"i thought it was optional, like they had the option to work for twelve cents an hour and often did because otherwise you’re just bored doing nothing all day,"

Chris Hedges speaks on this often, it's not boredom that makes prisoners work. US prisons are fully privatised internally, and the companies who run everything are price gouging prisoners. So if you want to speak with your family once a month you have to pay exorbitant phone rates. We basically take away prisoners humanity and sell it back to them, but only as long as they work for slave labor wages.

Why unions are screaming about this issue I don't understand, every major US company is by now completely dependent on prison slave labor in their supply chain, it has completely undermined labors power to negotiate, and as hellworld continues politicians will receive more bribes from the prison industrial complex and find news ways of putting more people into the machine.