HITCHED TO THE POST: PRISON LABOR, CHOICE AND CITIZENSHIP.

The current neo-liberal trend in the United States insists that citizens must be self-supporting and are free to choose how they will involve themselves in the labor market. However; with the hardening of poverty in the inner cities, it is difficult to maintain the idea that everyone can choose to work The collision between neo-liberal ideologies and economic crisis is evidenced by contemporary prison labor The incarceration boom and use of prison labor suggests that work and unemployment is a matter of character; thus helping to maintain the idealization of labor as a marker of rationality, disciplined free will, and hence citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]