When Esteban Nuñez arrived at Mule Creek State Prison, a facility not far from Sacramento, California, around 2010, a prison staffer asked him what he wanted to do with his time.
He wanted to finish college and figure out why he made the decisions that landed him in prison, he said.
“They kind of laughed and told me, ‘Well, we’ll be assigning you to the kitchen and it’s on you to figure out school and all that other stuff,’” Nuñez said. “I was like, ‘Isn’t the whole point of this to rehabilitate people?’”
Because of time conflicts with his mandatory work schedule, it took years until Nuñez was able to attend school and participate in rehabilitative programming, like Alcoholics Anonymous.
Like most states, California gives its prisoners mandatory work assignments that pay little to no money. Incarcerated individuals typically have no say in their schedule or the type of work they do. Prisoners can be tasked with cleaning toilets, doing laundry, preparing meals, fighting wildfires, or even making furniture, clothing and food products to be sold on the outside at a significant profit. Some jobs pay as little as 8 cents an hour. Prisoners who fail to show up for work — even if they are sick or injured — are often punished with disciplinary write-ups. In the short term, these write-ups result in the loss of privileges, or stints in solitary confinement. When individuals go up for parole, the write-ups can be used to deny release.
“You run the risk of either your health or your chances for your freedom. That’s the choice that you make on a daily basis,” said Jared Villery, an expungement fellow at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition. During Villery’s 21 years of incarceration, he was forced to work jobs that exacerbated an existing knee injury.
This year, Californians have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 6 , a ballot measure that, if passed, would eliminate the state’s constitutional provision that allows involuntary servitude for incarcerated workers. Under Prop 6, incarcerated workers could still work for little or no pay — but they would not be required to do so.
“Removing involuntary servitude really does allow folks to prioritize rehabilitation, which, in turn, will enhance public safety,” said Nuñez, who was released in 2016 and is now a Prop 6 campaign manager.
In recent years, Alabama, Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah and Vermont have taken similar action to remove so-called slavery exceptions from their state constitutions. California is one of 16 states that have yet to close the slavery exception loophole. California lawmakers first introduced a version of the bill in 2020. It stalled in the state Senate amid opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who claimed the bill would force the state to pay prisoners minimum wage, despite such language not appearing in the actual legislation . A different version of the bill cleared the legislature earlier this year, allowing it to appear on the ballot. (A separate bill that would have gradually increased prison wages was vetoed by Newsom in 2022.)
Advocates of Prop 6 predict that its passage would not dramatically change the availability of prison labor. Jobs give incarcerated people a way to get out of their cells and earn a little bit of money to help pay for the exorbitant costs of commissary goods and communication services. In fact, some of the more desirable jobs have lengthy waiting lists.
Prop 6 “will give incarcerated people the responsibility to choose what they want to do with their time — whether it’s what jobs they want to do — or if they want to do education, rehabilitation for substance use, domestic violence, whatever they want to do,” J. Vasquez, a policy and legal services manager at Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, said in an interview. “It’s giving that person that ownership of taking accountability of the direction of their lives, which will carry over when they come home to the community.”
Early on in his own 25 years of incarceration, Vasquez heard about a victim impact course with survivors of crime. He was working as a porter at the time, and after finishing his duties for the day, he asked his supervisor for permission to attend the course. His supervisor declined to let him leave work early.
“I thought about going, but I knew that if I put down that broom and went to the victim impact class to learn about the harm that I had caused, I would have gotten a write-up,” Vasquez said. “I knew that when I went to the parole board, that would for sure result in a denial. So it’s like I was being punished for wanting to learn about the ripple effects of the harm that I caused.”
Vasquez finally took the course years later, and said it was a “life-changing experience” that set him on a journey of “healing and accountability.”
But the delay ended up hurting his prospects of release, too. When he was finally eligible for parole, he said, he was repeatedly denied, in part because he hadn’t completed enough rehabilitative programs.
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