Bills push for inmates’ rights
Minimum wage for Ariz. prisoners is proposed
John Fabricius left prison in 2018 with one outfit and $250 to his name.
He’d worked nearly all 15 years he’d been incarcerated, but he’d struggled to put away anything beyond the socalled “gate fee” working prisoners save to have money in their pockets when released.
“When I came out, I didn’t have a place to live,” said the now 51-year-old Fabricius, who works in technical support. “I immediately had to pay for housing, buy clothes, buy food. Get a license or a bus pass. If not for the kindness of a couple of my friends who had been through the Department of Corrections, there’s not a chance in hell I would’ve made it.”
Joe Watson also worked most of the 10 years he spent in prison. But when he was released in 2017, he left with about $8,500 in the bank.
The savings allowed him to volunteer for the American Friends Service Committee of Arizona for three months, which resulted in a job offer. Watson, 48, has since become the organization’s communications director.
“(That money) provided me with a very useful cushion while I searched for a job,” he said. “That’s why I was successful.”
The major difference, according to both men: While in prison, Watson got a job selling ads for veterans, which allowed him to earn $3 an hour plus bonuses. Fabricius had groundskeeping, warehouse and administrative jobs that paid between $0.40 and $0.80 an hour.
“That (job opportunity) was just total and complete luck,” Watson said. “There are other folks inside working really, really hard — working in the kitchen, working to maintain the recreation equipment … and they’re making 20, 30, 40 cents an hour.”
Rep. Kirsten Engel, D-Tucson, wants to eliminate some of those gaps with House Bill 2556, which would create a minimum wage of $3 per hour for inmates who work jobs through Arizona Correctional Industries. She also wants to make sure those work environments are safe: Another proposal, House Bill 2552, would create reporting requirements for injuries sustained by prisoners while on the job.
“The prison minimum wage idea
really came out of my shock at learning how poorly paid these prisoners are for the work that they do,” Engel said. “Yes, these are prisoners. No, they’re not paying for housing. But these are people who are providing what is obviously a valuable service.”
The state should want prisoners “to become selfsufficient and see the value of work,” Engel said, so “for us to have a system where they derive really almost no financial value out of work — I think it defeats the purpose of having those work opportunities for them.”
A spokesman for the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry said the agency could not comment on pending legislation.
Thousands of employees, little information
Nearly 2,000 prisoners hold jobs overseen by Arizona Correctional Industries each day, helping with sales and finance support. About 750 work in administrative offices or shops throughout the state, producing license plates, baked goods, inmate clothing and linens, among other items.
Starting pay for those jobs range from $0.10 to $0.23 an hour, according to the corrections department.
Other prisoners hold jobs with private labor contract partners in the construction, agriculture, waste management, metal fabrication and call center industries. Those jobs start at $3 an hour.
A news report about injuries prisoners sustained while working for one of those private entities, Hickman Farms, spurred the reporting-requirements bill, Engel said. “The state did not have a record of them, because there was no requirement for the employer to report those injuries,” she said. “It seems like we should know when (prisoners) are injured or even worse, die, as a result of a workplace incident.”
Corrections spokesman Bill Lamoreaux said that “inmate work programs work to prevent injuries on the job with safety procedures, job training and regular oversight that are specific to the type of work,” but “injuries can occur despite these precautions, just like at workplaces that do not employ inmates”
“If that happens, staff will respond immediately to render first aid treatment on-site and if necessary, arrange transportation of the patient to appropriate healthcare facilities for additional evaluation and treatment,” Lamoreaux said.
Several formerly incarcerated people interviewed by The Arizona Republic reported witnessing injuries on the job, from lost fingers to head trauma.
Though they agreed there should be a system for reporting injuries to the state, they also said workers can be hesitant to say they need medical attention, because they know there are wait lists for their positions.
“You really don’t want to lose your job,” said J.C. Almanza, who worked as a prep cook for about two years at Douglas Prison and made $0.12 an hour. He said that’s particularly true if a job comes with small benefits, such as receiving newer uniforms if you work in a laundry room or extra food in the kitchen.
“All of (those) things in there mean so much,” Almanza said.
‘Expensive to even brush your teeth’
Earnings for prisoners on the lower end of the pay scale go quickly. If they owe restitution or child support, that’s about one-third off the top of each paycheck, former prisoners said. Then, they’re required to put $250 away for the “gate fee.”
Former prisoners interviewed by The Republic supported those requirements, but they did have a problem with a policy that requires inmates who earn and keep at least $8 over 30 days to pay for their own stamps and hygiene products, as well as certain medical expenses.
“You don’t get soap provided for you, you don’t get laundry detergent provided for you, you don’t get toothpaste or shampoo or deodorant or any of that stuff,” Watson said. “You have to purchase all those things on your own.
“If you don’t, you are doing whatever you can to barter with other folks. You’ll clean the other folks’ bunks or you’ll clean their cell, and they’ll give you maybe some shampoo or a pack of ramen or something like that,” he said. “But bartering is a violation, so you can be disciplined for bartering to cover the gaps.”
Fabricius who has become a vocal advocate for justice reform since his release, said that since the department privatized hygiene products, it has become “exponentially more expensive to even brush your teeth in there.” Almanza also said he spent most of his earnings on hygiene, meaning he often couldn’t afford phone calls. Women incarcerated at Perryville prison have faced the same conundrum. Before the Department of Corrections changed its policy in 2018, women who needed tampons or more than 12 pads had to pay for them. At the time, a 20-count box of Playtex Super Gentle Glide tampons cost $3.99 in the Perryville women’s prison commissary, while base pay started at $0.15 an hour.
Savings something both parties can get behind
Engel acknowledged that her bills were unlikely to advance in a Republican-controlled House this year. So far, neither has received a hearing.
“A few members across the aisle, when I’ve told them that inmates — even when they’re working side by side other employees in these workplaces — if they are injured, their injury is not reported to the state, they were amazed by that information,” she said.
“But (as far as inmate pay), I haven’t seen any interest in really looking into the Department of Corrections and what we can do there.”
“The truth is, 90-95% of everybody in prison is going to come home one day,” Watson said. “And if you have nothing in the bank, the next logical conclusion is not necessarily that you’re going to immediately commit crimes. But people are certainly going to be in a position of vulnerability, and they’re going to go through whatever their triggers are for depression, for anxiety, or to return to substance use disorder.
“It’s at that point that we’re wiling to do anything out of desperation to survive and can end up back in prison,” he said. “If we invested $3 to $4 an hour for every job folks are doing inside, think of all the ways we could cut out those moments of desperation.”