Californians voted down Proposition 6, a ballot measure that eliminates the state’s constitutional provision that allows involuntary servitude for incarcerated workers. The measure would not have ended the practice of incarcerated people working for little to no pay, but it would have banned California prisons from requiring that they do so.
California is one of 16 states that still has a so-called slavery exemption in its state constitution. In recent years, several states, including Alabama, Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah and Vermont, have passed measures to remove the loophole. Proponents of the California measure predicted it would not have significantly impacted the availability of prison labor. Jobs provide incarcerated people with a chance to get out of their cells and earn a little bit of money to pay for the inflated costs of commissary goods and communication services. Many of the more desirable jobs in the state’s prisons have long waiting lists.
The Prop. 6 campaign was largely led by formerly incarcerated people, who spoke about how forced labor jeopardized their health and safety, interfered with their ability to visit with family, and prevented them from taking educational and rehabilitative classes they were required to complete in order to be released on parole.
Like most states, California assigns prisoners work assignments that pay little to no money. Incarcerated individuals often have no say in their schedule or the type of work they are assigned. Jobs include cleaning toilets, doing laundry, preparing meals, fighting wildfires, or even making furniture, clothing and food products to be sold on the outside at a significant profit. Some jobs pay as little as 8 cents an hour. Failing to show up for work — even because of an illness or an injury — can be punished with disciplinary write-ups. In the short term, these write-ups result in the loss of privileges or stints in solitary confinement. When individuals go up for parole, the write-ups can be used to deny release.
When J. Vasquez first got to prison, he heard about a victim impact course with survivors of crime. When he finished his work as a porter, he asked his supervisor if he could leave work early to attend the class. His supervisor said he had to stay until the end of his shift.
“I thought about going, but I knew that if I put down that broom and went to the victim impact class to learn about the harm that I had caused, I would have gotten a write-up,” Vasquez said in an interview. “I knew that when I went to the parole board, that would for sure result in a denial. So it’s like I was being punished for wanting to learn about the ripple effects of the harm that I caused.”
Vasquez, who spent 25 years in prison, finally took the course years later and said it was a “life-changing experience” that helped him heal and take accountability for his actions. But the delay ended up lengthening his time in prison. When he was finally parole eligible, he was repeatedly denied, he said, in part because he hadn’t completed enough rehabilitative programs.
Prop 6 would have given “incarcerated people the responsibility to choose what they want to do with their time — whether it’s what jobs they want to do — or if they want to do education, rehabilitation for substance use, domestic violence, whatever they want to do,” Vasquez said. “It’s giving that person that ownership of taking accountability of the direction of their lives, which will carry over when they come home to the community.”