Wisconsin Prison Voices

In this episode, we look at prison labor in Wisconsin and hear directly from formerly incarcerated people who have labored behind prison walls. Over ten thousand incarcerated people currently work in Wisconsin's prisons. From buying items on the canteen to transitioning to life after prison with no savings, the highly exploitative working conditions of prison labor affect everything. In this episode, we discuss wages and working conditions, how the state defines prison labor, how products from so-called prison industries shape everyday life in Wisconsin, how prisoners organize to improve their conditions (despite their exclusion from labor laws and the right to organize), and more. 

To learn more, check out the following links: 

Prison Price Calculator -- an interactive calculator produced by IWOC-Milwaukee. 

Music: "Ode to a Baby Snowstorm" by Ghostly Dust Machine from the album Bad Panda #79. Accessed on Free Music Archive. The song is licensed under the Creative Commons: CC BY-BC-SA 3.0.

The focus of this episode is the COVID-19 pandemic in Wisconsin’s prisons, a chronicle of the crisis and the ways prisoners and activists have organized against it and the state prison system responsible for its unfolding. In putting this episode together, we relied on numerous reports and correspondence sent to the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC-Milwaukee) by people locked inside Wisconsin’s prisons during the pandemic.

Music: "Ode to a Baby Snowstorm" by Ghostly Dust Machine from the album Bad Panda #79. Accessed on Free Music Archive. The song is licensed under the Creative Commons: CC BY-BC-SA 3.0.