Executive Order 11755

The development of the occupational and educational skills of prison inmates is essential to their rehabilitation and to their ability to make an effective return to free society. Meaningful employment serves to develop those skills. It is also true, however, that care must be exercised to avoid either the exploitation of convict labor or any unfair competition between convict labor and free labor in the production of goods and services.

Under section 4082 of title 18 of the United States Code, the Attorney General is empowered to authorize Federal prisoners to work at paid employment in the community during their terms of imprisonment under conditions that protect against both the exploitation of convict labor and unfair competition with free labor.

Several states and other jurisdictions have similar laws or regulations under which individuals confined for violations of the laws of those places may be authorized to work at paid employment in the community.

Executive Order No. 325A, which was originally issued by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, prohibits the employment, in the performance of Federal contracts, of any person who is serving a sentence of imprisonment at hard labor imposed by a court of a State, territory, or municipality.

I have now determined that Executive Order No. 325A should be replaced with a new Executive order which would permit the employment of non-Federal prison inmates in the performance of Federal contracts under terms and conditions that are comparable to those now applicable to inmates of Federal prisons.

, pursuant to the authority vested in me as President of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

, December 29, 1973.