“Get to Work or Go to Jail”

April 6, 2016 CCRC Staff

A new report from the UCLA Labor Center with the snappy title of “Get To Work or Go To Jail” describes how the criminal justice system may compromise employment opportunities in more ways than one, placing workers on community supervision or in debt at the mercy of employers. Noah Zatz of the UCLA Law faculty, one of the report’s co-authors, summarizes the report’s conclusions as follows:

When many people consider work and the criminal justice system, they commonly focus on how difficult it is for people coming out of jail to find work. “Get to Work or Go To Jail: Workplace Rights Under Threat” goes further by exploring how the criminal justice system can also lock workers into bad jobs. Workers on probation or parole, facing criminal justice debt, or owing child support face a disturbing threat: get to work or go to jail. Because these workers face incarceration for being unemployed, the report finds that they cannot afford to refuse a job, quit a job, or to challenge their employers- and they can even be forced to work for free. This report identifies how the criminal justice system endows employers with this power.

The report’s findings include:

On any given day, about 9,000 nationwide are in prison or jail for violating the probation or parole requirement to hold a job.
Nearly 5 million Americans and 400,000 Californians are under probation or parole, and many are stripped of standard labor protections such such as minimum wage and workers compensation
On any given day, about 9,000 nationwide are in prison or jail for violating the probation or parole requirement to hold a job.
African Americans or Latinos account for 2/3 of those incarcerated for violating parole or probation conditions related to work or debt.
Every year in Los Angeles, 50,000-100,000 people must perform unpaid, court-order community service. Some debtors perform many hundreds of hours of unpaid labor, the equivalent to several months of full-time work. These workers are stripped of standard labor protections such as minimum wage and workers’ compensation.
African Americans or Latinos account for 2/3 of those incarcerated for violating parole or probation conditions related to work or debt.
The majority of fathers who were incarcerated for failing to pay child support worked during the previous year, in fact 95% of fathers reported having been employed prior to incarceration. Of these fathers, 85% lived in or near poverty.
African American noncustodial fathers are ten times more likely to be incarcerated for child support than other noncustodial fathers.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

This report was a collaboration among the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, the UCLA Labor Center, and A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project.