404 million in net sales of goods and services, generated by over 16 thousand people incarcerated in federal prisons.

[AMBIENT SOUND: WOMEN ANSWER THE PHONE IN A UNICOR CALL CENTER]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: This promotional video focuses on its call center services, which the UNICOR website calls “the best kept secret in outsourcing.”

“The Secret’s Out!” the website declares. “We have the experience, the quality control, the cost-effective labor pool, and the nationwide facilities to offer a highly competitive alternative to offshore outsourcing.”

“When you work with UNICOR,” the page reads, “your company is providing valuable job skills to federal inmates while it repatriates jobs back from overseas. It’s truly a win-win relationship for all involved.”

[AMBIENT SOUND FADES OUT]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: But is it really?

Before they see any money, UNICOR workers are docked for court fees and fines, child support, student loans, and unpaid income taxes.

UNICOR prioritizes hiring people who owe more than $1,000 to the government… ensuring that the government makes its money back in the form of labor under confinement.

BIANCA: So very often when people think about prison labor, they immediately go to corporate use of prison labor and they start thinking about all the products in their homes that are like touched by prison labor.

And there’s certainly not just some of that, a lot of that. But I think it’s really important for us to also remember that the majority of prison labor, more than 90 percent of prison labor is actually used inside facilities for government subsidizing, which means the subsidizing of the operations of a prison or jail.

Right? Um, everything in a prison except for maybe locking doors, count, and passing out mail is done by people who are incarcerated. Um, and so thinking about where that, um, where prison labor is used is more than worrying about what corporation, uh, abuses prison labor, it is largely about, uh, the ways in which we, as taxpayers, benefit from prison labor, despite never buying anything.

ASHLEY: What kinds of jobs did you do in prison?

JOHNNY: I’ve had many jobs in my life, and one of them was as a seamstress while I was incarcerated at Coxsackie Correctional Facility.

My role there, you know, was to sew sheets, pillowcases, boxers, um, other types of garments that were then sold to outside markets. I was paid 17 cents an hour. In fact I had to work myself up to 17 cents an hour, and if I met the quota of 30 dozen per day, in this case I was sewing a lot of sheets, then that 17 cents would be doubled to the 34 cents. Um, and that was my existence for about five years, five days a week, eight to five, no days off, no bereavement time, no sick time, no vacation time, um, just the weekends off.

Years later, when I was released, I saw that those same dozens were being sold to outside markets for about 12 dollars each.

[MUSIC IN: THE WORLD WITHIN DJEMBE STEM. STEADY HAND DRUM ]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Jobs like Johnny’s – producing goods to be sold to other government entities – are actually among the higher paying jobs you can have if you’re working during incarceration. If you’re lucky, your hourly wage might exceed a whole dollar. If you’re not, you’re looking at a wage closer to 13 to 52 cents an hour.

JOHNNY: Now the money that you do earn while you’re incarcerated, because you’re deprived of some basic necessities so much, what ends up happening is that the money you end up making from the work that you’re forced into ends up going right back into the commissary system.

[MUSIC ]<<Layer in Trombone Stem>>

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: According to one study, the average person spent close to a thousand dollars per year at the prison commissary, on basic necessities that they don’t get enough of. Toilet paper. Soap. Tampons. And during the early days of COVID: masks, tissues, and hand sanitizer.

Those necessities are priced similarly to what they would be outside of prison if not much, much higher.

In federal prisons, a stick of deodorant costs $3.05. If you made minimum wage, it would take you less than 30 minutes to afford some. On 52 cents an hour, it would take you 352 minutes, or almost six hours.

To put it another way, it’s like if that stick of deodorant costs 38 dollars and 65 cents.

JOHNNY: Um, like the most I ever got was like 30 dollars every two weeks or something like that. 28 dollars in two weeks. You know, and then you go to commissary and toothpaste is like 2 dollars. You know, um, a roll of tissues is like a dollar, you know, and then if you want to buy a bag of chips, the chips are like 2 dollars.

So I can’t send a gift home to my daughter on her birthday, you know, or send money to my daughter’s mother to help her, you know, with transportation because I’m 10 hours away.

Some people, Um, actually go without buying soap, go without buying toothpaste or go without buying certain things just to save, save some money up. And then others, you know, receive money from home, which in turn just goes right into the commissary system.

[MUSIC REVERBS OUT]

Follow the money, you know, um, follow the money.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: In late 2021 people could expect to spend an average of $3 for a 15 minute phone call within prison walls – another necessity for people who are incarcerated.

Studies show phone calls help reduce recidivism – or the likelihood that someone returns to the criminal legal system.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: One in three families with a loved one in prison go into debt, trying to stay in touch during incarceration.

Meanwhile, the telecom companies who operate phones in correctional facilities generate 1.4 billion dollars a year.

BIANCA: Oftentimes we think of wages and we think of wages for people who are incarcerated, right? But what does anybody do with their wages besides support themselves? They often support the people around them, the people that they love. And people who are going inside, more than 50% actually were breadwinners before they went inside, right?

And so when you steal wages from somebody who’s incarcerated, you’re not just stealing from them. You’re stealing from their families. You’re stealing from their children. You’re stealing from their victims because they can’t pay restitution, uh, at making eight cents an hour, right? You’re stealing from a whole like broad, uh, community of people, not just the one person who’s incarcerated.

JOHNNY: I was arrested for robbing a convenience store and sentenced to 15 years in prison. And now, this system robbed me for five years and I can’t even point the finger to any one person. But yet, somehow, that’s legal. And, I mean, to draw a juxtaposition, like, I got, like, ten packs of cigarettes.

It’s a 21 year old stupid running in the street, you know? And not to justify any harm at all, it’s just this idea that... what harm looks like… People have a different definition of what harm looks like depending on who’s doing it and who’s on the receiving end of it.

And in this country, a lot of times when it’s Black and brown people on the receiving end of it, it’s just not seen as harm. And, and why do I use robbery as an analogy? Because I know a thing or two about robbery and that is highway robbery. Period. You know, um, and it’s not against the law to rob people in such a way to force people into this forced labor, extract them of their labor, their dignity.

ASHLEY: Yes.

JOHNNY: And not only did you rob me, but you robbed my son and my daughter who was born two days before I got arrested for that, you know, and sentenced to 15 years.

ASHLEY: You know, my, my father went to prison, uh, two weeks before he turned 21 and he was in prison for 30 years. And one of the things that I think about often is the fact that he worked that entire time and yet he never made anything significant enough to send it home and have it make a difference. Um, like it just, it, it, it couldn’t make a difference. Even to the point of being able to afford phone calls.

[MUSIC IN: THE WORLD WITHIN BASS & PIANO STEMS. MOURNFUL PIANO CHORDS, PUNCTUATED BY AN ECLECTIC BASS. ]

JOHNNY: Years later, after I came home, I had to reverse for myself, through therapy, self talk and other confirmations, that no… I am not worth 17 cents an hour.

And, and for me to get out of that imposter syndrome and all of these other psychological things that happen to you when you’ve been treated like trash for so long, when you begin to take on the ideologies of your oppressor.

[MUSIC OUT]

ASHLEY: *Exhales sharply*

JOHNNY: Um, yeah, yeah, inhale, exhale, because it’s, it’s… I have not only experienced this, but I’ve been home for 10 years now and I’ve interviewed hundreds of people throughout the years and it’s the same amongst my peers.

The low self esteem, low self concept, low perception of who we are, and our capabilities and capacities to be great and take advantage of opportunities or even feel like we’ve been worthy of these opportunities.

And it hurts me because you understand, like for years I was told, “Johnny, you ain’t shit, you shouldn’t have broke the law. But since you’re here, you’re now our responsibility. And we’re justified in creating this type of environment. And we’re justified in not even giving you a semblance of dignity. Because, Johnny, again, you broke the law and you were sent here for punishment and not as punishment.”

“This is what you get. You deserve to work for 17 cents an hour. You deserve to be in a box. You deserve to not see your kids. You deserve 13 Christmases, 13 holidays without your family,” all of this other stuff.

And you’re like programmed with this low self esteem in a sense. And then you come home and you really look at the harm and you’re like, “if I was a bad person for robbing a convenience store, then what does that make you for doing all the things you did to me? Not in one incident, but repetitively over years and decades at a time. And you’re still doing it to others behind me.”

And then, and then why does it exist? Like, why do we let it happen? Why is this okay?

[MUSIC IN: WORLD WITHIN BASS & MARACAS STEMS]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: When we come back, Johnny’s job search on the outside, and the movement to end the 13th Amendment’s exception clause.

[MUSIC FADES OUT AND TRANSITIONS TO MIDROLL.]

[MIDROLL]

[AMBIENT SOUND: JOHNNY FLIPS THROUGH HIS DIARIES]

JOHNNY: Alright, let’s see here. 2000, 2010, let’s just pick a random date, 2010, here.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Johnny kept journals throughout his 13 years in prison.

JOHNNY: Let’s see, this one starts out in 2011. I wrote: “My Difficult Experience in Prison. During my stay at this country club I’ve learned that I would never again apply a criminal solution to a common problem or any other problem. Crime is no longer an option.

Although this experience is and has been unpleasurable, I won’t take it back because the lessons I’ve learned are invaluable. I am a better man today than I was 10 years ago. I’m not just saying this. I feel it. I see it. And I believe it.”

I like that I went to that. I’m going to tell you why. Because what I would say to him now, 13 years later, or anyone who says that right, is that, all of the things that you feel changed you while incarcerated, you should have gotten out here.

[MUSIC IN: HEART TO HEART PAD STEM]

JOHNNY: So it wasn’t prison that allowed me to reflect in that way. It was the pieces that I received, in this case education, you know, um, that allowed me to make the changes that I felt I needed to change, you know, um, because reading that I would think that, “wow, well, prison was good for you,” um, and in hindsight years later it wasn’t, it wasn’t prison – it was the things that I discovered there that I should have got in the community, like, you know, like great friends.

I made some really great friends while I was incarcerated. Um, and I also, you know, got a degree while I was incarcerated, and that opened up my eyes really, really wide to the point where I knew I couldn’t apply a criminal solution to my problem. And I didn’t name it there, but, poverty was the problem at the time.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: And poverty didn’t stop being the problem when he got out. After 13 years, making no more than 34 cents an hour… how could it?

[MUSIC REVERBS OUT]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: The day of his release, he started pounding the pavement, looking for work.

JOHNNY: When I first came home I tried to get a job as a facilitator. I facilitated classes for five, six years.

You know, um, I mean I facilitated emotional intelligence, anger replacement training. Uh, group dynamics, um, sexual harassment classes, sexual harassment classes in the workplace, all kinds of drug classes. And I’m like, I’m qualified. You know, if I can take 50 incarcerated men and sit them in a room and teach them sexual harassment in the workplace, and these guys sit still, I have to have some type of skill that’s valuable to an employer out in the world.

You know? And yet when I came home, I went on like 50 job interviews and no one would hire me. All they would see is this person who’s incarcerated with a big gap in their, uh, resume that did work that just wasn’t valuable on the outside world because it didn’t happen in the outside world. And I was, um, real disappointed at that to say the least.

In prison people come back. I did 13 years. I’ve seen people leave for three years or four years and come back, you know, do five and leave and still come back because I’m there for so long. And you hear the stories about you know, not being able to get hired and people that I looked up to with multiple degrees and all kind of stuff, you know, um, So I knew it was a challenge, but I knew I couldn’t break the law anymore.

I said, I cannot… never apply a criminal solution to my problem. And when I tell you, when I came home, it was difficult because I’m like, “this is how people end up breaking the law.” You can’t get a job, you know, um, and the jobs that you may get, they’re not paying a living wage. Like, my first job was picking up trash out of a park for 53 dollars a day.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Unemployment is a powerful predictor for recidivism. People who are formerly incarcerated who experience un– or under-employment are twice as likely to end up back in prison.

And beyond that – mass unemployment of people exiting that system costs the economy dearly – over $55 billion each year.

ASHLEY: People like to talk about rehabilitation, job training, you know, all those things for people who are incarcerated. How do you feel about those conversations?

BIANCA: Programs, uh, including different types of work opportunities can absolutely be beneficial to people who are inside.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Bianca Tylek again.

BIANCA: But what we know is not beneficial to people – ever – is slavery. People can work and you can have a sense of purpose through work, you can develop skills through work, uh, soft skills and hard skills, right?

But that is not what is happening in our facilities and it’s not the type of opportunities that people are getting. They are in many cases, getting work that they can’t even do on the outside. They can be a barber, but they can’t get that license on the outside. They can do firefighting inside, but they can’t do it when they come home, right?

Um, and then on top of all of that, the question is like, when you rob somebody of their ability to, um, have wages, right? This idea of value for your labor. Then what are you doing to them, um, in terms of helping them negotiate that when they come outside?

Right? Um, about their worth? About the value of their labor? Um, about who they are? What, what slavery does is it builds anger and resentment. It builds trauma, right? That creates more harm on the outside than anything it could heal. And the one thing, you know, at times I, I hear people about these programs and I hear about apprenticeships and all of that, and I’m like, tell me the apprenticeship that you did for 25 years.

ASHLEY: Yeah.

BIANCA: That’s a wild statement.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Research from the ACLU also shows that the kinds of jobs and training opportunities available to people inside of our prison system are changing.

As maintenance work assignments increase, higher paying positions are on the decline… as are vocational training programs.

And those that do still exist, don’t actually prepare people for life on the outside. Workers often report being trained on outdated equipment they never encounter again outside of prison walls.

JOHNNY: I did not come home looking to work at a garment factory. You know, in fact, there’s no garment factories in the Bronx where I was released to, you know, um, so that was not even realistic, you know. Now doing policy work, you know, I’m able to see a macro view, you know, like for example in California the firefighters there, you know, who are incarcerated and allowed to put out wildfires in California are not hired as actual firefighters after they’re released you know, and there’s countless examples of you know, men and women around the country who are forced into this work and then their labor is not only extracted, but then also, it’s not even counted toward, you know, um, the greater good of work experience, retirement, 401k.

So even when you’re the most qualified person in the room, your employer can’t hear you because your past is too loud and there’s no way to quiet it down. Because it’s like, walking around with a sign over your head that says “Johnny did 13 years in prison.”

ASHLEY: So, where does accountability sit within the system? Is anybody held responsible?

BIANCA: The short answer is no, right? We, um, continue the same practices over and over and over, um, and allow people to languish.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: But – Bianca says there are many reasons to have hope right now.

BIANCA: I wouldn’t dedicate my life’s work to doing this if I felt like nothing could change. I’m too smart for that. *Laughs* And things are changing, like it’s not a fight that’s fruitless, it’s a fight that’s fruitful, right, where, you know, in 2018, we passed the first bill in the country to make jail communication free in the system.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: That was in New York, and since then other states have followed suit, not only on the phone front, but also: in the movement to end the exception clause to the 13th Amendment entirely.

Since 2018, seven states have abolished slavery through their state constitutions. And there’s exciting momentum on the federal level.

BIANCA: Um, the abolition amendment was introduced by Senator Merkley and Senator Booker, along with Congresswoman Nekima Williams out of Georgia to end this exception in the 13th amendment.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: The amendment is simple. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as punishment for a crime.”

A dozen words to abolish slavery once and for all in this country.

BIANCA: And it has bipartisan support. And we need folks to go to “EndTheException.com” to take 30 seconds to reach out to their Congress member and tell them, “I support this bill. You need to co-sponsor it.” We need to get this to a hearing. We need to get this to passage.

In 2026, we are going to be celebrating the 250th year anniversary of our country. And I really hope we get to go into the next 250 years without slavery in our constitution legally allowed for anyone.

ASHLEY: I am hoping the same. I will light a candle on behalf of that tonight. What would true accountability look like from an abolitionist, restorative lens?

When I, it is really hard for me sometimes to look back and people always ask me, “you know, like, what could make it better, 30 years of having your parent incarcerated?”

And I can’t think of a thing, you know, I, I can think of things that could have made it a whole lot easier at the time. I could think of all that stuff, but when I think like, if somebody was like, “we want to give you something to make it better, what would it be?” I can’t think of a thing that could replace the time lost with my father.

BIANCA: First, I’m sorry. *Emotional*

ASHLEY: Thank you. *Quiet and emotional.*

BIANCA: Um, I think accountability starts with acknowledgement. An apology, and then what next, right?

And the reality is, is that we can’t do anything, I think, for those that have, um, suffered. Sure, reparations, there’s many conversations, right, about those kind of things, and, and they should happen and must happen. But even reparations isn’t gonna give you or any other child who lost their parent back, right, those, those 30 years.

I think the best thing we can do is be willing to fight so that there isn’t another child that suffers that way. Like, that’s the best thing we can give to our communities, to our families, to our people, um, to our society… is a new reality. A new tomorrow. One in which what happened to those, um, you know, in the past doesn’t continue.

ASHLEY: Mm hmm.

BIANCA: And I think that’s what we fight for every day to make sure that it’s a, it’s a new tomorrow and that what the system looks like tomorrow isn’t what it looked like yesterday.

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Eventually, Johnny found work as a re-entry advocate for the Urban Justice Center. Now, he travels the country as an organizer, advocate and speaker, in his position as the Director of Prison Programs at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

[Now, he’s the Director of Prison Programs at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture – and he travels the country as an organizer, advocate and speaker.]

It’s work that makes Johnny feel bolstered – not burdened.

JOHNNY: I love the work that I do. I find a lot of dignity in it and I find, um, a lot of worth in it in the sense that the laws that we’re passing are impacting people that I may never meet. And I will never meet. And not only on a solitary front looking at conditions, hence how we got it, you know, involved in the, in the Exception campaign to amend the 13th Amendment around forced labor.

There’s two things that motivate me. One that I am, that I’m uniquely qualified to work on the policies that I’m working on. In this case, I’ve lived through them. But there’s this other piece that’s coming from my journals. And I read some of the journals today.

And like, so like, they’re also fresh in my mind coming back to it. *Pauses* Um, and it’s like, it’s like blowing the whistle. I came across so much harm. I almost felt like there is no other place for me in society, but to be doing this because no other place is going to accept my past and places my past in such a powerful juxtaposition to the work. Undeniable juxtaposition.

Shout out to all my friends who passed the bar. But if you haven’t lived through 13 years in prison, you don’t know what those policies look like in practice. And there’s a big space. So, so, so, so for me, it’s using what I’ve been given, using what I have, redefining what I’ve had, to redefining what’s going to come after me, that I know I’m not going to live long enough to see, but hopefully that my children can benefit from some way, shape, or… And not only just my kids –

ASHLEY: Mm hmm.

JOHNNY: The kids of others, of the people that I know that I’m not going to meet.

How do I give people back their dignity who are, who are currently incarcerated so that they don’t come home damaged? People come home directly from solitary confinement?

If we are to get to a place where we get to a society that’s more reflective of our values, that is compassion, that is love, that is public safety. All of the values that we say that we stand for in theory, um, but are not reflected in practice. Um, so that’s kind of what motivates me, if that makes sense.

ASHLEY: Um, my guess is that at some point, the hope is one of us gets the chance to not have to fight that particular fight. Right? Somebody in the bloodline gets the opportunity to not have to face this monster.

Because, somehow, we defeated it before they even came along.

[MUSIC IN: TENDER PAD STEM]

JOHNNY: My hope is that, you know, that harm doesn’t replicate itself any longer.

In three years, this country will be celebrating 250 years of freedom. And I dare to ask: whose freedom? and as defined by who? and as given by who? you know, and as interpreted by who?

Um, and we have to look at the next 250 years because I’m not going to be around for that, but I’m going to run my fastest race to pass the baton on for sure.

You know, the biggest takeaway is for people to really look internally and this is more than just, “Oh, let me hire people like Johnny.” This is literally, you know, arguing with your own parents who may have an antiquated idea of what somebody like Johnny says, or it looks like, you know, um, that they walk away with a little bit more compassion for people with my experience and see beyond just the crime.

And for those listeners who are not Black and brown folks, who have privilege, who, you know, um, who have influence, your, your, your role in this whole conversation is to leverage the privilege you have to those who don’t have as much problems as you have, to create spaces, you know, and invite these folks into these spaces because they otherwise wouldn’t be there without you, unless you create intentionally the space. And it’s not going to be comfortable. It’s not. You know, but change is not comfortable, you know, at least not true lasting change.

[MUSIC PAUSES]

Um, and I want to challenge us to, to, to step and to stretch a little bit into that zone where, “Wait a minute, what is, what, what is my role in all of this?” You know, “What can I do? How can I leverage what’s, what’s been given to me, afforded to me, or even the stuff that I’ve worked for to kind of reverse this a little bit.”

You know, um, cause everybody can do something.

[MUSIC RETURNS]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: We’ve linked to some incredible resources from Worth Rises in our show notes, all about the prison industry. Check it out to learn more about how it started, how it works, and how it harms.

And at “End the Exception dot com,” you’ll find a form to help you contact your congresspeople, as well as powerful resources on the history of prison labor in America.

[MUSIC: THEME IN]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Thank you so much for joining us for this season of Into the Mix.

From Orlando to Ontario, New York to London, we’ve been so grateful to everyone who shared their story and opened their hearts, and every expert who opened our eyes. We’ll be back with more stories about joy and justice later in the year.

In the meantime, please leave the show a review and five stars. Share an episode with a friend, and don’t forget to subscribe to be the first to know when we’re back.

Until then, please take care.

[THEME BREATHE]

ASHLEY C. FORD [VO]: Into the Mix is a Ben & Jerry’s Podcast produced with Vox Creative.

This episode was written by Martha D. Salley.

The Vox Creative team includes Lead Producer Bethany Denton, Production Supervisor Taylor Henry, and Production Coordinator Jessica Bae. Martha D. Salley is our supervising producer. Annu Subramanian is our executive producer.

The team also includes Ariana Jiffo, senior manager of creative services, Design Director Brittany Falussy, and post-production stars Greg Russ and Andrew Hammond.

Kyle Neal engineered this episode. Original music by Israel Tutson.

A special thank you to Ekemini Ekpo and Priscilla Alabi for their expertise, and to Arianne Young for her support.

The Ben & Jerry’s team includes Jay Tandon, Jay Curley, Sanjana Mahesh, Chris Miller, and Palika Makam.

I’m Ashley C. Ford. Thank you for listening.

[THEME MUSIC ENDS WITH REVERB]

[MUSIC: VOX CREATIVE STING]