Prisoners' Unions, Bureaucratic Reform, and the Making of Post-1960s Prison Policy in North Carolina and the Nation

FAIN: FT-286365-22

Amanda Hughett
University of Illinois, Springfield (Springfield, IL 62703-5407)

Research and writing two chapters of a book on the unionization of imprisoned workers in North Carolina in the early 1970s.

During the early 1970s, imprisoned workers in North Carolina and across the nation launched a surprisingly successful movement to unionize. This book captures the electrifying moment when the unionization of the incarcerated seemed possible, and it explains how it was lost, giving rise instead to a new bureaucratic prison system awash in unenforceable constitutional rights. State officials, I show, leveraged imprisoned people’s newly expanded constitutional rights—and the bureaucratic structures implemented in response to them—to thwart prisoners’ ability to organize. They then redirected those structures to shore up their power and serve as barriers between prisoners and the courts. By illuminating how imprisoned people’s legal victories undermined their broader goals, this project reframes our understanding of the origins of today’s prison practices, connects the prisoners’ rights and labor movements, and offers new insight into the decline of liberalism after the 1960s.