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| Source:The Young Turks- I believe a California prison, but don't quote me on that. |
"ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is exploiting private prison labor for profit and lobbying for harsh crime and pro drug-war legislation to create more cheap workers for corporate America. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss."
From The Young Turks
The fact is their living conditions wouldn't be tolerated perhaps anywhere else in the developed free world. And we can do much better than this to the point that would help the inmates, the prisons, society, and our governments budgets, by giving our prison inmates real jobs and compensate them based on what they produce and have them do jobs that they are educated, trained, and qualified to do. Jobs that just keep the prison running and then prisons wouldn't have to bring in private companies to do the work.
Jobs like the mess hall like maybe turning mess halls into real cafeteria's (instead of mess halls, where they eat a lot of mess, pun intended) with real food and making inmates pay for their food.
Laundry. make the inmates do the laundry and then charge the inmates for their laundry and clothing.
Jobs in construction, have the inmates to the work when it comes to renovation of prisons or prison expansion. Jobs like real wood shops and factories that would build the furniture for the prisons, but also the furniture in other government offices and have these agency's pay for the work and then compensate the inmates for their work.
Jobs like auto mechanics like with the prison buses and other automobiles as well as bring in private automobiles for repairs as well as police cars.
Barbershops, you could also have inmates working in jobs on the street, well-supervised, of course like street repair and other things, but pay them for what their work is worth. And not the 20 cents an hour that they get, but what a free person would be making for that work.
If we just had a corrections system that brought back real prison industries that didn't compete with private industries unfairly, our prisons could pay for themselves and wouldn't have to compete with education and infrastructure and other priorities for taxpayer funds, because these industries would make money and the inmates would make money do the jobs and could then pay for their room and board.
Not all inmates are qualified for well-trained jobs and some of them need to be in tight supervision until they are ready for general population. But our general population inmates should be working and working full time to pay for their room and board. And to keep the prisons running where they live and to make our corrections system less of a burden on our government budgets.
Also, not all inmates are ready to work once they get there and it might not just be they can't function in general population. It's hard to find a group of people in society that has as low as an education level then prison inmates. Thats a main reason why they are in prison to begin with because they don't have the skills to make it legally on the outside. So these people first need to be educated in prison before they are ready to work but we can do this as well: high school and college that they could later pay for.
America unfortunately already had a slave era and we certainly don't need to try to repeat that or come anywhere close. But our inmates need to work, for their good, for the good of the prisons and for the good of society once they get out of prison. But we need to do it in a way that benefits everyone involved and as humanly as possible.
