Sheila Pinkel is an artist and educator. In the early 1990s, she came across a sales catalogue of products manufactured in prison in California. The catalogue included office furniture and other products made by prisoners for very low wages. Californian law says that all California state agencies, including universities, must buy goods from this catalogue, ensuring there is always a market for them.
In this artwork, the artist reproduces dozens of pages from this catalogue. There are more than 60 images, statistics and quotes. Each piece of furniture is bland and functional. Some of the photographs feature smiling white office workers posed in staged office interiors. At its centre is a flagpole with two flags: the United States flag and the California flag, which features a grizzly bear. Beneath the image is the text: “Made by prisoners in a California State Prison.”
On either side are prints with excerpts of articles and studies about current US prisoners and their socio-economic and racial backgrounds. An article by the Huffington Post in 2013 says: “Looking at current incarceration trends and applying it to men born today: One in every seventeen white males will go to prison in their lifetime. One in every six Latino males will go to prison. And one in every three Black males will go to prison.”
On the plantations, Black people suffered violence because of race, geographical displacement, control and surveillance. This racialised violence continues today in prisons. In the 19th century, prison labour was intended as a punishment, or a means of spiritual and moral reform. Today in the UK, work can’t legally be used as punishment, but it is often compulsory. Prisoners who refuse to work can have benefits or family visits reduced, or even face solitary confinement.
Much of the work available is repetitive: prisoners maintain the prison’s facilities and services, as cleaners or kitchen workers. Or they may work for private companies, manufacturing or packing goods, or repairing equipment. Consumers who buy these everyday products become unknowingly complicit in the exploitation of this captive workforce.
Prison workers do not have the same rights as other workers. For example, they do not have to be paid the National Minimum Wage: full-time work is paid as little as £4 a week. Outside of the workplace, prisoners also often experience dehumanising living conditions – such as overcrowding, poor sanitation, solitary confinement, and little choice over what they eat – which impact their mental and physical health. The loss of social connection and control over their day-to-day lives leads to high rates of depression and anxiety that often continues even once a prisoner is released.
At each corner of the grid is an identical print resembling an optician’s eye test chart. Each reads “SEEING IS BELIEVING”. The artist made this work to show an aspect of the prison system that is usually not seen or talked about.