ABSTRACT
This chapter is not about labor exploitation per se or the competition that imprisoned labor creates for even minimum wage workers. Rather, it is about the relationships between the controllers and the controlled: on the one hand, prison guards and welfare workers; on the other hand, prisoners and welfare recipients. But the foregoing vignette gives a vivid glimpse of
the political-economic function of both women on welfare and women in prison as members of what political economists call the “surplus population.” We will turn shortly to explicating this point within a broader political-economic framework, which will be helpful to an understanding of the dynamics between the controllers and the controlled. Notice in this story that the guards were paid by the waste-management company to prevent the prisoners’ escape from unpaid labor and servitude. This distinction indirectly figures into our analysis as well.
