Day 185 MCAT Practice Question

Passage 1

The state’s property right in the prisoner’s labor exists by virtue of the 13th

Amendment of the Constitution of the United States which provides that slavery

or involuntary servitude may be a punishment for crime, after due process of law.

This property right the state may lease or retain for its own use, the manner being

set forth in state constitutions and acts of legislatures. To make this of material

value the prisoner’s labor must be productive. The distribution of the product of the

prisoner’s labor inevitably presents the problem of competition. The confounding

of the evil of penal servitude with the methods of production and the methods of

distribution which have grown out of it has produced a confusion in the thought

underlying prison labor regulation by legislative enactment.

The usual penological analysis of prison labor into lease, contract, piece-price,

public account and state-use systems is impossible to use in an economic analysis

of the labor conditions involved. Economically two systems of convict production

and two systems of distribution of convict-made goods exist; production is either

by the state or under individual enterprise: distribution is either limited to the

preferred state use market or through the general competitive market. In the light

of such classification the convict labor legislation of the current year shows definite

tendencies toward the state’s assumption of its responsibility for its own use of the

prisoner on state lands, in state mines and as operatives in state factories; while

in distribution the competition of the open market, with its disastrous effect upon

prices, tends to give place to the use of labor and commodities by the state itself

in its manifold activities. Improvements like these in the production and distribution

of the products mitigate evils, but in no vital way effect the economic injustice

always inherent under a slave system. The payment of wage to the convict as a

right growing out of his production of valuable commodities is the phase of this

legislation which tends to destroy the slavery condition. Such legislation has made

its appearance, together with the first suggestion of the right of choice allowed to

the convict in regard to his occupation…

The expression of these tendencies found in the legislation of 1911 comes to view in

divers[e] states and a confusion of statutes in which every shade of development is

present…The prisoner received compensation for labor in six states…his dependent

family was given assistance in five…while Nevada gave him the right to choose

between working on the roads or working indoors…The antagonism of organized

labor to the distribution of the products of the convict’s labor on the open market

resulted in the passage in Montana, Oregon and California of laws requiring branding

of convict made goods.

In a word, the economic progress in prison labor shown in the legislation of 1911 is

toward more efficient production by the elimination of the profits of the leasee,

more economical distribution by the substitution of a preferred market where the

profits of the middleman are eliminated in place of the unfair competition with the

products of free labor in the open markets, and finally the curtailment of the slave

system by the provisions for wages and choice of occupation for the man in penal

servitude.

National Prisoners’ Aid Association. (1911). The Review, Volume I, No. 9. Project

Gutenberg.

Based on the author’s argument as presented in the passage, which of the

following can be reasonably inferred?

A) The specific manner of regulating prisoner labor has the potential to cause

profound economic impact

B) The particulars of economics are amoral, and have no ability to influence

the rightness or wrongness of the prison labor situation

C) There is strong consensus across America regarding the regulation of prison

labor

D) Where prison labor is concerned, typical economic considerations such as

efficiency are irrelevant