The Prison-Identity Complex: Unravelling Labour and Law in Identity-Based Prison Worklines

This article explores identity-based prison worklines, described as the organisation of prison labour around prisoners’ identities such as race, sex, disability, and age. These worklines often impact prisoners’ pay, working conditions, and post-release opportunities. By examining this phenomenon primarily in the United Kingdom, as well as across Europe and the US, the article discusses the co-constitutive relationship between prison labour and the identity of prisoner-labourers. To analyse this relationship, the article develops a theoretical model of Incarcerated Working Identities (IWI), drawing insights from six distinct theoretical fields: prison studies, labour studies, identity studies, and their intersecting sub-fields. Placing identity-based prison worklines within the IWI theoretical framework exposes two tiers of harm: (1) discrimination and (2) identity re/construction. Together, these harms illustrate how identity-based prison worklines infringe on prisoners’ right to equality while also constraining their identity in ways that clash with their rights to liberty, autonomy, and dignity. These harms, this article concludes, violate human rights law. Incarcerated individuals could therefore utilise the IWI framework to challenge their current work assignments and conditions.