💡 Productive Unit
Also known as: Work Unit, Productive Unit, Productive Workshop
Working group organized within the cooperative that develops a specific productive activity alongside other incarcerated people.
A productive unit is the basic organizational cell of Cooperativa Liberté: a group of incarcerated people who work collectively around a specific trade or activity — graphic design, textiles, carpentry, gastronomy, among others. Each unit operates under cooperative logic, which means shared decision-making, equitable distribution of earnings, and collective responsibility over the process.
Productive units are not workshops in the traditional penitentiary sense: they are real workspaces, with economic and social value, that connect their members to the formal market and to concrete labor rights. In that sense, each unit is also an experience of citizenship restoration within confinement.