I was thinking about writing about the forced labor accusation in Xinjiang but then find this interesting report with a documentary video by the Atlantic about why and how a maximum security prison called Angola in Louisiana “has created a controversial model for rehabilitation. Through work and religion, they learn to help each other, and try to become better fathers to their children on the outside.”
Prisoner Labors Are Legal
The Angola model may be controversial but certainly legal. As the Atlantic report points out: “In the shining promise of freedom that was the Thirteenth Amendment, a sharp exception was carved out. Section 1 of the Amendment provides: ‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.’”
Do not think that the prison in Louisiana is a rare exception, either, as prisoners have been used for a long time in California as firefighters since 1940s, “when World War II depleted much of the state’s stock of young men ready to be firefighters” according to the Sierra Club.
Chinese System of Laogai
Given the prisoner labor in the US, what makes Chinese system of transformation through labor, known as Laogai (劳改) different? Not much from the legal perspective, except that it is China so we must interpret things differently, right? So this website has these words about “Laogai” in China: “Rather than merely aiming to reduce recidivism, the communists sought to transform inmates into ‘new socialist men’ by forcing them to engage in productive labor to benefit the state and by exposing them to ideological indoctrination.”
I want to point out that such “preamble controlled” interpretations have and will continue to shape Sino-US comparisons for the years to come. I also want to point out that the real difference between China and the US prisoner labor systems is smaller or more subtler than we think. To see why, let us return to this 2015 Atlantic article covering the unique prison rehabilitation system in Angola, Louisiana.
The Unprotected Prisoner Labors
Some quick background first. As the Atlantic article points out: “We now incarcerate more than 2.2 million people, with the largest prison population in the world, and the second highest incarceration rate per capita.” Therefore, “prison labor has expanded in scope and reach. Incarcerated workers, laboring within in-house operations or through convict-leasing partnerships with for-profit businesses, have been involved with mining, agriculture, and all manner of manufacturing from making military weapons to sewing garments for Victoria’s Secret. Prison programs extend into the services sector; some incarcerated workers staff call centers.”
The US has not applied modern labor laws and standards to prisoner labor because “in the cases where incarcerated workers have sued their prison-employers to enforce minimum wage laws or the FLSA, courts have ruled that the relationship between the penitentiary and the inmate worker is not primarily economic,” which essentially “placed wage and working condition protections out of reach for incarcerated workers.”
The Angola For Life Way of Rehabilitation
It is against this background that I find the Atlantic documentary Angola for Life: Rehabilitation and Reform Inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary embedded in this report very interesting and touchy. Burl Cain, the Warden of Angola Prison, has had an incredible accomplishment by walking into “the most violent maximum-security prison in the nation and gave the men there — discarded and damned —what society didn’t: hope, education, and a moral compass.”
Cain’s secret weapon or weapons? Work and religion! If you listen to what the inmates had to say in the documentary, you will understand the power of transformation through Christianizing the prison, which means “there are churches everywhere, services are run everyday and hundreds of inmates are now trained as ministers” as the documentary told us.
Sometimes mind transformation simply works through giving responsibilities to the people, like this group of Christian inmates training other inmates how to be the fathers to their kids outside the prison. In the touchy words of one prisoner, “just because you are locked up in prison that does not give you the right to not still be a father.” In the words of Burl Cain, “It’s not about religion to get you go to God,” “It’s about changing yourself inside so you are a different human being.”
In the end, “they learn to help each other, and try to become better fathers to their children on the outside.” The reporter of the article confirmed that after talking to some inmates, he was willing to say this: “You would never know these were murderers.” In the words of another inmate: “That life that once took a life can now save hundreds of lives.“
The Largest Vocational Institute In Louisiana
Burl Cain is a true leader and change maker in this country who showed us how people can be changed to such a shocking extent that as if their old selves did not exist anymore — all in a country where “brainwash” and “mental control” or “mental manipulations” are among the worse taboo words or phrases.
In 1990s Cain faced a difficult situation as the federal government cut prisoner education funds. He then started something that turned out to be Louisiana’s largest vocational institution inside Angola, something similar to the training centers in Xinjiang except for inmates.
In the automobile tech shop inmates train inmates who were due to be released in five to ten years. Even though the trainer may have a life sentence himself, he felt good about contribute to the society by making other inmates better fathers, sons, husbands and workers when they were released.
The Lesson From Burl Cain
My “advantage” as a Chinese is that I did not have to wait for Burl Cain to tell me humans are transformable. This explains why I am totally supportive to entrepreneurs like Burl Cain and wish there were more leaders like him.
My whole point in this blog is that we now live in an increasingly smaller world, which makes it easier to learn from each other but also easier to run into conflicts. One way to avoid the latter but to promote the former is to judge less often by preambles but more by the whole content of a system. Preambles are shorter and easier to read, but not always error proof.
More specifically, it is easy for Americans to look at “mind transformation” as something bad, filthy or at least suspicious. The Angola case shows that it can happen anywhere, anytime and in many ways right in this country. Even better, judging from the inmates themselves involved in the unique model of rehabilitation, this thing does work and does not cost much at all.
If anything, the Xinjiang training centers are better than the Angola model because the former work on the idea of prevention, while the latter on rehabilitation. The cost for the former is much lower than the latter.