By Terry Wade
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) – In a dank workshop where the
din of pounding hammers bounces off cement walls, Rosangela
Oliveira, a convicted drug runner, screws locks together at a
factory inside the Tatuape Women’s Prison.
The 29-year-old mother of six is one of 42,000 prisoners
working in hundreds of jailhouse factories that Brazil’s most
populous state, Sao Paulo, has set up with private companies.
It hopes that giving inmates job skills will end a cycle of
poverty and crime that means six out every 10 released convicts
return to prison.
Unions, however, worry the state is killing off good jobs
by offering companies a way to avoid paying costly pension and
health benefits. Moving a job into a prison can cut costs in
half and erode job security in the formal labor market.
Prisoners, who usually earn a monthly minimum wage of 300
reais, say jobs keep them away from jailhouse violence and help
them support families on the outside. Still, they fear bias
against ex-convicts will prevent them from getting jobs after
leaving prison.
“We sell prison labor,” said Marcio Martinelli, director of
the state office for prisoner education and assistance.
A marketing executive from the private sector, Martinelli
was hired in March and wants to find jobs for nearly all the
state’s 117,000 convicts.
He tells companies that opening prison workshops is
socially responsible and can offer inmates, many of whom were
poorly educated in public schools, a path out of crime.
“The problem of the prisoner is a social one and if you
don’t employ him now, he will be out of jail tomorrow, and if
he isn’t employed when he leaves prison then we will return to
crime,” Martinelli said.
He has focused on finding skilled work for prisoners, like
furniture making and metalworking, instead of the traditional
prison job of sewing professional soccer balls.
Brazilian law has long guaranteed prisoners the option to
work and earn at least two-thirds the monthly minimum wage,
though most companies pay more than this. The state does not
receive any money from the companies.
But Sao Paulo, which houses more than a third of the
country’s inmates, is emphasizing jobs as part of a broader
restructuring of its penal system.
In 2002, it knocked down Carandiru, Latin America’s largest
prison, to end years of bloody revolts, including a police
massacre of 111 rioting prisoners in 1992.
Since closing Carandiru, the state has built dozens of
mini-prisons in small towns in its vast agricultural interior.
Jobs in the new prisons now threaten to alter local economies.
“Companies that use prison labor in a nasty way to cut
costs are engaging in unfair competition,” said Osvaldo
Ansarah, a lawyer for a statewide federation of metalworkers,
who traditionally have the best-paying manufacturing jobs.
“Companies should use prison labor only to complement their
work forces, not to replace them,” he added.
Some unions want a law passed to prevent companies from
having inmates make up more than a small proportion of their
workforce, say 10 percent.
When the state acts as broker for prison jobs lacking
benefits and safety protections it could hurt workers in the
rest of the labor market, they argue.
“We need to avoid outsourcing, informality and temporary
work,” Ansarah said.
Prison jobs in Sao Paulo have grown 35 percent over last
five years, a period in which Brazil’s economy was stagnant,
union power waned and U.S.-style outsourcing grew rapidly.
HUMANIZING CRIMINALS
Martinelli, of the state’s prisoner training office, said
he understands the concerns of unions but that building a
better society requires giving prisoners marketable skills.
Employers of prisoners say they are pleased with the
experiment. Shop floor supervisors say working alongside
prisoners allowed them to see inmates as people instead of
faceless criminals.
“We are pleased with the work. We’ve been here four years
and the tendency is to grow,” said Adelucio Sorce Marques, a
young supervisor at a prison workshop of LAO Industria, a
company which makes water meters, some of them for export.
“I’ve learned a lot from the women working here,” he said.
Still, Oliveira, the convicted drug trafficker who puts
together locks for the Alianca key company, fears that even
with new skills she will have a hard time finding a job.
“There’s a small chance I can get a job with this company
when I get out of jail, but there’s a lot of prejudice against
ex-cons and nobody will want to hire someone like me with a
tattoo on their neck,” she said.
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