The Dignity of Working Prisoners

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines the impacts of different work environments may have on prisoners’ workplace practices, self-perceptions, and outlooks. It describes how differing worksites behind bars may facilitate coping, friction, or professionalization strategies. Through these combinations of discourse and practice, the imprisoned may endeavor to avoid indignities or potentially reinject dignity into their lives at and through work. By unpacking the ways that incarcerated laborers agentically respond to the conditions of their work, which may vary greatly across different tiers of the carceral employment system, the chapter describes how the unequal outcomes of prison labor sorting may shape not only material but symbolic and personal dimensions of wellbeing.