Progressive Corrections: Digital Electronics, Carceral Labor, and Liberal Reform in the 1970s

Abstract This article looks at the deregulation of US prison labor in the 1970s and 1980s, and the use of prison labor in information technology (IT) and digital electronics supply chains. The article, on one hand, locates the effort to deregulate prison labor in US electronics firms’ search for cheap labor enclaves and the uneven development of the postwar United States. At the same time, the article situiates this deregulatory turn in the progressive reforms of the 1970s. These reforms, which occurred first at the state and local levels, sought to promote prisoner welfare, provide opportunities for “self-help,” and rationalize the allocation of state and local resources in light of rising inflation. As such, the article complicates narratives of the rise of neoliberalism, which center issues like “lost confidence” in the efficacy of federal social welfare programs, breaches in public trust following Watergate, the 1973 oil shock, knock-on effects of New Deal and Great Society programs, or emerging “family values” and racist dog-whistle politics. It also frames the labor history of digital electronics in a way that supports an analysis of the relationship between capitalist development and US federalism aongside the particularities of firm-level motivation, insitutional inertia, and prevailing political ideology. Current discussions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and corrections largely focus on the use of incarcerated persons to train AI algorithms or the use of AI systems to surveil prisoners. However, this article centers the growth of tech supply chains in the 1970s and 1980s as an important precursor to the development of contemporary AI technology and firms.