When Devin Giordano describes the day the commissary price sheet arrived at Eastern Correctional Facility, he returns to one man. Jack, a nickname, had recently been diagnosed with cancer and was scheduled to have part of his liver removed. His doctor told him to eat more greens, so Jack scanned the price list for vegetables and found what he was looking for: a single bell pepper, priced at $2.31.
“That’s half of my two-week salary,” Jack said.
He went quiet and retreated to his cubicle, weighing which items mattered most. The bell pepper or deodorant. The vegetables his doctor ordered or the shampoo the state does not provide. Jack has been incarcerated since the late 1980s and works as a hall squad porter, cleaning corridors during evening movement. What little extra money he earns comes from fixing hot pots and radios, building makeshift shelves, painting portraits, and other odd jobs. Even with all of that, his budget cannot stretch far enough.
Giordano knows what it means to choose between necessities. He has hypertension, and his doctor advised him to maintain a low-sodium diet. Before May 2022, he could order low-sodium products through packages sent from home. But then New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision eliminated food packages entirely, barring families from bringing or mailing food to incarcerated loved ones. Under the new policy, any food had to be ordered through approved vendors at inflated prices with limited options. The low-sodium products Giordano needed were no longer available, and the loss “was immediate and tangible.”
This is the economy of incarceration in New York State. Wages have been frozen since the early 1980s, yet commissary prices continue to climb, and there is no legal avenue to bridge the gap. A man with cancer cannot afford the vegetables his doctor prescribed, while another with hypertension has lost access to the foods his condition demands. Both work for wages that cannot sustain them, under the pretense they’re being prepared for reentry into society.
In 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States, but with one crucial caveat: involuntary servitude remains legal “as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” More than 150 years later, that single clause continues to shape American incarceration, underpinning a labor system in which workers earn pennies per hour while producing billions of dollars in goods and services annually for the states that imprison them.
Inside Corcraft
Before he enrolled in college, Giordano worked in Corcraft garment shops across multiple New York State facilities, sewing sweatshirts, pants, and work shirts at Clinton, then making sheets and thermals at Green Haven for incarcerated people assigned to outside work details. But what happened to the goods after they left his hands remained unknown. “That information was never shared with us,” he said, adding that workers had no say in their assignments or visibility into the system they fed.
Giordano was one of more than 1,000 incarcerated workers employed by Corcraft, the brand name for New York’s prison labor division. Across 27 prisons and jails statewide, the program pays workers between 10 and 65 cents per hour. Between 2010 and 2021, Corcraft generated approximately $550 million in revenue from selling office furniture, cleaning supplies, and other goods, all of which flowed directly into the state’s general fund.
The products of this labor are ubiquitous. Every New York State license plate is made by incarcerated workers at Auburn prison. Incarcerated workers also make the metal crowd-control barricades the NYPD deploys at protests, the wooden benches where defendants sit in state courthouses, and the desks and chairs students use across SUNY and CUNY campuses. Even the street signs directing traffic, the soap in government bathrooms, and the cleaning supplies stocking public buildings are Corcraft products. During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo directed Corcraft to produce state-branded hand sanitizer. The workers who made it were prohibited from using it themselves because of its alcohol content.
Under state law, Corcraft holds “preferred source” status, which means government agencies must purchase from the program if it makes a comparable product. In practice, this arrangement eliminates competitive bidding and creates what critics describe as a monopoly on taxpayer-funded goods. For instance, CUNY’s student newspaper reported the university has purchased Corcraft chairs for up to $800 each, while comparable chairs retail for $115.
“College became a way to reclaim some sense of agency and dignity that those earlier jobs never gave me.”
Across the United States, nearly 800,000 incarcerated people work, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and around 80 percent are employed to maintain the very institutions that hold them by cooking meals, cleaning facilities, repairing plumbing, fixing HVAC systems, and rewiring electrical units. Nationally, wages average between 13 and 52 cents per hour. Seven states pay nothing. By international standards, this system qualifies as forced labor, a classification the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery has formally applied to U.S. prisons.
These days, Giordano is a journalist and student in the Bard Prison Initiative at Eastern Correctional Facility, where his enrollment replaced what would otherwise be a mandatory work assignment. He has written about prison conditions for Prism, Truthout, and Inquest, and from behind prison walls, co-founded You Are Not Alone, a nonprofit addressing violence against women. His path shifted in 2017, when he watched College Behind Bars, a Ken Burns-produced documentary about the very program he would later join, while incarcerated at Clinton.
“My first four years in prison were spent in programs and jobs I had no real choice in,” he recalled. “Many of those positions left me feeling hollow. I felt exploited for my labor, and sometimes the only benefit was something as small as being allowed an extra shower. College became a way to reclaim some sense of agency and dignity that those earlier jobs never gave me.”
Currently, he earns $7 every two weeks as a full-time student.
The Coercion Question
Corcraft’s website describes its program as “voluntary,” a characterization that sidesteps how assignments actually work.
When incarcerated people arrive at a new facility, Giordano explained, they are usually assigned to undesirable jobs like mess hall or industry work. “Better jobs are often secured through time, relationships, and reputation.” Whether a placement is voluntary or not, workers are expected to complete a full 90 days. If someone is assigned a program they are physically or mentally unsuited for, “they are still expected to perform it until they receive a medical exemption,” a process that can take months. “During that time, refusal is treated as misconduct.”
“Failure results in limited privileges or disciplinary action, which stays on a person’s institutional record and can make future job placements harder to obtain,” Giordano said. “These records function much like a work history on the outside.”
“The law changes, but the lived reality often doesn’t.”
At Clinton Correctional Facility, refusing an assigned program meant placement on Limited Privileges Company: no commissary, no packages, and one hour of recreation alone. Giordano described it as isolation in plain sight.
“Technically, a person remains in general population,” he explained. “But in practice, it functions as coercion. You are denied commissary, packages, and meaningful social interaction. The pressure is designed to break resistance and force compliance. The goal is not correction, but concession.”
The officers who enforce these rules are represented by NYSCOPBA, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association. The organization has opposed reforms like the HALT Act, which restricts solitary confinement, and has clashed with state officials over package policies and programming.
From inside, Giordano said, it “doesn’t feel like a normal labor organization. It feels more like a gang, not in a dramatic sense, but structurally. Loyalty is enforced. Power is protected. Retaliation is understood without needing to be spelled out.” When NYSCOPBA opposes something, he added, incarcerated people feel it almost immediately. “Not through announcements, but through tightened movement, canceled programs, and sudden rule changes. The law changes, but the lived reality often doesn’t.”
Giordano’s account echoes what other former Corcraft workers have expressed in interviews and testimony. Sarah DiLallo, who worked in the program, affirmed that no one volunteered: “None of us signed up for it. We were all forced to do it. They said to you, ‘The only way you’re leaving this program is if it’s in handcuffs.'” Stephanie Foxworth, who spent years lifting sheets of metal at Albion Correctional Facility, saw no reason to soften the description. “It was true slavery.”
Survival at a Markup
The ban on food packages, which took effect on May 9, 2022, did far more than cut off Giordano’s access to low-sodium dietary options. It also severed a lifeline for families who had relied on food stamps to buy goods, a payment method that approved vendors do not accept. For some, those packages were their primary means of survival. Others lost connections to culture and identity, like the Caribbean men who once received jackfruit, the Asian men whose families sent signature snacks, and the Jewish men who depended on kosher foods.
Against this backdrop, commissary prices continue to climb while wages remain frozen where they have been for decades. As Chairman of the Incarcerated Individual Liaison Committee, Giordano raised the pricing issue directly with prison officials. Their reply amounted to a dismissive shrug: inflation is global, and if people want to eat better, they should receive more money from their families or have packages sent in.
“That response overlooks the fact that many people have no outside support at all,” Giordano noted. “It also avoids the reality that wages inside have not changed in decades.”
Out of this gap between wages and need, an underground economy has taken shape, built entirely on scarcity. Commissary food becomes currency, while services like haircuts, tattoos, and handmade cards are bartered in exchange. Loans are issued in snacks, with repayment expectations that can stretch out for weeks. For men like Jack, this shadow economy is the only way to send money home to a struggling parent. Others need it simply to afford deodorant, stamps, or an extra meal.
But none of it is sanctioned by prison officials. Even small acts, like fixing a radio, can land someone with a misbehavior report for “unauthorized exchange,” a mark that follows them for years.
“When survival itself becomes a hustle,” Giordano said, “people turn to what works.”
“The pressure is designed to break resistance and force compliance. The goal is not correction, but concession.”
During his years at Clinton Correctional Facility, near the Canadian border, Giordano experienced brutal winters where the state did not issue thermals, gloves, scarves, or sweatpants. All of it had to be purchased by the workers themselves.
“I watched men suffer frostbite, lose fingers and toes, and even start fights just to be taken inside because they did not have proper winter clothing. For some men, it took years of working just to gather the basics needed to survive the cold.”
At wages of 10 to 65 cents per hour, a pair of thermal underwear can cost weeks of labor.
The Distance Between Policy and Reality
When asked why the system seems designed to undermine the agency it claims to cultivate, there was no tidy answer.
“Rehabilitation is the goal presented to the public, but the structure is a different story,” Giordano explained. “We know that systems centered on dignity, education, and life skills work. Countries like Norway have shown this clearly. Here, we do the opposite. We remove agency, isolate people, and place them in conditions that make them less prepared for life outside. Then we release them and act surprised when reintegration fails.”
On the question of motivation, he measured his words. “I do not claim to know the single reason this persists. Money likely plays a role. So does the racial history of mass incarceration. What I do know is that the research exists. We know what works and what does not. Yet we continue investing in what fails and [then] pretending the outcomes are unavoidable.”
While the financial incentives are embedded throughout operations, the racial dimension is harder to quantify, but no less present, and Giordano has seen it play out firsthand. In New York, nearly three-quarters of the state prison population is Black or Hispanic, and Giordano said that disparity carries through into who gets disciplined more often, who gets stuck in the hardest and lowest-paying jobs, and who has access to positions with better conditions or informal benefits.
Over the years, he noticed certain jobs seemed almost exclusively reserved for white prisoners, like maintenance or courthouse porter at Great Meadow, where workers clean the offices used for disciplinary hearings. In 2020, when he was hired as an electrical assistant at that facility, a civilian employee told him directly that one of the reasons he was selected was because he was white and “not like the others” who usually worked maintenance. “Hearing that out loud,” Giordano said, “made something that had always felt implicit suddenly very clear.”
What troubles him most is the distance between those who make policy and those who live under it.
“I truly believe elected officials should be required to visit prisons in their districts. As long as incarcerated people are not a voting bloc, there is very little incentive to listen. Too often, people see crimes instead of humans. Statistics instead of lives. But behind every person here is a story that matters.”
Bills That Never Reach the Floor
Reform efforts exist, though they have yet to gain traction. For years, State Senator Zellnor Myrie has introduced legislation aimed at addressing prison labor conditions in New York. The No Slavery in New York Act would formally abolish involuntary servitude in state prisons and prohibit using force, threats, or disciplinary action to compel work. The Prison Minimum Wage Act would raise wages to half the state minimum wage, linking them to inflation for the first time. A third bill would cap commissary prices at no more than 3 percent above purchase cost.
Passage, Giordano believes, would change everything. “For someone like Jack, it would mean being able to eat decent, nutritious food without having to rely on underground hustles just to survive. It would mean dignity in a very basic sense. For me, it would mean independence. It would mean being able to contribute rather than constantly relying on my family to cover every aspect of my life. I would feel like a member of my family again instead of a burden.”
In July 2025, the New York City Bar Association endorsed all three bills, calling the current system “a grave violation” of human rights. A version of the No Slavery in New York Act passed the State Senate during the 2023-24 session, A version of the No Slavery in New York Act passed the State Senate during the 2023-24 session, though it never became law. But the bills have been reintroduced repeatedly, only to stall in committee each time.
“I truly believe elected officials should be required to visit prisons in their districts. As long as incarcerated people are not a voting bloc, there is very little incentive to listen.”
Elsewhere, momentum has been building. Since 2018, seven states including Colorado, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, Vermont, Utah, and Nebraska, have amended their constitutions to prohibit forced prison labor. Nevada followed in 2024. New York has not joined them.
In New York City, newly inaugurated Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made decarceration a central focus of his administration, pledging to close Rikers Island and establishing a new Department of Community Safety. He appointed former acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su as Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice, a newly created role overseeing worker protections across the city. Whether his administration will use its influence to support the stalled state legislation remains to be seen.
The Bell Pepper Economy
Jack remains at Eastern Correctional Facility, where he is still battling cancer while working as a porter and facing the same impossible equation that has defined his incarceration. A bell pepper from commissary costs $2.31, and his biweekly wage comes to around $4.60. His doctor has told him to eat more greens.
When Giordano raised the issue as liaison committee chairman, the policy response was to tell men like Jack to ask their families for more money.
But Jack has no family support. For nearly four decades, he has been incarcerated, and to get by, he fixes things other men need repaired and paints pictures other men want to send home. By Giordano’s account, he is a jack-of-all-trades, and the nickname fits. When Giordano told him about this article, Jack expressed no hesitation, just a quiet hope that his experience will matter beyond these walls.
Giordano, meanwhile, is completing his senior thesis toward a bachelor’s degree in social studies, with plans to apply to Bard’s master’s program in public humanities after that. Eventually, he hopes to attend Columbia’s dual master’s program in real estate development and urban planning. He is eligible for parole in 2034.
“For me, education is about learning how to live independently in a world I entered prison without knowing how to navigate,” he said.
He is carving out a future inside a place built to foreclose on them. The work is his own. The wages are not.
Devin Giordano is an incarcerated freelance writer and student in the Bard Prison Initiative. He co-founded You Are Not Alone, a nonprofit committed to shifting the culture of how men treat women by confronting violence. His writing has appeared in Prism, Truthout, Inquest, and Prison Writers. You can follow his work on Substack and Instagram.
Reporting Note
This article draws on original interviews with Devin Giordano, conducted during his incarceration at Eastern Correctional Facility, alongside publicly available records, legislative materials, and contemporaneous reporting on prison labor and incarceration policy in New York State. It also incorporates prior reporting, public testimony, and documentation related to Corcraft operations, incarcerated worker wages, and proposed state legislation, using publicly available data and scholarship to contextualize the system’s economic impact.
