Highway Signs and Prison Labor

0:00:07 Hey there, it’s Stephen Duffner and today we’ve got a bonus episode for you.
0:00:09 It is an episode of another show in our network.
0:00:14 It’s called The Economics of Everyday Things, which is hosted by Zachary Crockett.
0:00:20 In the past, Zachary and his team have made episodes about Michelin stars, snake venom,
0:00:22 prosthetic limbs.
0:00:26 Today, they bring us their reporting on highway signs and prison labor.
0:00:30 If you like this episode, be sure to follow the show on your podcast app.
0:00:35 Again, it’s called The Economics of Everyday Things and let us know what you think.
0:00:47 Our email is radio@freakonomics.com Okay, here is Zachary Crockett.
0:00:52 The town of Bun, North Carolina, is easy to miss.
0:00:59 It occupies a total area of just half a square mile and it’s home to fewer than 330 people.
0:01:03 Most of the surrounding land is used to grow tobacco and soybeans.
0:01:09 But off the main road, behind a series of chain link fences and secure gates, is the
0:01:15 state’s primary manufacturer of highway signs.
0:01:21 Inside the plant, workers are busy shearing giant aluminum panels, cutting sheets of green
0:01:25 adhesive, and measuring out the spacing between letters.
0:01:30 And outside, in the shipping yard, the plant’s general manager, Lee Blackman, is admiring
0:01:33 a row of completed products.
0:01:35 This sign right here is 12 foot tall.
0:01:40 This is going somewhere on Interstate 95 in North Carolina.
0:01:47 This facility makes all kinds of road signs, stop signs, yield signs, construction signs.
0:01:53 But its biggest products, both by size and revenue, are those huge green signs that loom
0:01:55 over you on the highway.
0:02:00 That’s going to give you information about what road you’re on right now, the intersections
0:02:06 that are coming up, what is the next town coming up, the exit, and so forth.
0:02:10 Signs like this are all over American highways and freeways.
0:02:15 There are literally millions of them, and they’re so familiar that many of us don’t
0:02:21 stop to think about where they come from or why they look the way they do.
0:02:29 Behind every highway sign, there’s a long and winding road of economic decision making.
0:02:33 We want to make sure that we get a good quality product because we want it out there for 20
0:02:34 years.
0:02:38 We’ve got to be good stewards of the taxpayers’ money.
0:02:42 For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the Economics of Everyday Things.
0:02:44 I’m Zachary Crockett.
0:02:47 Today, highway signs.
0:02:56 Back in the early days of the automobile, driving on American roadways was a free-for-all.
0:03:03 There was no coordinated effort to manage the movement of vehicles, whether it be through
0:03:11 road construction, a connected network of roadways, highways, traffic control devices.
0:03:13 That’s Gene Hawkins.
0:03:17 He works for the forensic engineering firm Kittleson, and he’s a professor emeritus
0:03:21 in the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University.
0:03:28 He’s one of the foremost experts on the history, design, and installation of traffic signs.
0:03:33 The vehicles back then would not be used to travel long distances anyway.
0:03:39 As the ability to travel longer distances increased, they created these trail systems,
0:03:44 which were typically run by trail associations.
0:03:49 These informal networks of roads were a predecessor to the highway system in America.
0:03:54 And along these roads, there were very rudimentary ways of telling drivers where they were and
0:03:56 what was up ahead.
0:03:58 Most of these signs were hand-painted.
0:04:01 Some had words, others had symbols.
0:04:05 They were made from an assortment of materials in all different sizes and shapes, and the
0:04:08 signs were different from place to place.
0:04:13 I’ve seen pictures of stop signs that looked like coffins.
0:04:15 Signs with skull and crossbones on them.
0:04:20 As people started driving further and crossing state lines, they didn’t know how to interpret
0:04:22 all the markers they saw.
0:04:29 The state highway department people recognized we need to do a better job of providing a consistent
0:04:33 uniform system of traffic control devices.
0:04:41 In the 1930s, these efforts culminated in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices,
0:04:44 or MUTCD for short.
0:04:48 It provided a set of standards for traffic control devices across America’s growing
0:04:50 system of roads.
0:04:58 Today, it’s run by the Federal Highway Administration, and every state in the US adheres to its guidelines.
0:05:04 It’s nearly 1,200 pages long, and it lays out the ground rules for more than 500 signs,
0:05:09 markings, and signals, everything from the octagon shape of stop signs to the precise
0:05:13 size of an exit sign on the freeway.
0:05:18 These rules are determined by the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.
0:05:21 Hawkins serves as the committee’s chair.
0:05:27 MUTCD gets into issues such as the design of the signs.
0:05:33 Typically will give some indication on when or how to use the device.
0:05:38 Technically, highway sign refers to any type of sign that communicates something to drivers
0:05:44 on the road, and the MUTCD breaks these signs down into three categories.
0:05:49 There’s regulatory signs which tell you what to do.
0:05:53 That expresses the law, like a stop sign or speed limit.
0:05:59 There are warning signs, and those are yellow diamond signs, which warn you of a potential
0:06:05 hazard, like a curve in the road or a pedestrian crossing, and then there are guide signs which
0:06:07 give directions.
0:06:12 Guide signs are those enormous placards on the freeway that tell you which exits or intersecting
0:06:16 highways are coming up and how far away they are.
0:06:21 And everything you see on one of these signs is a calculated decision, starting with the
0:06:23 font.
0:06:29 Most signs use a special sans-serif typeface that’s unofficially called highway gothic.
0:06:33 It’s almost exclusively designed for highway signage.
0:06:39 The spacing between the letters in the highway alphabet is much greater than the spacing
0:06:43 between letters on a printed page for reading.
0:06:49 The words on these guide signs are almost always set in mixed case, with initial capitals
0:06:51 followed by lowercase letters.
0:06:54 There’s a good reason for that.
0:07:02 If you know what city name or street name you’re looking for, you could recognize that
0:07:07 it was on a sign even before you could read it when it’s mixed case.
0:07:13 For example, my name Hawkins, the H sticks up and the K sticks up.
0:07:20 The word English, the E sticks up, the G descends, and the L sticks up.
0:07:28 So if you’re looking for the city Hawkins or the road English, you have a shape that
0:07:33 you’re expecting to see and you can see that shape from further away than you can actually
0:07:35 read the letters.
0:07:44 And that was recognized as a real advantage when the traffic is moving at 70 miles an
0:07:45 hour.
0:07:50 There are also guidelines around the size of the font on highway signs.
0:07:56 And from below, it’s hard to grasp just how big the characters are.
0:08:00 If it’s an overhead sign, it’s 20 inches for a capital letter.
0:08:04 So the letter is almost two feet tall.
0:08:09 And the general rule is that the space between lines of text is going to be equal to the
0:08:12 height of the line of text.
0:08:21 So it’s very easy to have a freeway sign that may only have three or four lines of copy
0:08:24 that could end up being 10 feet tall.
0:08:27 Then there’s the color of the sign.
0:08:32 In the 1950s, the federal government looked into the legibility of black, blue, and green
0:08:33 signs.
0:08:39 Officials staged a test with hundreds of motorists on a road in New York and found that 58% of
0:08:42 drivers preferred green.
0:08:46 Turns out the color green has another benefit too.
0:08:52 It provides the best base for retro reflectivity, basically what makes signs legible when they’re
0:08:55 illuminated by a car’s headlights in the dark.
0:08:59 The reflectivity of signs has come a long way.
0:09:04 Drivers initially used something called cat’s eyes, tiny marbles embedded in each letter
0:09:06 on the sign.
0:09:11 These have since been replaced by reflective sheeting that covers the whole sign.
0:09:19 Most of the sign sheeting made in the United States is what’s called micro prismatic sheeting.
0:09:26 Essentially, if you look at a bicycle reflector, it looks like a series of ridges inside.
0:09:34 And it is a similar structure in micro prismatic sheeting just really, really, really small.
0:09:40 Now, not every sign on the freeway is green.
0:09:42 Some of them are brown.
0:09:47 Those are typically used for tourist attractions or recreation points like state parks.
0:09:53 And every now and then, you’ll also see a blue sign full of corporate logos.
0:09:57 Those are called service signs, and their purpose is to tell you what kinds of services
0:10:03 and businesses are coming up, say a Chevron gas station in two miles or an Arby’s at
0:10:05 the next exit.
0:10:10 These are actually ads and businesses pay for the real estate.
0:10:18 In most states, they contract that with a business who goes out and collects money from
0:10:23 those businesses that want to put a logo, and sometimes they have to do a lottery.
0:10:26 Sometimes it’s a bidding process.
0:10:32 To qualify, a business usually has to fall into one of a number of categories, gas, lodging,
0:10:36 food, camping, attraction, or pharmacy.
0:10:38 And the fees vary from state to state.
0:10:45 In Arizona, a placement can range from $1,100 in a less populated area to more than $6,000
0:10:48 in a busier urban location.
0:10:53 In other states, like North Carolina, it might only be a few hundred bucks.
0:10:57 For state transportation departments, service signs can bring in millions of dollars in
0:10:59 revenue.
0:11:04 But most highway signs aren’t lucrative for the public entities responsible for them.
0:11:08 Making them is an intensive and costly endeavor.
0:11:13 There are dozens of companies that make the smaller ones, like stop signs or speed limit
0:11:14 signs.
0:11:20 But few manufacturers are capable of producing the enormous green highway guide signs.
0:11:25 When a state transportation department needs a new one, the job goes to someone like Renee
0:11:26 Roach.
0:11:29 I work for the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
0:11:35 I am the state signing and delineation engineer.
0:11:39 Roach has a big job to go along with that big title.
0:11:43 We maintain over 80,000 miles in North Carolina.
0:11:46 Any signs, we lay out exactly where they need to go.
0:11:51 What do they need to say, destinations, route markers, and things like that.
0:11:56 Any of the payment markings that are there on the road, we also place the size, the color,
0:11:58 the location of those.
0:12:03 Most highway signs have a sticker on the back with the dates that it was manufactured and
0:12:04 installed.
0:12:09 Roach knows exactly how long every sign has been on the highway and when it probably needs
0:12:11 to be replaced.
0:12:16 A good sign might last anywhere from 12 to 20 years before the natural elements start
0:12:18 to degrade it.
0:12:22 But sometimes replacements happen far sooner.
0:12:23 There is vandalism.
0:12:28 You’d be surprised at how much vandalism they may get hit or destroyed.
0:12:33 Whenever Roach needs a new highway sign, she turns to a trusted supplier.
0:12:37 The vast majority of our signs are coming through Bunn.
0:12:42 In North Carolina, nearly every highway sign in the state comes from the sign plant in
0:12:44 the small town of Bunn.
0:12:50 That’s why we took a trip out there to see the manufacturing process for ourselves.
0:12:52 Is this whole thing we’re looking at here, one sign?
0:12:53 Yes, it is.
0:12:54 It’s pretty awesome.
0:12:58 When we get out on the yard, I’ll show you some really big signs.
0:13:03 As a general manager who oversees the plant, Lee Blackman is in charge of running day-to-day
0:13:04 operations.
0:13:10 I talked to him on the factory floor over the sounds of welding torches and miter saws.
0:13:13 Our plant is actually divided into two different halves.
0:13:18 This is what we call the project in, where we manufacture mostly your big overhead signs
0:13:19 that you see there.
0:13:24 The other end is what we call the maintenance sign of the plant.
0:13:29 That’s where your smaller signs, let’s say your 30, 36 inch stop signs that you’d see
0:13:34 in a rural setting, your standard speed limit signs are back there.
0:13:40 The process for making a highway sign begins with a detailed blueprint sent over by Renee
0:13:44 Roach at the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
0:13:51 That’s got the exact specifications that DOT wants for this sign, the type of sheeting,
0:13:57 the color of sheeting, the overlays, so this routing sheet is going to follow this sign
0:13:59 all through the process.
0:14:03 The first step of the fabrication process is selecting the right kind of aluminum for
0:14:05 the job.
0:14:09 We use four different gauges or thicknesses of the metal.
0:14:16 Our largest sheet is 48 by 144, which is four foot wide, 12 foot long.
0:14:21 The workers haul these huge sheets over to the shearing department where they’re cut
0:14:22 to size.
0:14:27 Sometimes, signs are so big that they have to be split up into as many as 14 different
0:14:29 panels.
0:14:34 When the contractor gets it out on the job site, they’ll put it together like a puzzle.
0:14:39 The sheared metal is sanded down to get rid of any blemishes or rough patches.
0:14:43 Then, it’s coated with green reflective sheeting.
0:14:45 There’s no paint on the side.
0:14:49 It’s all sheeting and it’s all translucent ink.
0:14:52 This piece of wood is called a squeeze roll applicator.
0:14:57 The machine is sent to a specific butcher and that will directly apply the sheeting
0:15:00 through the piece of metal.
0:15:06 Then comes one of the more technical parts of the job, putting the letters on the sign.
0:15:11 For large highway signs, each letter is printed individually and placed by hand, according
0:15:14 to very strict measurements.
0:15:20 What he’s doing now is he’s pasting out the horizontal measurements for the line of copy.
0:15:25 He knows how far from the bottom these letters are going to be, how far from the top.
0:15:27 And he’s setting all that up.
0:15:30 He’s going to hand lay every one of these letters individually.
0:15:35 It tells you the exact distance from one letter to the next, from the edge of the sign coming
0:15:36 up to the first letter.
0:15:38 So, you know everything down to the spacing of the font?
0:15:41 You know the spacing, the different size fonts.
0:15:47 And that determines too, you know, bigger sign, bigger font, smaller sign, smaller font.
0:15:50 These letters can only be off an eighth of an inch.
0:15:52 It’s not a whole lot of leeway, yeah.
0:15:55 It’s not a whole lot of leeway.
0:16:00 To start to finish, it can take around 12 hours to finish a single large highway guide
0:16:01 sign.
0:16:05 Once the sign is done, it’s taken out into the storage yard.
0:16:10 There, racks upon racks of enormous highway signs are lined up to get transported all
0:16:13 over the state of North Carolina.
0:16:19 These signs right here are ready to go, whether it’s going to a specific project on a specific
0:16:26 road, or whether it’s what we call a division, where it’s going to go to a specific DOT division.
0:16:31 North Carolina’s Department of Transportation pays around $42 per square foot for the sign
0:16:33 itself.
0:16:39 Depending on the size, that could run anywhere from $1,400 for an exit sign, up to $8,500
0:16:41 for a large guide sign.
0:16:44 Then, there’s installation.
0:16:50 If the sign is ground-mounted, labor and support beams might run an additional $18,000.
0:16:55 If the sign has to hang over the road, either on a cantilever or a structure that spans
0:17:03 the entire highway, that cost could be as high as $200,000.
0:17:07 But there’s a catch that saves the state a ton of money.
0:17:14 The Bunn sign plant is located inside a prison that’s staffed by incarcerated individuals.
0:17:19 And that allows Renee Roach to get a good deal on signs.
0:17:26 They can generate a lot of those signs really quickly for a fairly inexpensive price.
0:17:29 This isn’t unique to North Carolina.
0:17:34 Most states across America use prison labor to make stuff, not necessarily highway signs,
0:17:39 but a variety of products all around us.
0:17:44 Coming up after the break, Zachary Crockett takes a look at prison labor.
0:17:49 As a whole in society, we are not incredibly sympathetic towards prisoners having to do
0:17:50 work.
0:17:54 I think if you asked the average American, they would be like, “Good.”
0:17:59 But if you explained exactly how it worked, they would be a little more unsettled.
0:18:00 That’s coming up.
0:18:04 Christian Dubner and you were listening to a bonus episode of The Economics of Everyday
0:18:05 Things.
0:18:14 We’ll be right back.
0:18:19 We are back with this special episode from The Economics of Everyday Things.
0:18:21 Here’s Zachary Crockett.
0:18:34 Like most working people, Christopher Barnes has a daily routine.
0:18:39 He brushes his teeth, washes his face, and at around seven in the morning, he makes
0:18:42 the short commute to his workplace.
0:18:49 I work in EG sheeting, I sheet the metal, and trim it, and get it ready for screening.
0:18:52 I’ve been in that department the whole time I’ve been down here.
0:18:56 Barnes and his colleagues make highway signs.
0:18:58 My family, they’d be like, “What you doing the sign plant?”
0:19:01 And I tell them, “I make the signs in the streets.”
0:19:05 I was like, “Wow, I thought somebody else did that.”
0:19:08 This isn’t just any sign plant.
0:19:11 It’s located inside Franklin Correctional Center.
0:19:15 A medium-security prison in Bunn, North Carolina.
0:19:19 And Barnes is serving a life sentence for first-year murder.
0:19:26 He’s one of around 800,000 incarcerated people with jobs in America’s prison system.
0:19:32 They grow crops, repair roads, fight wildfires, and manufacture a surprising number of the
0:19:38 products we encounter in daily life, from office furniture to reading glasses.
0:19:43 It’s estimated that more than $11 billion worth of goods and services every year can
0:19:48 be traced back to workers who are mostly paid pennies per hour for their labor, or even
0:19:50 nothing at all.
0:19:55 We wanted to learn more about how prison labor became a central part of the economy.
0:20:02 And we found out that the story goes back to the founding of our country.
0:20:06 Around the world, work has long been used as a form of punishment.
0:20:10 The U.S. colonies under British rule were no exception.
0:20:15 Britain shipped over criminals and sold them to farms in Virginia and Maryland.
0:20:18 They worked in the fields alongside enslaved people.
0:20:22 And together, their labor sustained our early agrarian economy.
0:20:27 As America’s justice system evolved, we began to send convicts to prisons.
0:20:34 You don’t really see the first prison labor until the beginning of the 19th century.
0:20:39 Laura Appelman is a professor of law at Willamette University in Oregon.
0:20:43 She’s researched the history and economics of prison labor.
0:20:50 What quickly became common is something called the industrial prison.
0:20:56 Prisoners were essentially rented out to for-profit companies for labor.
0:20:58 They were putting together furniture.
0:21:01 They were making clothes, making wagons.
0:21:08 Whenever it was local, originally it was to recoup the expense of prisons.
0:21:11 But then they realized, hey, we can make some money here.
0:21:15 When the 13th Amendment was passed after the Civil War, banning slavery and other forms
0:21:20 of unpaid labor, a notable exception was carved out.
0:21:31 The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery except when you had been convicted of a crime.
0:21:36 Across the South, thousands of emancipated slaves were locked up for petty offenses.
0:21:40 They were forced to grow crops on penal farms.
0:21:46 Later, they were shackled together in chain gangs that built roads for government contractors.
0:21:52 These practices persisted for many decades, and eventually they morphed into a larger
0:21:54 and more institutional system.
0:22:03 Prisons didn’t really start going into the big time until the 80s, 90s, when mass incarceration
0:22:06 really started booming.
0:22:13 Cost skyrocketed, and prison labor is the way that government is trying to pay for it.
0:22:19 Today, more than a million people are incarcerated in America’s federal and state prisons.
0:22:23 Housing and feeding them is very expensive.
0:22:28 The median cost per person is around $64,000 a year.
0:22:33 That cost falls on the state, and ultimately, taxpayers.
0:22:38 The government offsets these costs by putting prisoners to work as much as possible.
0:22:43 At the majority of prisons, you’ll find them doing a lot of the internal labor.
0:22:49 They cook the meals in the cafeteria, do laundry, clean the buildings, and maintain the grounds.
0:22:52 But they also work in government-run prison factories.
0:22:56 Like the sign plant at Franklin Correctional Center.
0:22:58 Louis Southall is the prison warden.
0:23:03 He oversees the 300 incarcerated men who live there.
0:23:09 We’ve had offenders here from DUIs all the way up to incarcerated for taking someone’s
0:23:10 life.
0:23:15 Almost all of those men have a job, whether it’s sweeping floors or mowing the lawns.
0:23:21 But according to Southall, only the best workers get to work in the sign plant.
0:23:25 This is a million-dollar corporation, and you don’t want to have somebody down here
0:23:29 that may have anger issues or have destructive issues.
0:23:33 You can have one offenders destroy a whole sign, and that may cost tens of thousands
0:23:34 of dollars.
0:23:39 While the sign plant is on prison grounds, it’s actually run by a separate entity called
0:23:41 Correction Enterprises.
0:23:46 It’s a part of the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, and it has 27 production
0:23:51 facilities across the state, all almost entirely staffed by prisoners.
0:23:58 Again, here’s Lee Blackman, the plant manager who we met earlier on the factory floor.
0:23:59 I’ll sign manufacturing plant.
0:24:02 This is just one of the many plants that we have.
0:24:04 All of these plants are different industries.
0:24:09 The other ones that I have a hand in are the metal plant down in Anson County, woodworking,
0:24:11 and upholstery up at Alexander.
0:24:14 Optical plant we have over in Nash.
0:24:19 The other general managers have a wide variety of plants that they look after, whether it
0:24:25 be janitorial, laundries, sewing.
0:24:30 Correction Enterprises uses prison labor to make dozens of products.
0:24:34 Employed prisoners sew the linens used in prison beds.
0:24:38 They process canned peas and beef patties for prison cafeterias.
0:24:44 They manufacture air fresheners, hand soap, motor oil, prescription glasses, picnic tables,
0:24:47 and license plates.
0:24:53 Last year, Correction Enterprises sold $121 million worth of goods.
0:24:58 Almost all of those sales were to government agencies in the state of North Carolina, many
0:25:01 of which are required to shop through the company.
0:25:08 We also do a lot of work for any tax-supported entity within the state of North Carolina.
0:25:13 By using prison labor, Correction Enterprises is able to offer the government prices that
0:25:15 are well below market rate.
0:25:22 At a typical business, labor accounts for around 25 to 35% of the cost to produce goods.
0:25:27 At Correction Enterprises, it’s only around 2.5%.
0:25:34 It’s less than $3 million in labor costs on $121 million in sales.
0:25:38 Blackman says the benefits of those savings trickle down.
0:25:42 If you pay taxes and I’m a taxpayer instead of North Carolina, I want everybody to be
0:25:46 as frugal when my tax dollars as they can be.
0:25:51 But that frugality is only possible because prisoners aren’t protected by most employment
0:25:52 laws.
0:25:57 Again, here’s law professor Laura Appelman.
0:26:04 Prison labor is classified as, quote, “non-market work,” so you don’t have to pay them anything
0:26:06 near the minimum wage.
0:26:13 For incarcerated workers, pay depends on the type of job they have and where they work.
0:26:18 Most jobs pay somewhere between $0.13 and $0.52 an hour.
0:26:23 In some states like Kansas, prisoners are paid around $0.05 an hour.
0:26:29 And in others like Alabama and Mississippi, prison jobs don’t pay at all.
0:26:30 All states are in on this.
0:26:38 That means a great source of very low-cost labor.
0:26:44 Almost every state in America has its own version of Correction Enterprises.
0:26:49 And prisoners often do much riskier work than building furniture and spacing out letters
0:26:51 on highway signs.
0:26:56 Some prison jobs are part of work-release programs that send incarcerated men and women
0:26:58 to the outside world.
0:27:04 At the height of the pandemic, prisoners transported dead bodies to morgues and disinfected medical
0:27:06 supplies.
0:27:11 After a hurricane or an oil spill, they’re dispatched to clean up the mess.
0:27:17 And when wildfires break out, they’re airlifted into the heart of the forest.
0:27:22 Federal prisons have their own system for taking advantage of cheap labor.
0:27:28 The government-owned federal prison industries, or FBI, has more than 60 work facilities across
0:27:30 the country.
0:27:38 It manufactures around 300 products — boots, jumpsuits, tools, medical supplies, body armor,
0:27:45 even electronic components for guided missiles, which it sells to the Department of Defense.
0:27:47 But prisoners don’t just do work for the government.
0:27:53 Sometimes, the state leases out their labor to companies in the private sector.
0:27:56 The companies really want to keep it quiet.
0:28:00 But I think they’re thrilled because it’s so much cheaper.
0:28:06 And the state government is thrilled because they make some money.
0:28:10 Prisoners have sowed underwear for Victoria’s Secret, worked in call centers for cell phone
0:28:15 companies, and made cheese that was sold in Whole Foods.
0:28:22 Forty-six states run agricultural programs within their prison systems.
0:28:26 They raise a lot of food, and some of it’s used for the prison itself, and some of it
0:28:28 is sold on the open market.
0:28:34 An investigation by the Associated Press found that food produced on penal farms ends up
0:28:41 in popular products like frosted flakes cereal, gold metal flour, and ballpark hot dogs.
0:28:43 Companies don’t just save money on labor costs.
0:28:48 They often earn tax credits for hiring work-release prisoners.
0:28:54 All of this makes prison labor a great deal for taxpayers, governments, and private businesses.
0:28:59 And the idea is that prisoners gain key skills.
0:29:04 Up after the break, not all prison jobs teach key skills.
0:29:10 I can remember being given some of the most tedious jobs just to keep me busy.
0:29:11 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:29:15 This is Freakonomics Radio, and you’re listening to a special episode of The Economics of Everyday
0:29:22 Things with Zachary Crockett.
0:29:28 Brian Scott served 20 years in prison for a sex crime before being released in 2021.
0:29:33 For most of that time, he was at the Nash Correctional Institution in North Carolina,
0:29:38 and he was working at a printing facility run by correction enterprises.
0:29:43 We did everything from what they call inmate stationery, which is the paper that they gave
0:29:49 us to write on, to, you know, we did a brochure that detailed all of the wineries across the
0:29:51 entire state.
0:29:52 It was always something different.
0:29:56 I read on the site that they even did report cards there for high schools and colleges.
0:30:01 Yes, and the temporary tags that you get when you purchase a new vehicle.
0:30:07 The printing facility was staffed by around 130 prisoners, and the day-to-day work was
0:30:12 similar to what employees at any other printing facility would do, except in exchange for
0:30:17 his labor, Scott was only paid 26 cents an hour.
0:30:23 We actually started at 13 cents, and then there was a raise that you got pretty soon
0:30:28 to 20 cents, and then, you know, the 26 cents was when you were actually operating a machine
0:30:30 or a computer.
0:30:34 The crazy thing is, it was actually one of the higher paying jobs.
0:30:37 There were many people working back in the dorms, pushing brooms or whatever, and they
0:30:47 were making, you know, anywhere from 40 cents a day to maybe a dollar a day at the most.
0:30:53 Every Sunday, Scott’s weekly earnings, around $14, were transferred into a trust fund controlled
0:30:58 by the prison, and he says getting full pay wasn’t guaranteed.
0:31:04 There were some individuals who would have some of their pay taken out because they had
0:31:09 received a lot of write-ups, or they had some court-appointed fees.
0:31:16 A write-up was $10, but when you’re only making $15 and they take $10, it hurts.
0:31:21 First incarcerated people use their money to buy stuff at the commissary or canteen,
0:31:24 a store inside the prison.
0:31:26 Ramen noodle soup was maybe 25 cents.
0:31:30 Coca-Cola was probably, I don’t know, a dollar and a half.
0:31:34 When you’re considering that you’re making $14 a week, you know, a dollar 50 to spend
0:31:37 on a Coke, there’s a lot of money.
0:31:41 A lot of people couldn’t afford that sort of thing.
0:31:46 Scott says many people with prison jobs took on side hustles to supplement their income.
0:31:51 I don’t know how many green peppers I bought from guys who worked in the Chow Hall.
0:31:56 That was the way that they tried to compensate for the pennies that they were being paid.
0:32:01 We had people who would draw a picture of your child or your spouse, and you would pay
0:32:03 them a fee for that.
0:32:07 Scott had an operation making incense sticks in his cell.
0:32:13 They’d sell them for one postage stamp, which is a form of currency behind bars.
0:32:19 The process was you would get the stick off of a broom, you would take one little square
0:32:24 of toilet paper, which the state provided, you would wrap it around the stick, you would
0:32:30 get it damp, and then you would roll it in the sage.
0:32:31 That had to come out of the Chow Hall.
0:32:37 They would sell little bottles of oil in the canteen, and I would dab it on the whole stick,
0:32:43 let it dry, and there you go, you’ve got an incense stick.
0:32:49 Aside from the pay, Scott says his time at the printing plant was a tolerable experience.
0:32:53 But toward the end of his sentence, he was transferred to another correction enterprises
0:32:57 facility where he refurbished traffic signs.
0:33:00 And that was a different story.
0:33:02 It really was a horrible place.
0:33:03 Nobody liked being there.
0:33:08 It was off-site, so you got bused to this location, bused back in, and every day when
0:33:12 you came back, you had to go through a full strip search.
0:33:15 Because the labor was so cheap, they would have more people than they actually needed.
0:33:21 I can remember being given some of the most tedious jobs just to keep me busy.
0:33:25 There was a building that we had to pressure wash during the winter.
0:33:31 There were picnic tables outside that we had to chip all the pain off of.
0:33:35 The people who run prison labor programs often say that working at their facilities is a
0:33:40 choice and that if a prisoner doesn’t like a certain job, they’re free to find other
0:33:43 work inside the prison.
0:33:46 But this freedom often comes with a catch.
0:33:51 The New York Times recently reported that prisoners in an Alabama facility who refuse
0:33:56 to take on work release jobs often face disciplinary action.
0:33:59 Again, here’s law professor Laura Appelman.
0:34:07 Technically, it’s not forced labor, although it depends how you define forced.
0:34:09 It’s not the chain gang.
0:34:13 It’s not convict leasing, but the pressures are different.
0:34:18 If you absolutely refuse to do anything, your privileges are going to be taken away.
0:34:23 And of course, when you’re incarcerated, privileges sort of make life bearable.
0:34:28 Appelman also says that because prisoners aren’t considered employees, they aren’t
0:34:31 covered by employment protections.
0:34:36 Things like workplace safety regulations and a worker’s comp in case of injury.
0:34:41 But some incarcerated workers believe that prison labor will pay off for them down the
0:34:42 line.
0:34:47 Work programs are often positioned as a solution to recidivism, the tendency of convicted
0:34:50 criminals to reoffend.
0:34:54 The idea is that the skills you learn on the inside will help you land on your feet once
0:34:56 you’re out.
0:35:01 Lee Blackman of Correction Enterprises made that point during a walkthrough of the sign
0:35:03 plant in North Carolina.
0:35:09 We can take these men and we teach them and once they start doing the job, they’re figuring
0:35:11 out, “Hey, I can do this.”
0:35:13 They start believing in themselves.
0:35:14 They got the confidence.
0:35:16 They know they can do that job.
0:35:24 And they can walk into a prospective employer and say, “Let me show you what I can do.”
0:35:29 The evidence that prison labor helps incarcerated people find jobs once they’re back out in
0:35:32 the real world is mixed.
0:35:36 Many companies won’t even consider hiring people with felony convictions.
0:35:42 And more than 60% of people who are released from prison are unemployed a year later.
0:35:47 But it does work out for some people, including Brian Scott.
0:35:53 After he was released in 2021, he quickly found a civilian job in the printing industry.
0:35:58 Correction Enterprises connected me with the printing company in Burlington that had expressed
0:36:02 an interest in hiring people with criminal records.
0:36:06 I think my starting pay was $15 an hour, that first paycheck.
0:36:13 It was more money than I would make in almost an entire year working for correction enterprises.
0:36:18 Christopher Barnes, the incarcerated worker at the sign plant in Bunn, North Carolina,
0:36:21 will never see that kind of paycheck.
0:36:25 He’s in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
0:36:29 For him, the benefit of working a job in prison isn’t the pay, the chance to learn
0:36:33 new skills, or the promise of a brighter future.
0:36:38 It’s the brief moment of respite he gets from the cell block each morning, before the
0:36:43 machines fire up and the highway signs are cut to size.
0:36:55 Quiet, quiet as goals are long way.
0:37:02 Hey there, it’s Stephen Dubner again, and I hope you enjoyed this special episode of
0:37:05 the economics of everyday things with Zachary Crockett.
0:37:09 I hope you liked it enough to follow the show on your podcast app.
0:37:14 We will be back very soon with a new episode of Freakonomics Radio, although for the new
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0:37:22 to early Friday morning.
0:37:27 So if you are an early downloader, which I know you are, and you aren’t seeing the episode
0:37:30 on Wednesday night, do not freak out.
0:37:32 We’ll be there Friday morning.
0:37:37 Until then, take care of yourself, and if you can, someone else too.
0:37:41 Freakonomics Radio and the economics of everyday things are produced by Stitcher and Renbud
0:37:42 Radio.
0:37:46 This episode was produced by Zachary Crockett and Sara Lilly, with help from Daniel Moritz
0:37:47 Rabson.
0:37:50 It was mixed by Jeremy Johnston.
0:37:54 The Freakonomics Radio network staff also includes Alina Kulman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin
0:37:59 Abouaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon,
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0:38:09 Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers.
0:38:11 Our composer is Luis Guerra.
0:38:14 As always, thank you for listening.
0:38:24 I guarantee you there are stamps floating around the system that were purchased 25 years ago.
0:38:31 Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.
0:38:34 (gentle music)
0:38:36 you