A man named Anthony Whyte has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department for underpaying the employees who work at the Suffolk County Jail. Whyte said he, along with hundreds of others, get paid only $1 a day and is filing the lawsuit to assert that he should be paid at least Massachusetts’ minimum wage, $9 an hour.
Sounds reasonable. The catch? Anthony Whyte and the others he is fighting for are prisoners of the Suffolk County Jail.
Whyte is currently in jail for civil violations, not violent crimes — he has fought deportation back to Jamaica. He works by choice in the jail’s immigration unit, doing janitorial work such as passing out trays at mealtime, doing laundry or cleaning bathrooms. And he says the low wage he is paid for his time is unfair, The Boston Globe reported.
“We’re concerned that states and private companies have started using immigration detention as a cash cow, based on the backs of this extremely cheap labor,” Andrew Schmidt, the case’s lead counsel, told the Globe.
But this is not the case, Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins’ spokesman told the Globe. Inmates are paid based on where in the jail they work: detainees are paid $1 per day to work indoors, like Whyte does, and $3 per day to work outdoors, doing jobs such as shoveling snow. Those who work the harder outside jobs can even earn a reduction of their sentence.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is not named in the lawsuit, has said the low wages are standard for detainees nationwide. Spokesman Daniel Modricker said in a statement that the work does not constitute employment and is done for a “small stipend” due to its voluntary nature, the Globe reported.
“The Voluntary Work Program, which allows detainees the opportunity to feel productive and contribute to the orderly operation of facilities, was developed in an effort to improve detainee morale and reduce the frequency of disciplinary incidents,” Modricker said in the statement.
The lawsuit, filed Feb. 18, stated the Sheriff’s Department misclassifies workers as nonemployees and fails to pay them overtime. Lawyers representing Whyte have said the law allows inmates to be paid unfair wages for the work they do and that even if they are working voluntarily, they still have a right to be paid minimum wage, the Globe reported.
The bigger issue underlying Whyte’s story is the need for prison reform in the United States. This small example boils down to one idea: something may be legal, but that doesn’t mean it’s right.
On the one hand, housing inmates cost the state of Massachusetts approximately $47,000 per year — and that’s per inmate, according to the Massachusetts Department of Correction website. One has to beg the question of why we are paying inmates at all when the state has to spend this much money per prisoner. Why should the money go to them for more than just room and board?
It’s because the whole point of the penal system is — so they say — to rehabilitate people who have done bad things (even though it sounds like Anthony Whyte is not that bad of a guy). We shouldn’t be treating them as sub-class citizens when the whole goal is to reinstate them into society after their sentence is over. Why would we do less for them than we would for an average non-jailed person?
If the purpose of putting someone in jail is to re-assimilate him or her back into society when it’s over, you need to give them wages that are comparable to what they’d get in the “real world.” Let them see what it means to live off minimum wage. Putting someone away in a little box is not the point of a prison such as the one Whyte is housed in.
In a minimum-security prison, the prisoners’ wage is important. The prisoners are going to leave eventually, get out into the workforce and have to support a family. They should be able to make a fair wage.
Many people go back to jail after they’re released. Perhaps this could also be a way for the state to ensure that there are less re-admissions. Having money would be a good way for these people to stay out of jail and cost the state less money overall.
And for those getting out of jail, what does it make you think about yourself? “This is what I’m worth to society — one dollar?” It’s already dehumanizing enough to be put into prison — obviously prisons serve their purpose, but to a point. It’s time to start treating people like … well, like people.
