Posted in the comments about this happening, others have had it happen too, so here's the closest to empirical testing I've gotten.

I am running the game with only three things enabled:
Harmony
Core
Prison Labor

I have disabled everything else and restarted the game. And I'm having the same issue as before. So I've ruled out some stuff.

where should I upload the images too?

Well here's some more text info on waht I've done..

Debug/Dev mode on Rich Explorer with those three mods enabled.
Made shelter, maxed skills of Pawn
Spawned new Pawn, captured (angered faction). Default is "Forced to Work," cool.
Built a Research Bench, marked their cell's Research Bench in Prison Labor Area, that fancy orange zone
Made sure their Research task was set to Priority 1..they used it for a bit. Cool.
Disabled the prisoners WORK task, setting them to Reduce Resistance. Their work tab is unchanged, they're just not working.
Set Pawn's Research Priority to 1..they go and work in the Prison Labor Area.

There is a grand total of one Simple Research Bench and no other benches or tables in the game or colony right now.

If more info is required or requested, I'll see what I can do.