The last couple of days has seen the Guardian newspaper publish a major article by Richard Cookson and Phil Chamberlain headlined ‘Inside the sell blocks: Major companies are using prisoners as cheap labour through secretive government contracts. But who else benefits?’ on prison labour in the UK, which mentions the Campaign Against Prison Slavery (CAPS). See http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/09/prisoners-cheap-labour-major-companies
Interestingly, the 2 journalists have also set up a website containing the results of their research, see http://www.prisonlabour.org.uk/
Also in the Guardian is a piece in the Society section’s JoePublic blog by Eric Allison called ‘A fair day’s prison work?’.
Additionally, the Guardian has another related piece by Cookson & Chamberlain entitled ‘Prisoners promised ‘real wages’ under the Tories’. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/08/prisoners-wages-penal-reform
In other news, CAPS hopes to have its new website up and running in the next few weeks and one of our members will be presenting a workshop at the Gathering Against the Prison Society in Brighton at the end of October, see: http://anti-state09.blogspot.com/
The campaign against prison slavery – see http://www.againstprisonslavery.org/