ABSTRACT
The privatization of inmate labour, as well as that of prisons as a whole, leads many to believe that the prison system is more concerned with lucrative profits than it is with rehabilitating convicts. This chapter shows how the labour of inmates has been used to fit the economic and political conditions of the time and region. It argues that inmates are integrated into the economy on the basis of their exclusion from society and the laws that regulate work. This practice transformed the lease system into the notorious chain gang road crews characteristic of the landscapes of the South. The chapter discusses that prisons become 'landscapes of defence', because inmate labour defends the rest of society from the harmful by-products of the commodity chain. Inmate labour has adapted over time to serve the respective economic system and political condition. Prisons with recycling operations function as landscapes of defence and integrate inmates into the economy in a questionable manner.
