The Future of Prison Industry

Report Outline
Threat of Extinction to Prison Industry
Development of Prison Industry
Efforts to Restrict Prison Markets
Reorganization of Prison Industry

Threat of Extinction to Prison Industry

Effects of Validation of Ashurst-Sumners Act

Public interest in the Supreme Court's decision of January 4 upholding the constitutionality of the Ashurst-Sumners Act, which forbids transportation of prison-made goods into states having prohibitory laws, was largely centered on the possibility of utilizing a similar legislative device to implement state laws regulating wages, hours, and child labor in free industry, thus restoring to Congress a measure of the power denied to it by the Court when it struck down the N. R. A. in 1935. The direct significance of the decision, in spite of its great importance, escaped general notice.

Validation of the Ashurst-Sumners Act makes certain the passage of laws prohibiting the sale of prison-made goods on the open market in many of the 22 states which have not already imposed such a prohibition. A law forbidding importation of prison goods from other states and limiting the market for prison goods produced within the state to governmental agencies was enacted by the Kentucky legislature on January 16—less than two weeks after the constitutionality of the Ashurst-Sumners Act had been established by the Supreme Court. Similar laws are likely to be passed this year by the legislatures of at least nine other states.

Unemployed Free Labor vs. Prison Labor

Laws prohibiting the sale of prison goods on the open market have been supported by both employers and organized labor in an effort to eliminate unfair competition. Since limitation of the market for prison goods to governmental agencies merely reduces, and does not eliminate, competition by prison industry, the movement for abolition of such competition is likely to continue at least as long as widespread unemployment exists among free labor.