Still ‘slaves of the state’: Prison labour and international law

All within the labour reform camps system are forced into slave labour. Only the most excessive forms of forced prison labour lead to international protest. The 1930 Convention was created mainly to fight slavery and other involuntary labour in colonial settings. Without denying the relative importance of the Marxist and Foucauldian approaches, Garland saw the sanction of imprisonment, including prison labour, as part of a strategy aimed at the management of social problems in the modern welfare state. Wherever international law prohibits compulsory labour, it simultaneously makes reservations in respect of prison labour. The European Prison Rules (EPR) leaves room for contract work from private employers to be performed in and outside the penal institutions. Both the UN Standard Minimum Rules and the EPR require that private firms using prison labour pay to the prison administration the same wages as they would pay for free labour.