Adam Reich
Associate Professor of Sociology
Reich will explore the changing prevalence and organization of work among incarcerated people during the era of mass incarceration from the 1970s to the present. He will analyze data from the Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities and in-depth interviews with state correctional administrators and formerly incarcerated people. He will explain the decline of prison labor since 1970 and variation in how prison labor has been and continues to be understood and organized across the states.
Throughout U.S. history, the prison has played an important role in disempowering workers both within the prison and without. As incarceration has expanded fivefold since 1970, this problem has implications for more and more people in American society.