ABSTRACT
Modern factories in the United States of America (USA) typically have enormous square footage, are frequently purpose-built, including reinforced foundations, appropriate lighting and electrical wiring and good access to transport. In the USA prison-made goods have been banned from inter-state commerce. Nevertheless, penologists, liberal reformers and moral conservatives continue to pass laws proclaiming that prisoners should work, that prisons should be self-supporting, and that free-world workers and businesses should not be displaced. There have certainly been periods in American history when the exploitation and abuse of prison labour justified the liberals’ concerns. Brutal labour more or less came to an end in the post-World War II period as a consequence of both ideology and the prisoners’ rights movement. The modern advocates of rehabilitation excoriated agricultural labour because it was completely divorced from what the mostly urban prisoners would do upon release.
