Convicts spend 40 hours a week on hard labor, including “log drills”—or physical training exercises involving 18-foot-long telephone poles—and weekly stints at the “rock pile.” That's right: The prisoners are forced to break big rocks into little rocks, which are then used in landscaping projects around the State.
A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour.