Zachary Crockett
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
This facility makes all kinds of road signs. Stop signs, yield signs, construction signs. But its biggest products, both by size and revenue, are those huge green signs that loom over you on the highway.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
If the sign has to hang over the road, either on a cantilever or a structure that spans the entire highway, that cost could be as high as $200,000. But there's a catch that saves the state a ton of money. The Bunn sign plant is located inside a prison that's staffed by incarcerated individuals. And that allows Renee Roach to get a good deal on signs.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
This isn't unique to North Carolina. Most states across America use prison labor to make stuff, not necessarily highway signs, but a variety of products all around us.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Like most working people, Christopher Barnes has a daily routine.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
He brushes his teeth, washes his face, and at around 7 in the morning, he makes the short commute to his workplace.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
This isn't just any sign plant. It's located inside Franklin Correctional Center, a medium security prison in Bunn, North Carolina. And Barnes is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. He's one of around 800,000 incarcerated people with jobs in America's prison system.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
They grow crops, repair roads, fight wildfires, and manufacture a surprising number of the products we encounter in daily life, from office furniture to reading glasses. It's estimated that more than $11 billion worth of goods and services every year can be traced back to workers who are mostly paid pennies per hour for their labor, or even nothing at all.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
We wanted to learn more about how prison labor became a central part of the economy. And we found out that the story goes back to the founding of our country. Around the world, work has long been used as a form of punishment. The U.S. colonies under British rule were no exception. Britain shipped over criminals and sold them to farms in Virginia and Maryland.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
They worked in the fields alongside enslaved people. And together, their labor sustained our early agrarian economy. As America's justice system evolved, we began to send convicts to prisons.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Laura Appelman is a professor of law at Willamette University in Oregon. She's researched the history and economics of prison labor.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Signs like this are all over American highways and freeways. There are literally millions of them. And they're so familiar that many of us don't stop to think about where they come from or why they look the way they do. Behind every highway sign, there's a long and winding road of economic decision-making.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
When the 13th Amendment was passed after the Civil War, banning slavery and other forms of unpaid labor, a notable exception was carved out.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Across the South, thousands of emancipated slaves were locked up for petty offenses. They were forced to grow crops on penal farms. Later, they were shackled together in chain gangs that built roads for government contractors. These practices persisted for many decades, and eventually, they morphed into a larger and more institutional system.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
But today, more than a million people are incarcerated in America's federal and state prisons. Housing and feeding them is very expensive. The median cost per person is around $64,000 a year. That cost falls on the state, and ultimately taxpayers. The government offsets these costs by putting prisoners to work as much as possible.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
At the majority of prisons, you'll find them doing a lot of the internal labor. They cook the meals in the cafeteria, do laundry, clean the buildings, and maintain the grounds. But they also work in government-run prison factories, like the sign plant at Franklin Correctional Center. Louis Southall is the prison warden. He oversees the 300 incarcerated men who live there.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Almost all of those men have a job, whether it's sweeping floors or mowing the lawns. But according to Southall, only the best workers get to work in the sign plant.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
While the sign plant is on prison grounds, it's actually run by a separate entity called Correction Enterprises. It's a part of the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, and it has 27 production facilities across the state, all almost entirely staffed by prisoners. Again, here's Lee Blackman, the plant manager who we met earlier on the factory floor.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Correction Enterprises uses prison labor to make dozens of products. Employed prisoners sew the linens used in prison beds. They process canned peas and beef patties for prison cafeterias. They manufacture air fresheners, hand soap, motor oil, prescription glasses, picnic tables, and license plates. Last year, Correction Enterprises sold $121 million worth of goods.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Almost all of those sales were to government agencies in the state of North Carolina, many of which are required to shop through the company.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
By using prison labor, Correction Enterprises is able to offer the government prices that are well below market rate. At a typical business, labor accounts for around 25 to 35% of the cost to produce goods. At Correction Enterprises, it's only around 2.5%. That's less than $3 million in labor costs on $121 million in sales. Blackman says the benefits of those savings trickle down.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
But that frugality is only possible because prisoners aren't protected by most employment laws. Again, here's law professor Laura Appelman.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
For incarcerated workers, pay depends on the type of job they have and where they work. Most jobs pay somewhere between 13 cents and 52 cents an hour. In some states like Kansas, prisoners are paid around 5 cents an hour. And in others, like Alabama and Mississippi, prison jobs don't pay at all.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, highway science. Back in the early days of the automobile, driving on American roadways was a free-for-all.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Almost every state in America has its own version of correction enterprises. And prisoners often do much riskier work than building furniture and spacing out letters on highway signs. Some prison jobs are part of work-release programs that send incarcerated men and women to the outside world.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
At the height of the pandemic, prisoners transported dead bodies to morgues and disinfected medical supplies. After a hurricane or an oil spill, they're dispatched to clean up the mess. And when wildfires break out, they're airlifted into the heart of the forest. Federal prisons have their own system for taking advantage of cheap labor.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The government-owned Federal Prison Industries, or FPI, has more than 60 work facilities across the country. It manufactures around 300 products, boots, jumpsuits, tools, medical supplies, body armor, even electronic components for guided missiles, which it sells to the Department of Defense. But prisoners don't just do work for the government.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Sometimes the state leases out their labor to companies in the private sector.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Prisoners have sewed underwear for Victoria's Secret, worked in call centers for cell phone companies, and made cheese that was sold in Whole Foods.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
An investigation by the Associated Press found that food produced on penal farms ends up in popular products like Frosted Flakes cereal, Gold Medal flour, and Ballpark hot dogs. Companies don't just save money on labor costs. They often earn tax credits for hiring work-release prisoners. All of this makes prison labor a great deal for taxpayers, governments, and private businesses.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Brian Scott served 20 years in prison for a sex crime before being released in 2021. For most of that time, he was at the Nash Correctional Institution in North Carolina, and he was working at a printing facility run by Correction Enterprises.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
I read on the site that they even did report cards there for high schools and colleges.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The printing facility was staffed by around 130 prisoners. And the day-to-day work was similar to what employees at any other printing facility would do. Except, in exchange for his labor, Scott was only paid 26 cents an hour.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Every Sunday, Scott's weekly earnings, around $14, were transferred into a trust fund controlled by the prison. And he says getting full pay wasn't guaranteed.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Most incarcerated people use their money to buy stuff at the commissary or canteen, a store inside the prison.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Scott says many people with prison jobs took on side hustles to supplement their income.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
That's Gene Hawkins. He works for the forensic engineering firm Kittleson, and he's a professor emeritus in the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University. He's one of the foremost experts on the history, design, and installation of traffic signs.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Scott had an operation making incense sticks in his cell. He'd sell them for one postage stamp, which was a form of currency behind bars.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Aside from the pay, Scott says his time at the printing plant was a tolerable experience. But toward the end of his sentence, he was transferred to another Correction Enterprises facility, where he refurbished traffic signs. And that was a different story.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The people who run prison labor programs often say that working at their facilities is a choice and that if a prisoner doesn't like a certain job, they're free to find other work inside the prison. But this freedom often comes with a catch. The New York Times recently reported that prisoners in an Alabama facility who refuse to take on work release jobs often face disciplinary action.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Appelman also says that because prisoners aren't considered employees, they aren't covered by employment protections, things like workplace safety regulations and workers' comp in case of injury. But some incarcerated workers believe that prison labor will pay off for them down the line.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Work programs are often positioned as a solution to recidivism, the tendency of convicted criminals to reoffend. The idea is that the skills you learn on the inside will help you land on your feet once you're out. Lee Blackman of Correction Enterprises made that point during a walkthrough of the sign plant in North Carolina.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The evidence that prison labor helps incarcerated people find jobs once they're back out in the real world is mixed. Many companies won't even consider hiring people with felony convictions. And more than 60% of people who are released from prison are unemployed a year later. But it does work out for some people, including Brian Scott.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
After he was released in 2021, he quickly found a civilian job in the printing industry.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Christopher Barnes, the incarcerated worker at the sign plant in Bunn, North Carolina, will never see that kind of paycheck. He's in prison for life with no possibility of parole. For him, the benefit of working a job in prison isn't the pay, the chance to learn new skills, or the promise of a brighter future.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
It's the brief moment of respite he gets from the cell block each morning, before the machines fire up and the highway signs are cut to size.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
These informal networks of roads were a predecessor to the highway system in America. And along these roads, there were very rudimentary ways of telling drivers where they were and what was up ahead. Most of these signs were hand-painted. Some had words, others had symbols.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
They were made from an assortment of materials in all different sizes and shapes, and the signs were different from place to place.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
As people started driving further and crossing state lines, they didn't know how to interpret all the markers they saw.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
In the 1930s, these efforts culminated in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUTCD for short. It provided a set of standards for traffic control devices across America's growing system of roads. Today, it's run by the Federal Highway Administration, and every state in the U.S. adheres to its guidelines.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
It's nearly 1,200 pages long, and it lays out the ground rules for more than 500 signs, markings, and signals, everything from the octagon shape of stop signs to the precise size of an exit sign on the freeway. These rules are determined by the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Hawkins serves as the committee's chair.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Technically, highway sign refers to any type of sign that communicates something to drivers on the road. And the MUTCD breaks these signs down into three categories.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Guide signs are those enormous placards on the freeway that tell you which exits or intersecting highways are coming up, and how far away they are. And everything you see on one of these signs is a calculated decision, starting with the font. Most signs use a special sans-serif typeface that's unofficially called Highway Gothic. It's almost exclusively designed for highway signage.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The words on these guide signs are almost always set in mixed case, with initial capitals followed by lowercase letters. There's a good reason for that.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
There are also guidelines around the size of the font on highway signs. And from below, it's hard to grasp just how big the characters are.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The town of Bunn, North Carolina, is easy to miss. It occupies a total area of just half a square mile, and it's home to fewer than 330 people. Most of the surrounding land is used to grow tobacco and soybeans. But off the main road, behind a series of chain-link fences and secure gates, is the state's primary manufacturer of highway signs.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Then there's the color of the sign. In the 1950s, the federal government looked into the legibility of black, blue, and green signs. Officials staged a test with hundreds of motorists on a road in New York and found that 58% of drivers preferred green. Turns out, the color green has another benefit, too.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
It provides the best base for retro-reflectivity, basically what makes signs legible when they're illuminated by a car's headlights in the dark. The reflectivity of signs has come a long way. Engineers initially used something called cat's eyes, tiny marbles embedded in each letter on the sign. These have since been replaced by reflective sheeting that covers the whole sign.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Now, not every sign on the freeway is green. Some of them are brown. Those are typically used for tourist attractions or recreation points like state parks. And every now and then, you'll also see a blue sign full of corporate logos. Those are called service signs, and their purpose is to tell you what kinds of services and businesses are coming up.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Say, a Chevron gas station in two miles or an Arby's at the next exit. These are actually ads, and businesses pay for the real estate.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
To qualify, a business usually has to fall into one of a number of categories, gas, lodging, food, camping, attraction, or pharmacy. And the fees vary from state to state. In Arizona, a placement can range from $1,100 in a less populated area to more than $6,000 in a busier urban location. In other states, like North Carolina, it might only be a few hundred bucks.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
For state transportation departments, service signs can bring in millions of dollars in revenue. But most highway signs aren't lucrative for the public entities responsible for them. Making them is an intensive and costly endeavor. There are dozens of companies that make the smaller ones, like stop signs or speed limit signs.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
But few manufacturers are capable of producing the enormous green highway guide signs. When a state transportation department needs a new one, the job goes to someone like Renee Roach.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Roach has a big job to go along with that big title.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Most highway signs have a sticker on the back with the dates that it was manufactured and installed. Roach knows exactly how long every sign has been on the highway and when it probably needs to be replaced. A good sign might last anywhere from 12 to 20 years before the natural elements start to degrade it. But sometimes, replacements happen far sooner.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Whenever Roach needs a new highway sign, she turns to a trusted supplier.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Inside the plant, workers are busy shearing giant aluminum panels, cutting sheets of green adhesive, and measuring out the spacing between letters. And outside in the shipping yard, the plant's general manager, Lee Blackman, is admiring a row of completed products.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
In North Carolina, nearly every highway sign in the state comes from the sign plant in the small town of Bunn. That's why we took a trip out there to see the manufacturing process for ourselves.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Is this whole thing we're looking at here one sign?
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
It's pretty awesome. When we get out on the yard, I'll show you some really big signs. As a general manager who oversees the plant, Lee Blackman is in charge of running day-to-day operations. I talked to him on the factory floor over the sounds of welding torches and miter saws.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The process for making a highway sign begins with a detailed blueprint sent over by Renee Roach at the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The first step of the fabrication process is selecting the right kind of aluminum for the job.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
The workers haul these huge sheets over to the shearing department, where they're cut to size. Sometimes, signs are so big that they have to be split up into as many as 14 different panels. When the contractor gets it out on the job site, they'll put it together like a puzzle. The sheared metal is sanded down to get rid of any blemishes or rough patches.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
Then comes one of the more technical parts of the job, putting the letters on the sign. For large highway signs, each letter is printed individually and placed by hand according to very strict measurements.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
It's not a whole lot of leeway. From start to finish, it can take around 12 hours to finish a single large highway guide sign. Once the sign is done, it's taken out into the storage yard. There, racks upon racks of enormous highway signs are lined up to get transported all over the state of North Carolina.
Freakonomics Radio
Highway Signs and Prison Labor
North Carolina's Department of Transportation pays around $42 per square foot for the sign itself. Depending on the size, that could run anywhere from $1,400 for an exit sign up to $8,500 for a large guide sign. Then there's installation. If the sign is ground-mounted, labor and support beams might run an additional $18,000.