The California Constitution prohibits slavery — unless it is carried out as a punishment for a crime.
This carveout makes it possible for prisons and jails to force incarcerated people to work, or else face discipline.
On November 5, California voters will decide whether to change the state constitution to ban involuntary servitude in every form.
If voters approved Prop. 6, California would follow in the footsteps of three other states that have passed unequivocal bans on involuntary servitude over the last seven years — Colorado (2018), Nebraska (2020), and Alabama (2022). The issue will also go before Nevada’s voters this year.
While Prop 6, the End Slavery in California Act, would prohibit forced prison labor, incarcerated people could still voluntarily work jobs that offer good time credits and pay rates set by the state prison system (currently between six cents and seventy-four cents per hour, with some incarcerated firefighters making slightly more).
Ending involuntary servitude would not require prisons to pay incarcerated people minimum wage for their work. A companion bill, which only goes into effect if voters pass Prop. 6, would require the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to set wage rates and regulations for voluntary work assignments and other programs. Local governments would be required to set wage rates for jobs in county and city jails.
Current state law mandates that the CDCR require “able-bodied” incarcerated people to work “as prescribed by CDCR regulations.”
Those regulations state that each person held in prison must engage in 8 hours of activity “including labor, education, counseling, physical fitness, and other programs, 5 days per week.”
Yet, often, incarcerated people must forgo educational and rehabilitative programs — including those that are court-ordered — if they conflict with performing their required prison labor, according to Stanley Thermidor, Policy and Advocacy Strategist at A New Way of Life Reentry Project.
“You’re forced to go to work whether you like it or not,” said Thermidor, who has lived experience as someone who was formerly incarcerated.
Jobs, he said, are quickly assigned upon entering prison, while rehabilitation programs, even Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, often have a long waitlist.
Jobs assignments that teach marketable skills that will help people when they return to their communities are not the norm, Thermidor said. The most common prison jobs are in the kitchen, on yard crew, and working as a porter.
Many jobs also involve dangerous health and safety conditions.
“With the yard crew, I remember, when it was 103 or 105 degrees you still had to show up for work,” said Thermidor.
Additionally, illness and injury — even injuries sustained on the job — do not exempt a person from work. If you don’t show up to work, “you get written up. You can have everything from loss of privileges, to loss of your visits, to a limit on your canteen, to a bunch of other things,” Thermidor said. “There are a lot of repercussions that persuade you that it’s better for you to go along than to go against.”
Proposition 6’s supporters hope to force prisons to take an important step to reduce the exploitation of incarcerated people, and to instead prioritize rehabilitation.
“Incarcerated people should be able to choose jobs and shifts that allow them to continue their education, use the law library, get counseling, and participate in other rehabilitative programs that facilitate growth and transformation,” said Assemblymember Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City), who authored ACA 8, the precursor to Prop. 6.
“That’s really what Prop. 6 is about,” said Thermidor. “How do you want people to come back into society? Do you want them to come back as a better person, or do you want them to come back as someone who’s been exploited, without the skills to address the stress of being released with only $200 in gate money?”