Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2017
Capstone Advisor
Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern
Capstone College
Sport and Human Dynamics
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Social Sciences
Subject Categories
Food Studies | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
The explosion of the prison population over the past three decades, and the rise of privatized prisons with little governmental oversight, has opened the doors for Transnational Corporations to tap into this new source of cheap labor. Incarcerated individuals, barred from the protection of labor laws in the U.S., are at the will of these large corporations. Colossal supermarkets, such as Whole Foods and Walmart have recently come under scrutiny for their use of prison labor in producing food items, which raises an interesting question: is using prison labor in the food industry necessarily a terrible thing?
Incarcerated individuals supposedly have the right to rehabilitation; and to learn new skills that will better help them integrate into a community and that community’s economy post-release. However, the rise of privatized prison systems within many counties have clouded the understanding of what these prisons intend to do with incarcerated individuals in the food system and whether their intentions are to truly teach and rehabilitate. Interviews with post-release individuals now working in the restaurant industry and corporation representatives from Walmart and Whole Foods will help answer the many questions surrounding this new and silent labor force: Incarcerated individuals.
Recommended Citation
Towensend, Collin, "Incarcerated Individuals and the Food System: The Silent Rise of a New Labor Force" (2017). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1128.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1128
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
