Peruvian prisoners’ leather skills could be in demand
06/03/2019
A recent article published by the New York Times in the US and by Clarín in Argentina quoted Peru’s prison authority, INPE, as saying just over 5,000 women are currently in custody across the country and that more than h alf of them are working on projects involving leather, textiles and apparel.
A Danish clothing brand called Carcel (from the Spanish word for prison) is one of the companies employing incarcerated women in Peru. Set up in 2016, Carcel’s products include knitwear made from the wool of baby alpacas by prisoners in Peru. It provides the first names of the women involved in making each product.
Carcel’s first production operation was in the women’s prison near the city of Cusco, 1,000 kilometres south-west of Lima. Currently 15 women there work for Carcel, employed directly by a not-for-profit organisation the clothing brand set up in Peru to manage this work. It intends to scale up its production there and employ more women.
All Carcel employees are working for the brand because they want to. Their hours are less than those of a full-time job and no harsh treatment of the workers is permitted by the Danish company. The women are paid at living wage levels and are, therefore, able to provide for their families while serving their sentences.
Chief executive of Carcel, Veronica D’Souza, has said this addresses one of the main causes of women’s imprisonment in Peru: poverty.
A spokesperson for Carcel confirmed to World Leather that the company is only making products from baby alpaca in Peru at the moment, but said its in-house design team has experience of working with leather and that leather is “one of many materials” it is looking into at the moment.
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