A heavily distorted glitch art of a female mannequin wearing prison uniform

Meet Carcel Clothing: A Luxury Fashion Label Proudly Advertising Its Prison Labor

Carcel Clothing openly advertises it uses prison labor in its luxury clothes. We take a look at why this doesn't help anyone.

The word “carcel” translated from Spanish means “jail”. But for Carcel Clothing, a Danish luxury fashion company, it means cheap labor from an easily exploited workforce and tons of free advertising from liberals. Unlike other scuzzy manufacturers, Carcel openly advertises they use prison labor, and their workers (all women) are paid “living wages” for the countries they’re located in, claim to teach them new “skills”, and gets to use these women as props in their woke ad campaigns. They don’t publish how much they pay their workers, but it’s certainly not enough to buy a fancy sweater.

It’s peak neoliberalism wrapped up in the worst cloying “western savior” complex seen in quite some time. The vast majority of the women in Cusco, Peru and Chiang Mai, Thailand workshops are there for non-violent drug offenses. Another great American export: the pointless War on Drugs that sees jail as its only tool. Nearly every story is about a woman who turned to selling or transporting drugs because of poverty.

Thankfully, Carcel Clothing is there to swoop in and save these poor, poor souls by asking them to sew ugly clothes together while they sit in jail because they were living in poverty.

Let’s be absolutely crystal clear: you cannot have ethical prison labor in the current system. No matter how much you claim to pay them, how sustainable your materials are, or how many smiling photo ops you take. Prison is a system built on the threat of state violence, a more literal version of capitalist exploitation. Simply put, a worker cannot consent to having their labor stolen, especially not in prison where they are physically restricted under guard. Also, Carcel Clothing can change or completely backtrack on any promises it makes, and the workers have absolutely no leverage to do anything about it.

These women cannot own their labor. They cannot unionize and their only real choice is to stop working. It’s an impossible choice: have your labor stolen to produce luxury clothes for wealthy women 10,000 miles away or watch your children starve on the outside without your help. Some choice. Carcel claims to have “ethical labor standards” by ensuring shorter work days and constant inspections of their labor force. They also “never work overtime”. Good for you. Don’t worry about fixing the system that funnels women into poverty until they have no choice anymore.

It also doesn’t help the clothes look like a mix between clothes you spend a sick day in and jackets for 65 year old history professors. They also just make shopping bags for $140 USD. These clothes are practically dystopian: grey sweatpants that cost $344 USD. The average cost of an item on their store is $287 USD, far beyond the ability of their indentured workers to purchase.


The modern prison system has roots in 2 institutions: the English workhouse and the American slave patrol. The workhouse was a horrible invention of the mid 1800’s as a solution to the “idleness of the poor” as they put it. You’re too poor to live? Come to the workhouse with your family, we’ll split them up and even sell your children to other factories! Have fun not dying of cholera in our poorly maintained slum housing! Its sole purpose was to make it as unpleasant and possible to prevent the poor from asking for assistance.

The slave patrol is the historical precedent for modern law enforcement: a hierarchical, militarized law enforcement monopoly used to ensure the protection of capital and property from race and class rebellion. They funnel the poor into the judicial system, make captive, then easily used as inexpensive labor.

Like most systems built on exploitation, it needs to mutate and change to suit its time. Now it’s woke. With the advent of the internet, prison labor cannot be hidden anymore. Since they can’t hide, might as well lean all the way in and embrace it whole hog. Hell, let’s advertise we’re doing it, but that we’re doing it right.

The fundamental problem with neoliberal companies, even with the best intentions, is they see the symptoms of social ills as something that just needs good management. If they can just do the awful thing right, then the causes of the problem will be mitigated. And they’re nice! They’re so nice to these women! They take pictures of them and tell a half dozen stories!

One of their stated goals is to “break the spiral of poverty”, just not break the engine that creates the vortex sucking millions into it that gives them a market. That’s bad for their business model. Carcel also wants to teach “skills”, which is a buzzword that means absolutely nothing. If there’s no work outside of the prison, and these women get out, what good are those skills? If there’s no credit for a small business loan, how they start their own shops, and if they did, how would they compete with the obviously lower wages of their former cellmates?

Remember when Worry Free from Sorry to Bother You was a parody? I do, last century in 2018.


Carcel Clothing originally was crowdfunded in 2016 on Kickstarter, run by Veronica D’Souza. She’s responsible for Ruby Cup, another well-meaning but wholly ineffective market solution to women’s issues, this time in Kenya. She loves to travel!

Here’s a choice quote from Humanity in Action:

By selling the product to women in developing countries, instead of donating it to them, we help empower women by giving them the choice as a consumer… Business can be used to help solve societal issues, not just to minimize the harm.

And there you have it. Sorry to break it to you, D’Souza, but the capitalist business environment is what got us into this mess in the first place, and no amount of consumer choice is going to solve anything. If you vote with your wallet, a billionaire has a billion votes. 12 flavors of ethically sourced organic ketchup made by disabled at-risk teens does not eliminate the hunger of capital for never-ending growth; the thing destroying this planet and our souls. The massive transfers of wealth from local global south communities to western companies have a disturbing history, and no amount of glowing op-eds is going to erase that.

An actually ethical solution would be to have the women own their labor entirely and produce clothing for their communities. Then they should be able to transition that earned wealth into their own hands outside in a democratically run, union-led operation that produces goods that people actually need without the expectation of returning a profit for Veronica D’Souza. That would be way closer to something liberatory and restorative.

In 2018, D’Souza actually spoke on a panel titled Labour Markets at the Horasis Global Meeting, a cesspool of neoliberal shills and exploiters. Their entire mantra, as Jean Krill puts it, is “how to monetize the rot”. (My favorite part is the warnings on their Wikipedia page.)

A Horasis Global Meeting event description for "Labour Markets"
The panel description from Horasis’ own publication.
A Horasis Global Meeting event description for "Branding as a Social Good"
100% sure D’Souza attended this event.

Robots and lazy unemployed are the problem, folks. I don’t know, how can we get the unemployed to re-engage with society? I’m out of biodegradable menstrual cup patents, so maybe a transformative class consciousness that causes the working class to rise up and take control of their own economic destinies without European wine moms making them sew sweatpants? Maybe doing away with the vicious system that pushes people to make impossible choices, like run drugs or watch your kids starve? Dang it, if only I had a product that would assuage my conscience over my consumerism.

The appearance of doing something helpful, and having good press, seems to be what Carcel Clothing really wants to churn out. This is temporary harm reduction, nothing more, and not even particularly good harm reduction at that. The world needs to stop thinking it can invent or consume itself out of political problems, when horrible institutions like a carceral state do not have solutions a hideous, overpriced checkered jacket can solve.