All Hail Our Federal Prisons

[MKSheppard]

Providing Apparel and Hardware for the War

Last April, Bush embarked on a tour the press dubbed "Hardware in the Heartland." He went around to factories praising workers for their contributions to the war effort. Of course, many of these factories had seen and would see layoffs. So who really supplies the necessities of war for the Department of Defense? Our federal prisoners.

While the Boeing employees sat listening to Bush's remarks, just 50 miles to the northeast 265 workers in the apparel factory in Greenville, Illinois were far from idle. Averaging more than 1,000 desert-tan camouflage shirts per day, 194,950 of which were bought in 2002 by the Department of Defense and worn by the US infantry in the Middle East, these workers were not allowed many breaks. Equally harried were the 300 workers at the Kevlar helmet factory in Beaumont, Texas, who fill 100 percent of the US military's demand for battlefield headgear. A factory in Marion, Illinois also kept in rapid motion, soldering millions of dollars worth of cables for the Pentagon's TOW and Patriot missiles. Presidential plaudits were not forthcoming for these workers – all of whom are inmates in federal prisons.

Were it not for this captive labor force, the military could hardly meet needs ranging from weapons production and apparel manufacture to transportation servicing and communications infrastructure. US soldiers are well-equipped with guns to fire, clothes to wear, vehicles to drive, radios to call and maps to help them navigate, thanks in large measure to the 21,000 inmates working for Federal Prison Industries (FPI), a quasi-public, for-profit corporation run by the Bureau of Prisons. In 2002, the company sold $678.7 million worth of goods and services to the US government, over $400 million of which went to the Department of Defense.

Over the years, FPI has grown exponentially, now ranking as the government's thirty-ninth largest contractor – in no small part due to the quantity and diversity of apparel items it manufactures for the Department of Defense. The company has churned out more than 150,000 Kevlar helmets in the past 24 months, more than $12 million worth. Aside from the battle-dress shirts sewn at Greenville, the company is also a major supplier of men's military undershirts, $1.6 million of which it sold to the Pentagon in 2002. In that year, FPI made close to $3 million fashioning underwear and nightwear for the troops. Inmates also stitch together the vestments donned by military pastors and the gowns

cloaking battlefield surgeons. If an item of clothing is torn in combat, it will likely be sent to the prison shop in Edgefield, South Carolina, where it is mended at a cost of $5 per shirt and or pair of trousers. In 2002, 700 prisoners based at FPI laundry facilities located in Florida, Texas and Alabama washed and pressed $3 million worth of military apparel.
The prisoners' work extends to military hardware:

FPI factories produce a variety of components for weaponry ranging in size from 30mm to 300mm, the caliber of battleship anti-aircraft guns. FPI is there to help with more sophisticated hardware as well.

There's lots more. Prisoners are being forced to work against their will. They are employed in sensitive areas and there is no security. Two of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing defendants are among those forced to do such work who successfully challenged the assignments:

As an experiment, Middle East Report contacted three of the men convicted for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Two had not only worked in FPI factories, but also reported being compelled to do so. Mohammad A. Salameh put up a long legal fight before he was finally excused from working for the company. Salameh pointed out that since he, along with more than 29 percent of the total federal prison population, is not even a legal resident of the United States, he should not be legally permitted – much less forced – to work for the company. Ultimately, when the Bureau of Prisons released Salameh from the job, they admitted in court documents to having forced him to work for FPI. Officials argued that the compulsory labor was justified since higher-risk inmates were easier to monitor if they were kept busy

Why haven't we heard much about this? Call it "the politics of prison labor"--or, if you prefer, "the politics of exploitation.
"
With American casualties mounting in Iraq, and little good news about domestic employment either, even the Bush campaign must understand that a reprise of such photo-op moments would be in poor taste. So the 21,000 inmate employees of FPI, despite their vital importance to Bush's wars, remain distinctly behind the scenes.

www.talkleft.com/archives...tml#004733

[The Yosemite Bear]

remember my comments about how much I loathed BoP in the firefighter thread...

It's merely for the curruption factor, yes this is old news to us. Many of the firefighters I knew bought our own gear from union companies at our own cost, simply because of the fucked up quality control standards from Prison Industry. Fuck my first prison made undies/firefighting uniform had to be hand washed with gloves because they douesed it with caustic chemicals.)

[Faram]

Woot, you mean to tell me that the inmates is not motivated to produce high quality items?

Who would have figured?

[The Yosemite Bear]

Let's just say that many of them have a very sick sense of humour, (I have found syringes in the combat boots (yeah firefighters buy them from the same sources as the military), Nails in the combat boots, razorblades in the combat boots etc. (Another thing you active duty types can thank us desk jockey's for, we go over the gear before it's sent to you to prevent that sort of thing from laying you up.)

[The Yosemite Bear]

Oh and out of a shipment of several thousand there is maybe one in 100 where there is that sort of diliberate sabotage, the fact that someone has to vet it for quality control and wash and steam all of the cloathing before issue (they have a tendancy to pour detergent concentrate onto ALL of the cloathing so if we didn't wash and steam & repackage it, you would see a lot of people with chemical burns to eyes, and body parts. Ahh the glories of sulferic acid just add light amount of water(sweat))