Whole Foods, finding itself at the center of a debate about the ethics of prison labor, has made the decision to stop selling foods that are produced by inmates.
Whole Foods has announced it will no longer sell goat cheese from Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy and tilapia from Quixotic Farming. The two companies work with Colorado Correctional Industries (CCI), a division of Colorado's Department of Corrections.
The purpose of CCI is to help inmates develop working skills that may help them find jobs when their incarceration ends. Inmate recidivism is high across the country and the inability to find work is given by many returning convicts as a major fact in their failure to stay on the straight and narrow. CCI currently has about 1,600 inmates in its system, according to an audit by Colorado.
While many, including Whole Foods, support the goals of CCI, there are others who claim that the jobs given to inmates are a form of exploitation.
Source: Colorado Correctional Industries brochure
"People are incarcerated and then forced to work for pennies on the dollar — compare that to what the products are sold for," Michael Allen, founder of End Mass Incarceration Houston, told The Salt, an NPR blog.
According to a report on the Pacific Standard site, "Inmates are desperate for the work and the minuscule payment they get" from their CCI jobs. Two states not affiliated with CCI do not require that inmates be paid anything for their labor while they are in the corrections system.
Looking outside the U.S., it was alleged for years that Chinese companies used prisoners in labor camps to make products sold at prices much lower than similar items could be made here in the U.S. International pressure led the Chinese government to pledge it would discontinue the practice in 2013, although rumors persist that the practice continues to this day.