Inside Jobs

“Inside Jobs is a landmark study of prison labor practices in the US, past and present. Instead of viewing penal labor in isolation, Adam Reich locates it on a broader field of ‘outside’ labor markets, production regimes, labor struggles, and social and political developments. The result is a distinctive and deeply rewarding account of prison labor, the conflicts that surround it, and how and why they have changed over time. Inside Jobs is carefully researched and beautifully written. It should appeal to undergraduate students and deserves to be widely read by scholars, advocates, and practitioners inside and outside of government.”
—JOE SOSS, Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

“With intellectual range, moral clarity, and a keen sociological eye, Adam Reich has produced a remarkable book. In Inside Jobs, he offers a compelling account of the long and changing relationship between prison labor and the American labor market. Refusing to treat prison as a world apart, he shows how ideas about work, discipline, freedom, and coercion have been produced through the prison and then carried beyond it. Ambitious in scope and clear in argument, this is an important book.”
—SANDRA SUSAN SMITH, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice and faculty chair for the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School

“Adam Reich has written a brilliant and inspiring book about prison labor in the United States. It’s beautifully written, full of stories, and a must-read for everyone who cares about the future of workers in the US. Inside Jobs digs deeply into the interconnections between the criminal punishment system, wage labor, and the development of American capitalism. It reminds us of how racism undergirds everything related to workers and the US economy. This book will be a great tool for organizing forward to create a more fair and just economy and a criminal justice system that is actually rooted in equity and justice.”
—MADELINE JANIS, ESQ., executive director, Jobs to Move America

From the stone quarries of Sing Sing that supplied marble for early New York City landmarks to twenty-first-century construction projects staffed by formerly incarcerated workers, Inside Jobs traces the relationship between prison work and the labor market over the past two hundred years. Sociologist Adam Reich demonstrates how prison labor has repeatedly been used to solve economic problems—disciplining workers, lowering labor costs, managing unemployment—revealing unexpected connections that challenge our assumptions about freedom, coercion, and labor itself.

Reich examines the history of work in prisons to understand how it has related to the free labor market. He finds that the organization of prison work, and debates over it, have changed dramatically over time. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, prisons helped shape the emerging factory system as the apprentice-based labor market gave way to industrial production. Labor unions opposed prison labor as immoral, and in the early to mid-twentieth century, the moral character of the workforce became central to economic life within the prison and without. Therapeutic professionals worked in prisons to rehabilitate the incarcerated and determine what motivated them to work. Following prison uprisings in the late twentieth century, prison work became a tool of population control. Yet, paradoxically, work programs were remodeled to mirror the free labor market, requiring applications and hiring processes.

Blending archival research, political economy, and sociological theory, Inside Jobs offers a powerful new framework for understanding mass incarceration and reentry today. Reich examines how the dynamics of mass incarceration have begun to shift. He explores how the “mark of a criminal record”—the stigma traditionally associated with felony convictions—has given way to a “market” for criminal records, as employers discover advantages in hiring disadvantaged, dependent, and disciplined workers recently released from prison. Looking toward the future, Reich focuses on promising efforts to transform this system.

Inside Jobs is an illuminating examination of prison work’s history, its relationship to work outside prison walls, and how the criminal justice system disempowers workers both behind bars and beyond.