Why Are So Many Labourers On Death Row? Analysis -

The majority of death row inmates in Texas are trade workers, according to a data mining project conducted in 2016. The data revealed Texas death row inmates' previous occupations to be mainly labourers, carpenters, and other trades based on 182 inmates at the time. Blogger David Lettier posted the compiled results on Medium. More data needs to be compiled to see if this extends to the rest of the United States. You may wonder why this concerns me, especially on a website dedicated to travel and immigration. This is simply because I am a carpenter and many of us immigrating abroad are trade professionals. If you're a trades person, it's hard not to raise both eyebrows. If you're a tradie like me, what is it that the Texas judicial system has against you?

Source: https://medium.com/@lettier/text-mining-in-r-death-row-prior-occupations-by-david-lettier-fc0726bd4b3

The possibility that many would not give this much thought or find the data surprising, disturbs me even more. Texas and most likely the rest of the American justice system is favouring trade workers. Moreover, 25% of prisoners in general have a mental illness as documented by the National Research Council. More on how this connects to the professions of death row inmates later. So where's the doctors? The professors? You mean to tell me a chiropractor has never killed somebody?

As I organise my move to Australia, infamously used to ship convicts from Europe, I have to acknowledge the stark differences in the justice system there compared to my home country of the United States. While Some Australian politicians idolise America’s ageing neoliberal policies which privatise institutions such as schools, healthcare and prisons, Australia still pivots away from some of the US' more extreme practices such as capital punishment. Queensland was the first state to ban the death penalty as early as 1922 and in 1973 the punishment was discarded federally. By 1985, every state had followed. In 2010, parliament even passed legislation prohibiting any reintroduction of the punishment to the judicial system. [Source]

Meanwhile, the US currently has 2,500 inmates on death row. It is worth noting that executions have fallen slowly over the last twenty years. In those twenty years, 931 have been executed. 60% of Americans either strongly or somewhat support the use of the death penalty in 2021. In Australia, you find the complete opposite with 64% of Australians opposing the death penalty. Today, America is one of 53 countries to still have the death penalty. Note that they share this commonality with even adversarial regimes such as China and Iran, not to mention countries with known brutal (in)justice systems such as Saudi Arabia.

From here on, these conclusions are based on my own experiences working in construction unless otherwise sourced. As a carpenter, this data immediately resonated with me. Why all the tradies? Without much official research to go on, I look back to my own experience working with others to find clues. The majority of Texas' death row inmates were labourers as seen in the graph above. The pieces of the puzzle immediately came together for me when learning this because of my experience hiring from labour halls. Labourer is the most accessible job to start from nothing with no skills. It attracts the young who want to gain experience and it is often a haven for those passed aside due to inexperience, mental illness, personality disorders, drug use or past convictions. Of the 25% of prisoners suffering from a mental illness, according to Mental Health America, it is estimated that “five to ten percent of all death row inmates suffer from a severe mental illness.” For years I worked alongside those who served time for armed robbery and drug convictions, as well as those with obvious signs of personality disorders. Some workers had high-functioning autism and Aspergers - disorders which can also be found on death row. Labours can work their way up to become carpenters and therefore share the same demographic.

Violence In The Work Place

Racism, bullying, and intolerance of others’ differences is a long staple in construction. It is an injustice that cries loudly with any attempt to stomp it out. Trump was a Godsend to many of my colleagues guilty of bullying. They worried their “right” to belittle and hurt others was at risk from “woke liberals." To my former boss, never mind wider problems in the world - he just couldn’t understand why someone had to “be so sensitive” when used as a punching bag, as if he wouldn’t react the same when the reversed happened. One day, a worker who was known to have weapons in his jeep, stormed off after being teased to the brink. Everyone took cover behind boulders and machinery because someone thought he was spotted creeping around in a rain coat atop a nearby cliff overlooking the site. Thankfully, it wasn't. Our fearful reactions summed up blue collar America in just ten minutes and was an admission of the climate we worked in, though only the foreman and myself thought this. Had he came back with a weapon, turning the site into yet another shooting, could he have been one of these statistics on death row? Had my own temper got the best of me when I was an angsty, anxiety-ridden teenager ridiculed for every little thing, would I have been sentenced to death after a fatal loss of temper?

Many times this is most likely what happened, whether on a job site, or on the inmate’s own time. Browsing through the case files, you’ll find that many murders were domestic disputes, botched robberies, and senseless killings with no understandable explanation so cases cannot always be tied to the workplace and their guilt or innocence requires all of the evidence to be brought forward. OSHA reports workplace violence affects two million people a year across the US. 9% of workplace deaths were caused by workplace violence. Construction sites account for 56 out of 971 of these deaths.

If you find yourself the odd one out on a construction site, you can bet you will hear about it from your colleagues. For someone who has trouble managing their emotions, construction is one of the last places you want to be. If you don't have the ability to take one of their "jokes," your negative reaction will amplify attacks against you. Buddhist thinking will have you believe a prison is anywhere you don't want to be. To strive for acceptance among men is another plane of incarceration where the weak, or sensitive in this case, are weeded out. The conflicting nature of wrongly-suited personalities entering the construction industry is because construction is one of the few industries that will bring just about anyone in with little vetting and experience required. Again, this makes labourer jobs attractive to those with social challenges like a mental illness.

When working in construction, it won't be long until you have a boss who will feel they are doing a charity by hiring you and will hold your weaknesses against you as leverage. In a bullying or narcissist mindset, the fact they are associated with someone they feel is less than themselves irks them to the core. A boss like this will do his best to separate himself from you while at the same time patting himself on the back that he will get to heaven because of his "good deed." Personally, I have a number of undiagnosed problems but I excel at hiding them and blending in. The few times I've slipped and let the anxiety or anger get the best of me, I wonder how far I could have gone if I didn't stop myself. Looking back, had I ever wanted to kill someone on the workplace or harm anyone? Could I have done so under a more severe diagnoses? The American justice system is always hungry for young mens’ lives, especially by use of private prisons designed to profit by maintaining occupancy. With these prisons being publicly listed companies, a scandal erupted over a judge known to tilt judicial proceedings against the suspect because of the judge's ties to the company.

Inherent Biases Against Trade Workers

Beyond the formula of injustice, there is also an existential bias against the trades that has existed for thousands of years which could subconsciously influence a judge or jury's decision over the fate of someone's life. I believe the following paragraphs are ingredients to leading the labourer down the path of incarceration. If this starts to feel off-topic, please bear with me... Classism brings forward the "othering" of professions which do not undergo the same level of training as the next. This can be done by someone who believes they hold a higher degree of skill compared to their next door neighbour. You will hear the term “Low Skill” used often today. "Low Skilled Worker" is a derogatory term used to shame those who pursue trade school or entry level jobs rather than pursuing university. Those who underwent an expensive education and work in white collar jobs will hire blue collar workers to do tasks they're not interested in doing, don't have the time to, or not interested in learning how to do it themselves. This is fine. It's why general contractors exist, but I've found there is an attitude among many clients who hire contractors which suggest they can do the job themselves but they feel it is beneath them to do so. I've heard many demeaning comments from clients:

"Why would you build a pier and beam here... my last contractor screwed the edge of the deck to the house" (a house will shift overtime so don't do what their last contractor did, fyi).

"You know, I could audit you."

"I expected you to finish this in a day, how come you did it in half?"

No explanation of man hours, documentation or knowledge can defeat narcissists who hire contractors because they feel they are above the task of doing it themselves, yet feel they could if they simply wanted. The image of a worker spotted with dirt, cement or blood on their clothes evokes two different responses from people: they either see a hard worker or a sap for doing a job that gets you dirty. When searching for resources to help my father recover over ten thousand dollars from a cheating client, Google turned up mostly "how to fight a cheating contractor." Very little will be discussed regarding clients who try to screw over their workers and the law mostly protects the client. Despite photo and testimonial evidence, only $1,500 was recovered from the client after a year of back and forth. The job of a general contractor is stressful, will fill you with rage, and can amount to destroyed property and assault.

You may wonder why anyone, including myself or my father, would do such a job. It is the same reason you do yours. No matter how creative, wealthy, or well-rounded an individual is, we gravitate toward jobs that suit our personality and harmonise with our cognitive strengths - that or we feel stuck and haven't yet figured out how to move on to something else. In my case, I come from a labour family where physical work and good work ethic is a rite of passage. It just so happens that sometimes the industry we end up in is the target of society's ridicule.

Tradies Shape The Image Of The World, To Others' Dismay

People who work with their hands have had varying levels of respect throughout history. I believe tradies today are at a low point. Looking at ancient Egypt, labourers such as carpenters and masons were given many rights such as shelter, healthcare, ability to pair with women of various social classes and time off. The main reasons for this wasn't charity but to ensure they would have time to procreate, bringing new labourers into society. The protection of the tombs of Egypt were utmost priority so the government made sure workers had everything they needed in life to remain productive. So next time you think your contractor is doing a shabby job on your cabinets, have a little chat and see what's bothering him!

Still, it's a living. Countries like Australia need skilled trades people for the same purpose. Australia is facing population decline after nearly two years of border closures. They plan to increase migration levels to hopefully get population growth back on track within the decade. Single applicants are awarded 10 points toward their visa application and a condition of my 190 permanent residency visa states "must not marry before entry." Australia is not too different from ancient Egypt in that regard!

If you hire me as a carpenter, you don't have to worry about me wearing nothing but a loincloth, despite years of working through Texas summers... that'll cost you extra.

Where trades fall from society's grace today is in countries with a large supply of wealth and the product of labour is seen as a luxury rather than an essential service. No one cares for masons tasked to build condos designed for a higher financial class of people. A real estate tycoon's dream could be a 3D printed building, built by robots, doing away with pesky unions and concerns over worker safety. When automation eventually takes over, we will see prisons and death row blocks filled with the unemployed, rather than any specific prior job. My wishful thinking hopes by then we won't have the death penalty and prisons will have been reformed.

An American Past Time of Sacrilegious Practice

The conclusion of this piece may be hard to stomach, just a trigger warning.

Americans love punishment. A fairer statement could be that many humans throughout history enjoy the suffering of others. I wonder if American Puritan roots are at odds with Australian's more recent convict ancestry? Punishment in America is commonly known to be selective due to racial bias - does this extend to prior professions as well, or are they one of the same thing? You can be an inexperienced, 23 year old hispanic truck driver who loses control over his rig, killing four people and sentenced 110 years in prison (truck drivers make up a decent percentage of death row inmates as seen in the graph above). Or you can purposely insert yourself in a mob of angry people, kill two and wound others when things expectedly go wrong and walk free - Kyle Rittenhouse was a white, soon-to-be medical student. Just two examples but there are much more to choose from. All of this brings me to where I believe the path of a doomed labourer all began: Jesus. Some would think I have a lot of gall to say the most infamous execution of a tradie is Jesus... but he was a carpenter and working class organiser who upset the rich to put it mildly. It's a lot to process... Could the death penalty be a long-standing sacrilegious tradition dating back to the story of Jesus? As pre-cancel culture comedian Lenny Bruce said, “if Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

I believe religious history has a subconscious affect on our view of tradies, whether you are religious or not. Even though I am agnostic, I have a deep, disturbing feeling whenever I hear about someone being executed. It's not just about whether the human was innocent or guilty, but a feeling that all of us have committed a serious crime. Religion is a powerful force that influences our moral decisions whether we believe or not. Workers today reflect some of the values of Jesus: to build, create shelter, and change the world - something that will always harm the rich powers-that-be. When these powers, whether they be a client richer than you, a politician, or corporate leader become upset, they exploit the worker. When a trade worker commits a crime, they are punished accordingly whether subconsciously or consciously. If guilty, their life is examined with a fine-tooth comb to find out what made them do what they did. If innocent, their past is used against them to ensure their guilt. Upon the courtroom stand sits a person who the judge and jury will form an opinion based on their race, religion, class and as I now learn, prior occupation.

If time is counted from the day a carpenter was executed, there could be some truth as to why so many workers are mistreated. There could be evidence that the path to prison is paved by the exploited labour of troubled human beings. Workers have always been the backbone of today's middle class, many supported by strong unions - an endangered institution in America. I'll never forget the day I was helping my dad tile his client's entryway. The client had a crucifix displayed over the head of the door. We're down on our knees when the client approached him to question a payment draw over a task completed long ago. I remember this image vividly: the cross behind a self-proclaimed overseer who is belittling workers on their knees, creating shelter for the client's family. Perhaps there is a subconscious will to persecute those who build and change the image of our world and it could be in all of us.