THE NUMBERS: Americans in jail: 2.3 million Working in prison industries: ~0.1 million WHAT THEY MEAN: U.S. law has banned imports of goods made in foreign jails since the “McKinley Tariff” of 1890 (McKinley, not yet president, was then Ways and Means Committee Chairman), with extensions in 1930 and 1983. But some American prison industries do export, and at least one advertises its goods abroad. Bold hypocrisy? Unwitting but embarrassing policy contradiction? Neither is quite right. About 100,000 of America’s’ 2.3 million inmates of state, federal and local prisons work in national and state prison industries. North Dakota’s “Rough Rider Industries” produces a typical line of goods: including chairs, bookcases, prison uniforms, stop-signs and other light manufactures. The federal UNICOR program, and the prison industries run by larger states, produce longer lists of similar products. The total yearly sales total is around $2.4 billion. American law bars these industries from selling to the general public except under defined circumstances, including guarantees that inmates earn prevailing wage, participate voluntarily, and deduct part of their salary for restitution to victims. Most domestic prison industries limit sales of goods to particular approved customers. UNICOR, for example, sells its signs, eyeglasses, electrical gear, and office furniture to the Defense Department and a few other federal agencies. Prison industries in California and Georgia likewise sell only to state government agencies, while those in South Carolina and South Dakota add non-profits to the approved list. Massachusetts and Kentucky sell to state residents as well as agencies and non-profits. Idaho and Minnesota allow sales to some retailers and wholesalers, which can imply some export business, but neither actively solicits business abroad. Foreign prisons, unable to meet the general conditions allowing American prison industries to operate commercially, would not qualify as eligible to sell regardless of McKinley’s import ban. For their part, foreign countries can ban prison-labor goods as the U.S. has done, if they choose. For now at least, a few American prisons export on a small scale. Most seem to do so through small-scale sales to Canada rather than through organized trade-promotion. But a few are more ambitious. In the 1990s, Florida’s PRIDE Inc. was selling shoes, cigar boxes, furniture, paint and ‘reassembled vehicles’ to Latin American countries, reportedly earning about $500,000 a year. Oregon Corrections Enterprises, which employs 1,045 of the state’s roughly 14,000 inmates, seems the most globally-minded, using a modest web-site and outlets in Australia and the United Kingdom to market its “Prison Blues” line of jeans, denim overalls, T-shirts, caps and work-shirts: “Made on the Inside to be Worn on the Outside.” The weekly trade fact is courtesy of the Democratic Leadership Council, Trade & Global Markets.