The prison co-op is a positive thing, from the education it provided me to its values and principles. It has given me possibilities.
— Alan Vicéns
In most countries around the world, penitentiary systems are centered around punishment, not rehabilitation. That focus means that the people released from prison often re-enter society with few marketable skills, little money, and trauma from the years lost and the dehumanizing treatment they sustained while locked away. For those coming home to poverty, the likelihood of re-entering prison increases considerably.
Millions of people are incarcerated around the world, and many of them are subject to prison slave labor. This is a form of exploitation in which prisoners work grueling or dangerous jobs for corporate clients or the government. It is common for incarcerated workers to earn almost nothing, or a small fraction of the minimum wage, for their labor.
Incarcerated worker co-ops offer an alternative. Unlike prevailing systems of justice based on retribution, which expect a prisoner to suffer for their crime, incarcerated worker co-ops “return economic agency to those who are caged, giving them control over their livelihood and work experience,” says Jessica Gordon Nembhard, a US Cooperative Hall of Fame inductee and professor at John Jay College in New York City. Engagement in a cooperative enables incarcerated people to regain their dignity, while contributing to their families and communities in multiple ways. It also reduces recidivism, or the likelihood of a person returning to the criminal-justice system after leaving.
There are incarcerated worker co-ops in Italy, Canada, and Ethiopia, among others. On the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, it was incarcerated people who started lobbying in 1999 for co-op education and the right to operate their own businesses in prison. They teamed up with the Puerto Rican League of Cooperatives and petitioned to change the law that had long barred them from running a co-op. After winning the right in 2003, they formed the artist’s cooperative Cooperativa ARIGOS. ARIGOS secured a contract with the Puerto Rican Department of Corrections, whereby the business pays 15 percent of its profits in exchange for production space and utilities in prisons such as electricity and internet. In addition, the co-op covers all costs for security and travel whenever its members need to go offsite to sell their art, especially at other co-op events around the island. After ARIGOS, more co-ops have formed in Puerto Rican prisons.
Through a co-op, incarcerated workers can gain some control over their working conditions and an ability to improve the dignity of their work. Income earned can be distributed as remittances to family members back home. The remainder is then paid out upon their release from prison, to help get their lives on track. By the time they are released from prison, co-op members will have developed employment-ready trade skills in carpentry, pottery, sewing, horticulture, or even solar technology. They also pick up other skills like problem solving, teamwork, and decision making, along with general knowledge of cooperative business practices. As a result, they are better prepared to either seek traditional jobs or collaborate with others to establish new co-op enterprises outside prison.
Of the dozens of men who have participated in Cooperativa ARIGOS and then been released from prison, only around 5 percent have been rearrested. The average recidivism rate in Puerto Rico, on the other hand, exceeds 50 percent. (For context, the United States has one of the highest recidivism rates in the world, at about 76 percent, and Norway has one of the lowest rates at 20 percent.) Equipped with new skills, social connections, and funds, co-op members have a better chance of succeeding upon their release. The ARIGOS model—and other programs that champion the dignity of prisoners—can be applied to existing prisons to aid in the transition away from punitive systems and toward prison abolition.
“When you’re in jail, the correctional department doesn’t care whether you’re doing better, whether you’re learning. They don’t care what you do. Just do your time and go home,” said Alan Vicéns, a former prison co-op member in Puerto Rico. “But this beautiful co-op system gave me theory and practice. It made me a better person,” he continued.
Despite the many benefits of such a system, there exist various barriers to its expansion. Certain laws, including those that prohibit entrepreneurship among incarcerated people or prevent the mere formation of co-ops in prisons, need to be changed. Prison administrators are constantly rotated in and out, often corresponding to each election cycle, so they need to be educated about—and convinced to endorse—the cooperative system. Though some of the public has yet to be convinced, the positive results of incarcerated-worker co-ops demonstrate the importance of efforts to enhance prisoner autonomy and dignity.
