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BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill and Gets a Tax Break of $2,400 For Every Prisoner for Doing It

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle Abe Louise Young July 21, 2010 The Nation In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight. Work crews in Grand Isle, Louisiana, still stand out. In a region where nine out of ten residents are white, the cleanup workers are almost exclusively African-American men...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on July 24, 2010 (boomark / email).