Prison labor

Talk Left has an article reporting that the U.S. military buys whole bunches of stuff at a cost of millions of dollars from the FPI (Federal Prison Industry) - but I didn't see Bush at a photo-op thanking those guys for their war support, did you?

Anyway, it brings up an interesting dilemma - should prisoners be working for a for-profit industry?

Here's one guy's take on it:

When an institution that is supposed to be driven by justice becomes a profit center, it will become driven by profit. It isn't a profit center for us taxpayers, but it is a profit center for those who know how to gain access to this slave labor. Since prisons are full of people society would rather not think about, there is little protest when they are mistreated or used.

What you will find as a result is an increasing prison population (we are already compete with Russia for the largest # of people in prison per capita) for increasingly petty crimes (such as smoking pot).

Feel free to defend the bastards behind these programs, but you get shafted by them on both ends:

1.) You pay for the prisoners anyway, what they work for is peanuts, and most of it gets eaten up by the parties involved making a profit, and the costs of maintaining an enourmous prison industry.

2.) You live in a society with more and more laws, that get to a point where it is nearly impossible to NOT commit an illegal act on a daily basis.

3.) They DO take jobs away from others. It undermines minimum wage laws and other protections. You can't compete with them on price, because legally you and I can't make less than minimum wage, they can.

Prison corruption is serious because once money enters the equation, it will want to dirty the legal system and political system as well.

When a FREE society takes away a man's freedom, it takes on the burden of supporting that man, and the responsibility of defending that man. It's not cheap, and it should be used sparingly. It should only be done in extreme cases where society at large feels that man is a threat to them, and needs to be kept seperate.

Turning people into slaves of the state will only inspire the state (and the enterprises that profit from it) to find ways to get more of the same.

Cliff - Sure working is good for prisoners (its good for anyone) but it MUST be kept seperate from the free market system, or it will become entrenched. Prison reform is an ongoing battle because we keep repeating past mistakes like this.

Posted by: Davin on October 28, 2003 08:04 AM

I also read that there's a report saying 20% of the prison population is seriously mentally ill, but I don't know where they fit into the labor question.