I don't mean forced labor, I mean supposedly volunteer prisoner labor. My gut reaction is that it makes me uncomfortable. It seems like a situation ripe for abuse.
Isle prisons become key source of labor - Hawaii News - Staradvertiser.com: "Private and public groups hit hard by the recession are increasingly hiring less costly inmate workers ... The demand for prison work crews as cheap labor for nonprofit groups, schools, churches and state and city agencies has skyrocketed over the past two years in an economy that forced deep cuts, layoffs and a mounting backlog of repair and maintenance projects. Prison officials can't keep up with the requests pouring in for inmates to clean, do heavy lifting and even scour Leeward Coast beaches for medical waste in the runoff from Waimanalo Gulch Landfill last month. Since the economy fell apart in 2008, "there has been a vast increase in requests for the past two years," said Francis X. Sequeira, warden at Oahu Community Correctional Center, who oversees 12 prisoner "work lines." "We can only address a finite amount of requests," Sequeira said in an e-mail. Prison officials do not track the number of requests from all islands for prison labor, but there has been a clear increase, said Michael Hoffman, institutions division administrator for the state Department of Public Safety."
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
What Are We To Make of Using Prisoners For Labor?
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1 comments:
I don't have a problem with prisoner volunteer labor. The prisoner can be paid good behavior points and credits to buy something like cigarettes, maybe some cash sent home for child support. Their rate can be a little cheaper to encourage companies to hire them, but not so cheap that a law abiding citizen would lose their job. The rest of the money the prisoners earn would go to maintain the prison. There needs to be some oversight, so the warden doesn't try to get rich like in Shawshank Redemption.
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