Testimony of Pat Nolan
President of Justice Fellowship
Before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Committee on Education and the Workforce
U.S. House of Representatives
On Prison Industry Programs
August 5, 1998

Mr. Chairman and Members,

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before your subcommittee on the very important subject of Prison Work programs.

I am the President of Justice Fellowship, the public policy affiliate of Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries. Justice Fellowship works to reform the criminal justice system based on the principles of restorative justice found in the Bible. We seek to restore peace to our communities by healing the wounds of victims and renewing the hearts of offenders. Establishing work programs in every prison is one of our major policy goals.

We are grateful for today’s hearing so that we can give our perspective on the essential elements of a good prison work program and the reforms that are needed to make the current programs better. Prison Fellowships perspective is based on a quarter century of sharing the life-changing message of the gospel in prisons. Our staff and volunteers lead Bible studies and provide discipleship training in prisons in every state in the Union. Scientific studies have shown that inmates who participate in ten or more of these Bible studies and seminars are two-thirds less likely to recidivate. Prison Fellowship also ministers to the children of both prisoners and victims through our Angel Tree project. Our affiliate ministry, Neighbors Who Care, provides practical assistance to victims of crime. In short, we work to bind the wounds of all those who have been harmed by crime, directly or indirectly, so that peace can be restored in our communities.

I bring a unique background to our ministry. Prior to becoming president of Justice Fellowship, I served for fifteen years in the California State Assembly, four of those as the Assembly Republican Leader. I was also a federal prisoner for twenty-five months in prison camps with four more months in a halfway house. My testimony today on prison work programs reflects my experiences both as a legislator and as prisoner.

Prison work programs are an essential part of changing prisoners lives so that they leave prison better than they enter. Meaningful jobs teach inmates productive skills that will help them make the transition to leading productive lives in the free world, and the wages they receive allow them to pay restitution to the victims they have harmed, support their families, pay some of the costs of their incarceration, and save a small amount toward their "gate money."

We advocate work programs because they are a benefit to society. Over 95 percent of the inmates who are currently incarcerated will be released back to our communities. Do we want them unskilled and angry after years of forced idleness? Or do we want them capable of contributing to society with skills they have learned during their confinement? How we treat them in prisons will determine what type of neighbors they will be.

Idleness is destructive. In prison I had the chance to see firsthand that my mother was right when she warned, "Idle hands are the devils playground." There is nowhere that the devil has a freer hand than in prison. However, to my surprise, the idleness I saw in prison occurred on the prison worksites. I was at two prisons, and both were labor camps. Everyone has an assigned job. The jobs entailed about half an hour of actual work. The rest of each day was spent "looking busy." We were not allowed to bring any books to our worksite, nor any paper on which to write.

To say the least, the correctional officers assigned to oversee us were not specifically trained in job skill development or building self-esteem. They did not view it as their responsibility to give inmates useful skills, but merely to act as custodians. While my jobs were not part of UNICOR, the structure of the jobs (other than the pay) was the same, and the training and skills of the corrections officers who supervised us were the same. The inmates who worked in UNICOR bunked in the same dorms with me, and because of my background in government, they were eager to tell me of the problems with the program.

In order to be effective, prison work programs should accomplish these things:

Teach inmates their responsibilities as an employee. Most prisoners have never had a job that resembles anything we would understand. And in many cases they have never lived with a parent who has. They don’t know what their employer expects of them. They need to be taught that it is their responsibility to show up on time, put in a days work for a days pay, and let their employer know if they can’t come to work.

The jobs should mirror actual jobs in the real world as closely as possible. To prepare inmates for jobs in the private sector, they must develop a sense of responsiveness to their customers’ needs and the market mechanisms for determining price. The current system gives UNICOR a captive market. Government programs are forced to purchase UNICOR products at the price UNICOR decides and in the time and manner UNICOR chooses to provide them, without regard for the needs of the customers. This attitude of non-responsiveness to the customers runs throughout the UNICOR program. Inmates trained in such an atmosphere face a rude awakening when they start work in the private sector, where they are expected to satisfy their customers. Will Durant once asked, "What makes Ford a good car?" His answer was "Chevrolet."

It is important that managers who understand this discipline of competition supervise the inmates to prepare them for jobs in the private sector.

We think the McCollum bill, H.R. 4100, takes the right tack by calling for private sector firms to operate the inmate work programs in new prisons. We strongly support Mr. McCollum’s objectives in this regard. However, we think H.R. 4100 should go further. In the McCollum bill, this private sector participation is mandated only for new prisons. We think that all prison industry work programs should be converted to private sector operations.

We also endorse the core provisions of Mr. Hoekstra’s bill, H.R. 2758, which eliminates UNICOR’s "captive markets" and subjects UNICOR to the discipline of competition and of having to meet its customers’ needs.

Inmates should be paid viable wages. An important benefit of having a job is the esteem that comes from knowing that someone else is willing to pay you for your work. The wages paid to prisoners should be comparable to what they would earn on the outside. From these wages the inmates should pay restitution to their victims, support their families, contribute to the costs of their incarceration, and save some toward their release. An important skill most prisoners need to develop is learning to manage their income. Therefore, it is also important that the inmates receive their wages directly, from which the above listed items would be deducted. H.R. 4100s proposal to pay the wages to the attorney general teaches inmates nothing about the responsibility of managing their income.

Restitution should be paid directly to the victims of the inmate’s crime. The purpose of restitution is to help make right the wrongs that were done to the victim. The payment of restitution by an offender is an important part of acknowledging [his] responsibility for [his] crime and the damage done to the victim. It is also important because it lets the victim know that the offender is repaying [him] for the damage done to [him]. Programs that take money from prisoners and put it into a government fund without earmarking it for the particular victims whom they harmed are not truly restitution programs in any sense of the word. Such programs are merely a fine, because they do not require the offender to acknowledge his responsibility to the victim, and deprive the victims of the satisfaction of knowing that the offender is making things right. While victims are grateful for payments from a generic pool of inmate money, these payments are merely another government transfer program instead of restitution.

Teach inmates skills that will be in demand when they are released. The jobs should not be busy-work or make-work projects. Too many UNICOR jobs involve merely repackaging or assembling items manufactured on the outside. To the extent that this occurs, the program is a sham. Such operations take advantage of the captive customer base and guaranteed profits of the current structure of UNICOR. This creates a paper profit for the UNICOR program while adding little or no value to the products sold to the government agencies, and increasing the costs to the taxpayer. Such jobs teach no useful skill to the inmates (how much skill is involved in shrink-wrapping items manufactured by outside suppliers?). The inmates know this is a scam, and though they appreciate the extra pay for working at UNICOR, they learn to disrespect the system which operates in such a manner.

The McCollum bill, H.R. 4100, repeals the current statutory requirement that inmate jobs should maximize the opportunity to acquire skills that will provide a means of supporting themselves when they are released. An inmate work program is not an end in itself. It is the means of preparing inmates to become productive citizens. Deleting the requirement that the jobs teach the inmates marketable skills would remove the rehabilitative benefits of prison work programs, and turn our prisons into gulags. We strongly oppose removing this requirement from the statute. Rather, we believe it should be strengthened and enforced.

Teach inmates to be honest. Inmates need to be taught not to steal from their employer and to be honest in their dealings with their supervisors and their co-workers. My own observation is that the current UNICOR program and other federal inmate work programs do not do this. In fact, they undercut honesty, and cause inmates to disrespect those in authority over them. Just yesterday I received a letter from an inmate who detailed such abuses in the UNICOR program. I have modified portions of his letter to make it difficult to identify the inmate. Even with my modifications, the facts he describes are such that he could still be pinpointed. He is in serious danger of reprisal from the prison authorities.

However, it is important that you know that such misuses of the UNICOR program are occurring.

Dear Pat,

In my response to your request, here is what I hear about the UNICOR operation here: It employs 130 inmates. Its primary activities are in rebuilding and refurbishing government vehicles, mostly for [a branch of the armed services]. This includes, but not limited to, fork lifts, mechanical and electrical components for them such as starters, alternators, and motors. Hydraulic systems are also a major item.

I should first qualify my sources of information inasmuch as I have never worked there although I have done some [work] for some of their facilities. I know at least 20 people employed there of which 3 are very believable and whose knowledge is quite comprehensive; I will limit my remarks to their representations alone.

To those employees, the whole UNICOR operation is one massive "racket" designed to feed a bloated, incompetent bureaucracy with "kickbacks" from the "select" group of civilian "middleman dealers" who buy government vehicles cheap, have them "refurbished" as "new" and sell them back to the same government agencies at new vehicle prices.

As if that were not bad enough, within UNICOR itself, the same ripoffs occur between the purchasing "schemes" between the suppliers and the UNICOR operators in the form of artificial mark-ups on parts and supplies, "erroneous" orders for parts never needed or used, and "write-offs" and "disposals" of "surplus" items often ordered again within months of the prior "disposals."

Item: Two months ago, the [branch of the armed services] decided to test operate a large number of forklifts "totally rebuilt" by UNICOR here. These are part of a large emergency contingent designed for quick deployment [deleted] for war zones or other emergency purposes. VIRTUALLY EVERY MACHINE FAILED WITHIN HOURS and the s__ hit the fan. A busload of inmates were shipped immediately to [the city where the equipment was located] with tools and parts to try to put the humpty-dumpties back together again. Needless to say the inmates loved every minute of it since they got out of this hole for awhile and ate real food for a change. To my knowledge, the issue is still not resolved. But the fact that worn out parts are typically given a coat of paint, reinstalled as new and invoiced to the buyer is the norm and that NOTHING is ever done about it suggests that the pay-offs go all the way to the top.

[Section deleted] Inmates are now forced into UNICOR jobs against their will and severely punished, or transferred to county jails if they object. The whole subject is very sad and I could write several more pages but this will give you some idea of what goes on here [at the prison]." End of the letter.

Such abuses by those in authority over inmates teach disrespect for their supervisors and reinforce bad behavior. These abuses undermine any rehabilitative benefit of incarceration. Before the UNICOR program is expanded, such dishonesty must be addressed.

I would like to thank this subcommittee for this chance to share Justice Fellowships suggestions on how to improve prison work programs. We applaud Mr. Hoekstra and Mr. McCollum for their leadership in working to bring fundamental reform to FPI and to give prison inmates productive rehabilitative work experiences that prepare them for their release.