We recently heard from an incarcerated individual in Virginia who works at least 30 hours a week with his paint crew, yet can’t afford to pay for his medical needs and to supplement his meager diet with food from the commissary. His prison job pays him only $0.45 per hour of work.
While some expenses like lodging are obviously cheaper while incarcerated, many individuals struggle to afford basic necessities like their medical visits, personal hygiene items, and snacks to supplement often meager prison rations. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, an incarcerated person receives between $0.86 to $3.45 per hour on average nationwide for their labor.
Incarcerated people in Virginia with jobs like cleaning the prison and preparing food make a minimum of $0.27 per hour and a maximum of $0.45. Those who are employed through Virginia Correctional Enterprises (to make items like furniture for offices and public VA universities, textiles, and office supplies) make a minimum of $0.55 per hour and a maximum of $0.80.
In January 2026, Virginians saw an increase in their minimum wage from $12.41 per hour to $12.77. No such increases apply to incarcerated individuals. In fact, VADOC policy only states the maximum amount that an incarcerated person can earn, which is 90 cents per hour. Most individuals earn far less, and those in local Virginia jails are paid nothing at all for work done in these facilities. My brother Tanner, for example, served food trays and cleaned his unit for multiple years while held at Middle River Regional Jail. While he earned good time credits, he was not only denied pay for his labor but was charged a $3 per day “keep fee” while held there.
According to Tanner, “The food they serve us isn't even worth that. We get no fruit on our trays. In fact, we get almost nothing but starches, and have no access to healthy snacks. For lunch, we generally get cookies with some kind of cornbread. Dinner usually includes some type of cake with corn bread. There is no nutrition in this, and we are on lock down for all but six hours a day. We ae charged $6 for a bar of soap. Where is the money going?”
Indeed, prison labor is a widespread economic crisis – and a targeted one at that. Poor and minority communities experience increased levels of policing, even after controlling for crime rates. As a result, poor people and people of color, particularly Black people, are incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates, often resulting in already disadvantaged people in prison being forced to work for low to nonexistent wages with few worker protections. (For more information on mass incarceration and its racial and economic disparities, consider reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow or Danielle Sered’s Until We Reckon.)
In some cases if a person refuses to work in prison they can face disciplinary action including solitary confinement, which has been internationally condemned and recognized by medical professionals as torture.
“I know a lot of people out there are thinking that the system is doing the best that they can. But it’s not,” Tanner stated. “It seems to me, and a lot of other people inside, that prisons and jails are more concerned about the money they can make on inmates rather than their rehabilitation.”
Regardless of your beliefs about prisons, imagine being forced to work for tens of hours each week for as little as $0.27 an hour. Imagine using multiple hours of wages to afford a call to your mom for just fifteen minutes. Consider having to use over half a week’s wages to visit a nurse for Ibuprofen or to buy a bar of soap. Ask yourself, if prisons truly care for a person’s betterment, then why do they make basic living so difficult?
This article was written on behalf of the Valley Justice Coalition by Destinee Harper. a local resident who is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of West Virginia and an assistant program director for the WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative.
