Temporary Downturns and New Directions, 1946-1959

The end of World War II ushered in a period of fluctuation in FPI's fortunes. By the mid-1950's, however, stability was restored as FPI developed new products and services.

As soon as the Axis powers surrendered in 1945, the military canceled millions of dollars worth of contracts with FPI. FPI, in turn, was forced to cancel orders with its suppliers. Sales plummeted from over $17.5 million in 1945 to less than $10.7 million the following year. Even with the decline, however, sales remained well above pre-war levels.

Reconversion from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy caused dislocations throughout the United States, so the decline in sales and production for FPI was not unexpected. FPI was able to mitigate the effects of reconversion by turning to the backlog of orders from civilian agencies that had built up during the war, when military orders took precedence. It was able to promote constructive inmate activity in other ways by developing new training programs - especially in such emerging fields as radio communications, air conditioning, and refrigeration.

United States intervention in the Korean War in June 1950 generated a flood of new military orders for FPI. In 1952, sales peaked at over $29 million, and the number of inmates employed by the corporation reached an unprecedented 3,800. Sales fell by more than one third after the armistice was signed in 1953.

Fewer defense-related orders after the Korean War and the need to re-tool factories in order to produce new products led to some temporary shutdowns of FPI factories and an increasing problem with inmate idleness. By 1954, in fact, FPI had only enough work for 18 percent of the Bureau's inmates. The corporation's biggest losses were in textiles. FPI struggled to cope with these difficult circumstances by shifting as many industrial jobs as possible to the penitentiaries, to ensure that as many of the potentially more disruptive inmates requiring higher security were kept occupied.

Industrial programs in State prisons also faced a declining number of orders in the 1950's, and State industries' problems were often more severe than the FPI's. As a result of inmate idleness, State prison systems experienced a rash of disturbances in the early and mid 1950's. Even the Bureau was not immune; some minor disturbances that occurred at two or three facilities during the 1950's coincided with the reduction of prison industries operations at those institutions.

FPI's Board of Directors commented on the connection between idleness and the violence in State prisons. In its Annual Report for 1954 it observed:

"The prison riots and disturbances which have occurred so extensively in State prisons throughout the country in the past 2 years have demonstrated most effectively and at tragic cost the absolute necessity for a well-planned and comprehensive work and production program . . . (L)arge groups of idle prisoners create a constant hazardous situation. The deteriorating effect of long periods of idleness in prison is in turn one of the major causes of the unrest and tensions underlying these costly and destructive outbreaks."

The period of decline for FPI, however, was short lived. With tightening Federal budgets in the 1950's, FPI realized that there would be a new market in renovating existing equipment, so that Federal agencies would not always have to purchase expensive new merchandise. FPI opened shops at BOP facilities at Petersburg, Virginia; Terminal Island, California; Terre Haute, Indiana, and elsewhere, that specialized in repairing, refurbishing, and reconditioning furniture, office equipment, tires, and other types of Government property. Other new industrial programs included a tobacco processing factory at FCI Ashland, Kentucky, and a new woolen factory at USP Terre Haute. In addition, FPI introduced new vocational training programs, such as the manufacture of artificial limbs and dentures, hospital attendant work, and television repair.

MCFP Springfield inmates manufacture prosthetic limbs, circa 1950.