When work is punishment: Penal subjectivities in punitive labor regimes
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474517690001 |
| Author | Erin Hatton |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Punishment & Society
2018, Vol. 20(2) 174–191
! The Author(s) 2017
When work is
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punishment: Penal
DOI: 10.1177/1462474517690001
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
subjectivities in punitive
labor regimes
Erin Hatton
State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
Abstract
Scholars have persuasively argued that U.S. penal and welfare institutions comprise a
single policy regime that has taken a punitive turn with carceral expansion and welfare
contraction. Less recognized, however, is the centrality of labor to this regime. Not only
has labor been the lynchpin of welfare reform with the expansion of workfare, it has
also been an important yet overlooked dimension of mass incarceration, as most able-
bodied American prisoners are required to work. For prisoners and welfare recipients,
work is a punitive curtailment of citizenship rights, even as it is a foundation of such
rights for others. This article thus conceptualizes work as a form of punishment in the
penal-welfare regime. Drawing on 83 in-depth interviews with incarcerated and work-
fare workers, it examines these workers’ penal subjectivities—how they ideologically
navigate their labor qua punishment. Through this negotiation, it finds, incarcerated and
workfare workers deploy, contest, and reify the cultural narratives that justify their
relegation to punitive labor regimes.
Keywords
citizenship, penal subjectivities, prison labor, punishment, punitive labor, welfare, workfare
Introduction
Penal and welfare institutions in the U.S., scholars have persuasively argued, com-
prise a ‘‘single policy regime’’ (Beckett and Western, 2001: 44), which has taken a
‘‘resolutely punitive turn’’ (Wacquant, 2009: 11) in recent decades with carceral
Corresponding author:
Erin Hatton, Department of Sociology, State University of New York, Buffalo, 404 Park Hall, North Campus,
Buffalo, New York 14260, USA.
Email: eehatton@buffalo.edu
Hatton
175
expansion and social welfare contraction (also see Garland, 2002; Kohler-
Hausmann, 2015; Western and Beckett, 1999; but see Lynch, 2011). Less recog-
nized, however, is the centrality of labor to this policy regime. While the expansion
of work requirements for public assistance—i.e., workfare—has been examined as
the sine qua non of welfare retrenchment (e.g., Collins and Mayer, 2010; Goldberg,
2007; Krinsky, 2007; Peck, 2001; Soss et al., 2011), it has not been linked to prison
labor, which itself has largely been overlooked (but see Haney, 2010; Zatz, 2008,
2009). This lack of attention to prison labor is understandable, given the exigent
implications of mass incarceration and the broader the criminal justice system as
racialized (and gendered) institutions of social control and inequality (Alexander,
2012; Wakefield and Uggen, 2010; Western, 2006; Western and Pettit, 2010). Yet
the fact that the unprecedented numbers of American prisoners are also workers
should not be ignored, as most able-bodied prisoners are required to work.
Therefore, penal and welfare institutions are not only linked at the state level
through political discourse, legislation, and budgetary spending (or lack thereof)
(Beckett and Western, 2001); they are also linked at the ground level through the
dual expansion of punitive labor regimes, in whose day-to-day operations prisoners
and welfare recipients experience firsthand the punitive power of the ‘‘centaur
state’’ (Wacquant, 2009: 42).
This article thus conceptualizes work as a form of punishment in the American
penal-welfare regime. Indeed, even as labor may yield limited benefits for incar-
cerated and workfare workers—e.g., warding off isolation and boredom (e.g.,
Haney, 2010)—their labor is legally, socially, and institutionally constructed as
punitive. Prison labor, for example, is explicitly construed as punishment in the
U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment prohibition of forced labor ‘‘except as pun-
ishment for a crime’’ and, although the work requirements of the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program are politically constructed as
‘‘opportunity’’ rather than punishment, the punitive nature of such policies has
been widely documented (Gilliom, 2001; Goldberg, 2007; Gustafson, 2011; Soss
et al., 2011; Wacquant, 2009). Not only does prisoners’ and workfare workers’
labor garner little or no pay, both groups are compelled to work—prisoners as a
punitive condition of their incarceration (Zatz, 2008), workfare participants as a
punitive condition of their access to the social safety net (Peck, 2001). Accordingly,
their ability to refuse work, as well as choose where and for whom they work, is
significantly limited. In short, these workers’ economic independence is con-
strained; as a result, they do not have access to the full rights and freedoms,
which constitute ‘‘substantive citizenship,’’ even as they generally possess
‘‘formal citizenship’’ by birth or naturalization (Brubaker, 1992). In this way,
incarcerated and workfare workers’ labor, which punitively constricts their citizen-
ship rights, is the inverse of free waged labor, which is a foundation of the rights,
freedoms, and obligations of American citizenship (Fraser and Gordon, 1994;
Kessler-Harris, 2001; Marshall, 1964 [1949]; Weeks, 2011).
This tension between work as punishment and work as prerogative—a discip-
linary curtailment of rights versus an underpinning of such rights—is the subject of
176
Punishment & Society 20(2)
this article. This tension is not academic. As my analysis of in-depth interviews with
83 incarcerated and workfare workers in New York State reveals, it is actively
negotiated by both of these groups of workers, often in remarkably similar ways.
It is this negotiation, I argue, which shapes their penal subjectivities, for these
workers are not negotiating labor relations based on uneven power relations, as
are most employees. They are negotiating labor relations predicated on punish-
ment, imbued not only with routine economic coercion but, as I argue elsewhere
(Hatton, 2016), with the more severe institutional coercion and, in prison, physical
coercion (Hatton, 2016).
In this article, I examine incarcerated and workfare workers’ penal subjectivities
in two analytical steps. First, I identify what they believe to be the three most
punitive aspects of their labor, namely: minimal remuneration, lack of autonomy,
and mistreatment on the job. Though they do not always use the language of
‘‘punishment’’ to describe them, in their view, these are what make their labor
unjust; these are what transform their work into ‘‘slavery,’’ making their labor
punishment rather than employment, even as they do not uniformly agree whether
these axes of punishment are undeserved. Second, I analyze how incarcerated and
workfare workers interpret each of these punitive dimensions of their labor.
Whether they are opposing or affirming them, I find, these workers draw on the
same two cultural narratives: the Protestant work ethic and citizenship rights’
claims. In so doing, most of these workers (though not all) contest the cultural
narratives that justify their relegation to punitive labor regimes, arguing instead
that they are entitled to substantive citizenship because of their labor and/or will-
ingness to work. Yet their use of these cultural narratives inadvertently reifies
them—and the workers’ relegation to punitive labor regimes in turn—thereby
limiting the oppositional potential of their challenge. Thus this analysis of penal
subjectivities is perhaps more accurately described as one of penal consciousness, as
it not only documents these workers’ ideational perspectives but also how such
perspectives resist and reify ideological hegemony and the institutions that
sustain it.
This article contributes to scholarship on penality and work in multiple ways.
Foremost, it expands the study of penality and the ‘‘definitional boundaries of the
category of ‘punishment,’’’ as called for by Hannah-Moffat and Lynch (2012: 119),
by examining work as punishment both in and out of prison. It also offers a much-
needed complement to top-down analyses of the penal-welfare regime by
focusing on the perspectives of those whose lives are shaped by it. In so doing, it
links studies of agency, ideology, and subjectivity in prison (e.g., Bosworth and
Carrabine, 2001; Grabosky, 1978; Sexton, 2015; Sykes, 1958) with such studies in
labor and employment (e.g., Burawoy, 1979; Salzinger, 2003), thereby pushing
against the respective siloing of these disciplines and enriching each in turn.
Finally, it further develops the concept of ‘‘penal consciousness’’ (Sexton, 2015)
by pushing it toward an engagement with social structures and ideological hegem-
ony, as urged by Silbey (2005) in her analysis of the related concept of ‘‘legal
consciousness.’’
Hatton
177
Labor in the U.S. penal-welfare regime
There is a rich literature on the history of prison labor (e.g., Lichtenstein, 1996;
Oshinsky, 1997), yet there are few studies of prison labor in the contemporary era
despite its prevalence (but see Haney, 2010; Zatz, 2008, 2009). In New York State
alone, all able-bodied individuals of its approximate 54,000 prison population are
required to work (Department of Corrections and Community Supervision
[DOCCS], 2013) and, although such data at the national level are not available,
it is estimated that the same is true of America’s roughly 2 million inmates in state,
federal, and private prisons (Benns, 2015). In New York, prisoners often work in
facility maintenance and utilities—cleaning,...
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