Valparaiso University Law Review Volume 43 Number 3 Spring 2009 pp.1425-1482 Spring 2009 Working 9 to 5: Embracing the Eighth Amendment Through an Integrated Model of Prison Labor Amy L. Riederer Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Amy L. Riederer, Working 9 to 5: Embracing the Eighth Amendment Through an Integrated Model of Prison Labor, 43 Val. U. L. Rev. 1425 (2009). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol43/iss3/11 This Notes is brought to you for free and open access by the Valparaiso University Law School at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at
[email protected]. Riederer: Working 9 to 5: Embracing the Eighth Amendment Through an Integra WORKING 9 TO 5: EMBRACING THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT THROUGH AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF PRISON LABOR I. INTRODUCTION The numbers are disheartening: there were 2,293,157 prisoners in federal, state, and local jails and prisons in 2007.1 States used 38.2 billion dollars for correctional expenditures in 2001.2 Sixty-eight percent of state prisoners did not receive a high school diploma.3 The average recidivism rate of prisoners incarcerated for common crimes is 74.2%.4 At the very least, these statistics suggest that the American prison system is dysfunctional.5 This dysfunction is indicative of the historical friction between the goals of imprisonment—punishment and rehabilitation—and the rights the Constitution guarantees to prisoners.6 1 U.S.