Prison Labor & Economics

Unpaid by Design: Georgia's Zero-Wage Labor System

Georgia is one of roughly seven states that pays incarcerated people nothing for regular prison work. The others are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas (Prison Labor & Wage Exploitation in Georgia, #1803, #1822, #8230). Every routine assignment — kitchen, laundry, janitorial, groundskeeping, facility maintenance, construction — carries a wage of $0. No Georgia statute requires compensation for prison labor (#3422), and the Georgia Department of Corrections publishes no pay scale for regular work assignments (#1803).

The scale of participation is not marginal. The Department estimates that approximately 80% of able-bodied incarcerated people take part in work programs of some kind, with the vast majority receiving nothing (#3403, #3494). During the convict leasing era the comparable figure was approximately 100% (#3508). Because GDC does not publish a breakdown of who works in which role, the exact distribution across kitchen, farm, road crew and manufacturing assignments is unknown (#1904).

What that labor would be worth is a calculation GPS has made explicitly: if Georgia holds roughly 47,000 incarcerated people and half of them work an average of six hours a day, 250 days a year, at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, the annual value is approximately $256 million (#1866). That estimate is conservative on participation — the Department's own figure is closer to 80% — and it uses the federal floor rather than Georgia's nominal state minimum of $5.15 an hour, which the federal rate supersedes (#1910).

The savings do not stop at the state line. Georgia counties receive an estimated $100 million or more in value annually from unpaid prison labor on road crews, maintenance and other public works (#3396, #3495). The Muscogee County Prison in Columbus — the state's largest county work camp — saves the city approximately $17 million to $20 million a year according to officials (#1836). The director of the county Public Works Department, Pat Biegler, put the figure at approximately $140,000 a week, or more than $7.2 million annually from that single department (#1839). Warden Dwight Hamrick described the facility's "top priority" as providing prison labor to Columbus Consolidated Government (#1838). Pay at that facility is not uniform: people working sanitation, golf course maintenance, recycling and landfill operations receive roughly $3 a day, while those in facility maintenance, transportation and street beautification receive nothing (#1837).

National context sharpens the comparison. Approximately 800,000 incarcerated people work in U.S. prisons (#1804), producing more than $2 billion a year in goods and more than $9 billion in services (#1805, #1806). Average wages in states that pay at all run from $0.13 to $0.52 an hour — 1.8% to 7.2% of the federal minimum wage, or 0% in Georgia's case (#1847, #1850). Only 1% of state correctional budgets nationwide goes to incarcerated worker wages (#1844). Seventy-six percent of incarcerated workers report being required to work or face punishment, and 70% report they cannot afford basic necessities on what they earn (#1843, #1849). None of that last figure applies to Georgia wages, which are zero.

One claim in the record does not survive contact with the state's own numbers. The NAACP and reform advocates have argued that Georgia's cost per prisoner is approximately 39% of the national average and speculated that the gap is attributable to unpaid labor (#1840). GPS's own figures put Georgia's FY 2025 per-prisoner cost at roughly $27,664 to $31,489 against a national average of approximately $33,274 — between 83% and 95% of the national figure, not 39% (#1842). The 39% claim may reflect an older or narrower cost calculation; as published, it overstates the gap, even though the underlying point about unpaid labor stands independently.

From the Lease to the Line: A Century and a Half of Compelled Work

Georgia's unpaid labor system did not begin in a manufacturing plant. In 1866, one year after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the General Assembly authorized the governor to lease state prisoners to railroad companies and other private enterprises (#1816, #3427). The first contract handed 100 Black prisoners to the Georgia and Alabama Railroad for $2,500 (#1816). By 1868 the arrangement was formalized in statute (#3428), and within three years all 393 state prisoners had been leased to lay more than 450 miles of railroad track (#1817). In 1874 the state leased all its convicts to three companies (#3461); in 1883 it leased them for 20-year terms (#3416).

The supply was manufactured. Georgia's Black Codes — vagrancy laws, contract enforcement statutes, and enticement laws that criminalized offering better terms to already-contracted workers — were designed to funnel Black Georgians into the criminal justice system (#3429, #3373). The result: in the late nineteenth century Georgia's free population was approximately 45% Black while its convict population was roughly 90% Black (#3382, #3452). Black convicts were preferentially leased for the deadliest work — mining and railroad construction — and some operations explicitly requested "Negro convicts" in their lease agreements (#3383, #3453).

The human cost was catastrophic and is documented in the record. An 1881 legislative investigation found approximately one in four convicts died each year (#3446); the death rate stood at roughly 16% in 1876 (#3380); Matthew J. Mancini found some camps exceeded 20% annual mortality (#3501, #3412). At the Dade Coal Company's Cole City mines, owned by former governor and sitting U.S. Senator Joseph E. Brown, prisoners worked 12- to 16-hour shifts in cramped, poorly ventilated shafts and death rates in some years exceeded 10% to 15% (#3439, #3440). Brown was one of the Bourbon Triumvirate — with Alfred H. Colquitt and John B. Gordon — who dominated Georgia politics from the 1870s through the 1890s, were all deeply invested in convict leasing, and used their power to block reform (#3431, #3375). James W. English, mayor of Atlanta, presided over the Chattahoochee Brick Company, which used hundreds of convicts to produce the bricks that built much of the city (#3434, #3436). Alex Lichtenstein found that convict leasing generated more revenue per capita for Georgia than any other state function in the 1880s and 1890s (#3500).

Georgia abolished convict leasing in 1908 under Governor Hoke Smith, among the last Southern states to do so, and replaced it with a county-based chain gang system that retained the worst features: prisoners chained together, worked under armed guard, housed in mobile cages or stockades, whipped, and subject to high rates of disease and death (#3460, #3465, #3387). Chain gangs were formally outlawed around 1943 and the last were disbanded around 1945 (#1894, #3388). The resistance was real and dangerous: in 1951 at the Buford Prison Rock Quarry, prisoners severed their own heel tendons and 30 more broke their own legs with sledgehammers to protest conditions (#1820).

Modern operations carry the structure forward under different branding. Georgia Correctional Industries was established by the General Assembly in 1960 as a public corporation, replacing overt chain gangs with a bureaucratized industrial program that kept the compelled, uncompensated labor (#1821). GCI now runs approximately 21 manufacturing plants (#3472) producing furniture, signs, license plates, cleaning chemicals, mattresses, clothing and textiles, metal fabrication and printing (#3392). License plates are made at Telfair State Prison (#1896), shoes and boots at Autry (#1897), cleaning chemicals at Dodge (#1898), eyeglasses and optics at Hays (#1899), printing and binding at Phillips (#1900), metal furnishings at Walker (#1901). GCI employs approximately 1,000 incarcerated workers daily (#1824) and generated approximately $64 million in revenue in FY2023 (#3394); by statute it retains 25% of profits for employee bonuses and self-investment, with the remainder going to the State General Fund (#1834).

Agriculture is the other half. GCI manages more than 13,000 acres of farmland (#3473) and serves over 39 million meals annually (#1825), producing more than 40% of the food items on prisoner menus (#1828). Rogers State Prison Farm in Reidsville alone covers 9,400 acres with 1,200 head of beef cattle, a 450-sow pork operation, a dairy milking 175 cows daily, and row crops (#1830); Joe Kennedy Farm in Lyons covers 2,600 acres (#1833); Lee Arrendale has 596 acres (#1831); Dooly has 125 (#1832). GPS's food-safety research adds that GCI runs five processing units — meat, dairy, egg, gristmill and cannery — with a USDA-inspected meat facility in Milledgeville (#5842).

Scholars identify six elements of continuity running from chattel slavery through convict leasing to the present: the Thirteenth Amendment exception as legal framework, racial targeting through the criminal justice system, economic exploitation with no or minimal compensation, geographic continuity of forced-labor sites, a political economy of beneficiaries who influence policy, and persistent resistance by incarcerated people (#3511, #3426). The geographic continuity is not metaphorical: many of Georgia's modern prisons sit on or near former convict camps and plantations, and some GDC facilities occupy land used for forced labor for over 150 years (#3418, #3503).

The Commissary: Markup as Policy

Georgia's commissary does not simply sell goods at a profit. GPS's investigation of 20 high-volume staples documents a two-tier extraction system: first the vendor charges the state inflated "wholesale" prices, then the state charges incarcerated people 54% to 323% more on top of those already-inflated costs (#378, #494). The combined effect puts commissary prices 83% to 1,150% above retail (#1807, #373). Other GPS collections report overlapping but different ranges — 67% to 1,150% (#1909), 67% to 161% (#937), 50% to 300% (#1771) — reflecting different item sets and comparison baselines. The ranges are not interchangeable and should not be averaged; what they share is the direction.

Individual items show how far the markup can go. A 3-ounce packet of Maruchan ramen sells for $0.90 against $0.15 per unit at Walmart in bulk, or $0.31 in a 12-pack (#370). The vendor charges Georgia $0.40 a packet when verified restaurant-supply wholesale is $0.314 and institutional wholesale is $0.20 to $0.25 — a 60% to 100% vendor overcharge (#377, #442, #404) — and the state then adds a 125% markup (#461). Georgia sells 2.3 million units of a single ramen flavor annually (#375), and on that one flavor the excess over fair pricing extracts $1,472,000 a year from families (#409). Generic ibuprofen sells for $4.00 per 20-24 tablets against $0.40 to $0.48 at Walmart retail (#371) — a 975% to 1,076% markup over Costco bulk pricing (#384), with the vendor charging $1.92 for a product that has no legitimate wholesale market at that price (#445, #495) before the state adds 108% (#462). Bar soap sells for $1.10 to $2.25 against institutional wholesale of $0.08 to $0.14 — 575% to 1,812% (#390), and 6.75 to 15.5 times true wholesale cost on the vendor side alone (#425, #446). A toothbrush sells for $1.10 against $0.15 to $0.40 wholesale and $0.47 at Target (#393, #426). Canned tuna sells for $2.70 to $3.20 against $0.98 at Walmart (#395) even though the vendor's own price to the state exceeds Sam's Club retail (#394). A 16-ounce jar of peanut butter sells for $5.60 against $2.18 for Walmart's store brand — a 157% markup — and $0.99 on Kroger sale (#396), while the vendor charges Georgia $2.60, 59% above Sam's Club retail for the equivalent volume (#497, #498).

The pricing is not uniform, and that is the point. Items families can easily price-check against a Walmart shelf stay close to retail: 4-6 ounce toothpaste tubes run 0% to 20% over retail (#428), shampoo actually falls below retail while still sitting 70% to 247% above institutional bulk cost (#429), hot sauce is priced competitively against Walmart (#431), and Doritos and Lay's sit 5% to 9% below single-bag retail, creating an illusion of reasonableness (#421). Items whose wholesale cost is invisible to a shopper — bar soap, toothbrushes, travel toothpaste — carry the extreme markups (#430). Protein follows the same logic: a processed snack protein like beef sticks is reasonable at $1.00 (#432), while peanut butter and tuna, the staples people actually need, are marked up 157% to 227% over retail (#435). Travel toothpaste is sold at $0.55 for a 0.15-ounce packet that appears to be a free promotional sample, with the vendor charging the state $0.13 (#372, #386, #388); 3,510 units move annually, generating nearly $2,000 from packets that may cost nothing to acquire (#387).

Sourcing compounds the markup. Georgia's commissary vendor, Stewart's Distribution, sells near-expired convenience-store rejects at premium prices (#938). Honey buns cost the state $0.95 per unit against a standard foodservice wholesale of $1.01 — 6% below market, consistent with liquidation sourcing (#452) — and Bulkvana sells 16-count cases at $0.89 a bun with expiration dates two months from the sale date (#454). Marvell Foods, a major salvage broker, explicitly states it serves the "prison system" and specializes in "short-coded products, excess inventory, package changes," including inventory "expired to 12-month-old" (#455, #478). Liquidation suppliers offer 30% to 75% discounts off standard wholesale (#456). People buying these products are not told, and are not charged prices reflecting the acquisition cost (#491).

At the aggregate level the numbers are large and have grown. Georgia extracted $18.76 million in commissary profit in 2024 alone — money taken from families of people who work for free (#1857). In November 2025 the state raised commissary prices an average of 30%, pushing projected annual extraction above $60 million (#1858, #1859). GPS documented 153 items where vendor prices dropped but GDC either maintained or raised the inmate price, pocketing an estimated $420,000 in additional profit from price manipulation alone (#1860). Against a fair-pricing model of true wholesale plus a modest markup, the excess extraction across all commissary purchases is estimated at $8 million to $15 million annually (#472); on the 20 investigated items alone it runs $3 million to $5 million (#374).

The counterfactual is not speculative. If Georgia bought ramen at true institutional wholesale and added a 30% markup, the price would be $0.26 rather than $0.90 (#408, #463); ibuprofen would be $0.52 rather than $4.00 (#464); bar soap would be $0.18 rather than a $1.68 average (#465). On five high-volume items alone — ramen, water, Doritos, Lay's and beef sticks — fair pricing would return $2,806,247 a year to families (#471). Buying Doritos and Lay's through Sam's Club Business instead of the vendor would save $127,726 annually on two products, against a membership cost of $50 to $100 (#418, #449). Legitimate institutional distributors compete aggressively for large contracts and price well below what Georgia reports paying (#477).

Families Pay the Difference

The commissary system only works because someone outside the prison pays. Georgia prisoners are forced to buy basic necessities at markups of 83% to 1,150% above retail, "funded almost entirely by their families" (#1807). Families on fixed incomes routinely send $100 to $300 a month just so a loved one can eat and stay clean (#939). Research published in Science Advances (Baker et al., 2025) found families with an incarcerated member spend a median of $172 a month on direct support — roughly 6% of household income (#1861) — and FWD.us's 2025 study put average direct out-of-pocket spending at $4,200 a year (#1862, #898), more than 27% of income for someone at the federal poverty line. GPS researchers have argued the 6% national figure is likely a floor in Georgia, where commissary prices are higher and institutional meals are worse (#1000).

The mechanism is a closed loop, and GPS has described it as such: the state profits from free labor, then profits again when families pay inflated commissary prices to meet needs the state refuses to provide, and again through telecom fees and medical co-pays (#1912). The six-step model GPS labels the "Family Tax" runs from state failure to feed and clothe people, through a monopoly vendor at marked-up prices, through commissions and kickbacks to the facility, to the family paying inflated prices plus transfer fees, to revenue flowing into opaque Inmate Welfare Funds with minimal accountability — then repeating as families deplete their resources (#987). Commission-based contracts create a direct incentive for officials to approve higher prices, because the facility's cut rises with them (#934). Nationally, 39 prison systems draw welfare fund revenue from commissary purchases (#8238); at least 49 state systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons maintain some form of inmate welfare fund (#8237).

The inadequacy of institutional food is the precondition for commissary dependence. GDC food service failures — spoiled meats, undercooked food, portions so small many survive on ramen and chips — were documented in GPS's "Starved and Silenced" investigation and force reliance on the commissary (#940). The state spends an estimated $1.77 to $2.20 per prisoner per day on food, roughly $0.60 per meal (#5844, #8330), against a USDA Thrifty Plan floor of approximately $10 a day for an adult male. Board of Corrections Rule 125-4-3 requires three meals Monday through Friday but permits only two on weekends and holidays at the warden's discretion, and most facilities served just two on weekends until 2024 (#5846). When Georgia cut more than $5 million in commissary-adjacent spending in FY 2021, the effect was to shift costs onto incarcerated people and their families rather than absorb them (#3058).

The burden is not distributed evenly. Eighty-seven percent of the financial burden of prison communications is carried by women, disproportionately women of color (#1749). Menstrual products illustrate the compounding: women pay $3.40 to $4.25 for an 8-count box of tampons against $1.20 for a Walmart generic equivalent — a 183% to 254% overcharge (#398) — working out to $8.50 to $10.63 a month at commissary prices versus about $3.00 at retail (#438). Over a five-year sentence a woman pays $330 to $460 more than retail for menstrual products alone (#439), an annual "menstrual tax" of $50 to $120 (#400). Several states now provide these products free, recognizing them as health necessities rather than a profit center (#441).

Beyond commissary, the family cost stack includes money transfer fees of $3.50 to $6.50 per transaction through JPay (#1659), which on a $20 transfer is a 17.5% surcharge (#1730); phone calls at $0.06 a minute, or about $45 a month for one 25-minute call a day (#1722, #1721); email stamps at $0.20 to $0.35 each (#1657, #1658); and medical co-pays estimated at more than $10 million a year across Georgia prisons (#1865), against a $5 GDC co-pay (#3073). A Georgia family maintaining regular contact is estimated to spend $115 to $135 a month on communications alone (#1752). Nationally, families spend $5.6 billion a year on commissary, phone calls and basic necessities (#1864, #899), and total annual costs to families approach $350 billion when lost income, travel and fees are counted (#1863, #897) — nearly four times the $89 billion taxpayers spend running corrections systems (#8223).

Coercion, the Courts, and the Limits of Reform

The legal architecture for unpaid labor is explicit. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" (#1808), and Article I, Section 1, Paragraph XXII of the Georgia Constitution mirrors that exception (#1809). Courts have held that the relationship between prisons and incarcerated workers is "primarily penological," not economic, so the Fair Labor Standards Act does not apply (#1882). The National Labor Relations Act does not cover incarcerated workers, so there is no right to unionize (#1884). They are not classified as employees under Georgia law unless working for private gain, which strips OSHA protections (#1883); on-the-job injuries do not trigger workers' compensation (#1885); and GCI fact sheets reference long shifts with no overtime consideration (#1886). Even in the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program, which technically requires prevailing wages for private employers under Georgia Department of Labor rules (Subject 300-9-1), up to 80% of wages can be deducted for taxes, room and board, victim restitution and family support — and the program covers only a tiny fraction of the population (#1823, #3475, #3395, #1848).

Where law does not compel, administration does. Coercive mechanisms used to compel prison labor include solitary confinement, loss of visitation, loss of commissary access, denial of good-time credits that extend time served, denial of parole, transfer to harsher facilities and loss of housing assignments (#1855). The Georgia Parole Board considers work history in parole decisions, meaning refusal to work for free can lengthen a sentence through parole denial (#1856). GDC does not publicly disclose how many people are punished for refusing to work (#1905). Michigan's system offers an instructive parallel: labor there is mandatory, and declining the job pool can lead to long-term isolation (#5796).

The most significant organized challenge came in December 2010. On December 9, incarcerated people in at least seven Georgia state prisons — Hays, Macon, Telfair, Smith, Augusta, Baldwin and Hancock — launched what was then called the largest prison work stoppage in U.S. history (#1868, #1869). It was organized over months using contraband cell phones purchased from prison guards, described by The New York Times as possibly the first instance of cell phones being used for grassroots prison organizing (#1870, #3490). The action was multiracial, crossing racial, gang and religious lines, nonviolent by design, and coordinated across facilities simultaneously (#1872); it was announced as a one-day action and extended to six days, December 9-15, with thousands refusing to leave their cells, work, or shop at commissaries (#1871).

The strikers issued nine demands: a living wage for work, educational opportunities beyond the GED, decent healthcare, an end to cruel and unusual punishment, decent living conditions, nutritional meals, vocational and self-improvement opportunities, access to families, and just parole decisions (#1873). The state's response was force: four prisons on full lockdown, hot water shut off, heat reportedly turned off in winter, phones confiscated, suspected organizers transferred, tactical squads with assault weapons deployed, and documented use of pepper spray, tear gas and physical beatings (#1875). Guards at Macon and Hays were reported to have beaten inmates with hammers (#1876), and seven guards were arrested in February 2011 for assaulting inmates (#1877). As of 2026, not one of the nine demands has been met (#1874). The strike nonetheless seeded a movement: similar actions followed in Illinois, North Carolina, Virginia and Washington, and both the 2016 nationwide strike on the 45th anniversary of Attica and the 2018 national strike cited Georgia as a model (#1878, #3491, #3406).

Legislative reform has moved elsewhere but not here. Eight states have removed the slavery and involuntary servitude exception from their constitutions — Colorado (2018), Utah and Nebraska (2020), Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont (2022), and Nevada (2024) (#1810, #3409). Alabama's experience is a caution: it removed the exception in 2022 but has not implemented prison wages, and litigation continues (#1911). California voters rejected Proposition 6 in 2024 amid "tough on crime" messaging (#1812), and Democrats have announced they will reintroduce the measure as ACA 6 in 2026 (#1813). Georgia has taken no action: no legislation has advanced in the General Assembly on prison labor compensation, and the issue has not appeared on any ballot (#1814). HR 1530, the "Ending Slavery in Georgia" amendment introduced in 2026 by a bipartisan coalition, would amend Article I, Section I to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude without exception and send the question to voters as a referendum (#3483, #3407); it faces opposition from GDC and the corrections industry, which argue prison labor provides job training and that eliminating compulsory labor would raise incarceration costs (#3423, #3488). Clearing the legislature would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers (#1887). At the federal level, Georgia Congresswoman Nikema Williams has co-sponsored the Abolition Amendment with Senator Jeff Merkley, which would require ratification by 38 states (#1815, #1888).

The reform menu that does not require a constitutional amendment is well documented. GPS's commissary investigation recommends markup caps of 10% to 15% over retail for essential healthcare items, 20% to 25% for basic hygiene, and 30% to 35% over true wholesale for food staples (#474, #475, #476); free provision of menstrual products and basic hygiene items (#482, #483); an independent pricing oversight board with auditors, family advocates and procurement experts (#485); a legal requirement that excess commissary revenue fund education, reentry, victim restitution or inmate welfare rather than general correctional operations (#486); posted price-comparison charts and separated disclosure of vendor cost versus institutional markup (#488); a ban on selling promotional samples (#487); and whistleblower protections for staff or vendors who report pricing irregularities (#489). San Francisco's experience shows the ceiling is low: eliminating commissary markups cost approximately $500,000 a year — 0.17% of the sheriff's budget — and the impact was described as "profound" (#984).

What the Record Does Not Show

The economics of Georgia prison labor rest on a set of numbers the state does not publish. Total hours, assignments and municipal savings across all Georgia counties using prison labor are not publicly available (#1907). GDC does not report how many people work in which roles across the prison system (#1904), how many are disciplined for refusing to work (#1905), or how many are in the prevailing-wage PIECP program and what deductions are applied (#1906). Current GCI revenue and production figures are not available either: the most recent public fact sheets date from 2019-2020 (#1902).

The financial plumbing is the largest gap. Where commissary profit goes via the Inmate Welfare Fund is not publicly disclosed, and GDC quoted $88,944 to fulfill an open-records request for those records (#1903, #1892). In Georgia, welfare-fund reporting is triggered only by suspicion of fraud, a change in personnel managing the fund, or extensive funding shortages — there is no routine reporting or audit schedule (#8249). Only five states require prisons to post welfare fund audits publicly within view of the incarcerated population, and Georgia is not among them (#8250). Revenue from phone, tablet and email charges through Securus and JPay is likewise undisclosed (#1908), and how GDC allocates the more than $8 million in annual commission revenue has never been publicly reported (#1781). The perverse results of that opacity are documented elsewhere: Fulton County jail's welfare fund covered $40,000 in gift cards for a staff holiday party, $2,600 to florists, and a tropical bounce house for employee events (#8251).

Two headline figures in the record conflict and should be read carefully. Georgia's commissary extraction is reported as $18.76 million in 2024 profit (#1857) and separately as $47 million in annual extraction enabled by Truth in Sentencing-mandated longer sentences (#1241) — the latter appears to model total family spending over longer terms rather than a single year's facility profit, and the two should not be treated as the same measurement. Nor do the two GCI revenue figures reconcile: approximately $64 million in FY2023 (#3394) against a ZoomInfo estimate of approximately $5 million (#1835), which GPS itself notes likely understates total economic value because it excludes internal consumption of manufactured goods, food production and agricultural output. The markup ranges vary across collections for the same reason — different item baskets, different baselines — and GPS treats the underlying item-level documentation as the load-bearing evidence rather than any single headline percentage.

Methodological limits apply across the topic. The ACLU's 2022 Captive Labor report and the Prison Policy Initiative's 2017 wage data remain the most comprehensive nationwide datasets available and have not been superseded as of February 2026 (#1913). Georgia's state minimum wage of $5.15 is superseded by the federal $7.25, so any calculation using the state figure understates labor value (#1910). And the estimate that unpaid labor would be worth $256 million a year (#1866) is a modeled figure built on stated assumptions — 23,500 workers at six hours a day, 250 days a year — not a measured payroll; it is best read as a floor given that GDC's own participation estimate is closer to 80% (#3403).

What is not in doubt is the direction of the money. GDC's state general fund appropriation rose from $1.07 billion in FY2020 to $1.42 billion in FY2024, according to the Governor's Budget Reports compiled in GPS's budget dataset — while the state continued to pay incarcerated workers nothing and drew $18.76 million in commissary profit from their families in a single year (#1857). The system's fiscal efficiency depends on that transfer, and the transparency needed to measure it precisely is the same transparency the state has declined to provide.