Prison labour taking private sector jobs

Post Reply New Topic

This is odd:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/16/am ... ent-lines/

Not only is Fox Noise reporting on it, but is taking a decidedly liberal perspective.

Here is Unicor's website: http://www.unicor.gov/

Convict labour is doing a whole host of things. It would appear that US convicts are doing not only work that was previously done in the US private sector, but US convicts are also taking jobs that were previously exported to India and Bangladesh: including call center operations.

It is quite amazing what prisoners are producing these days: everything from eyeware to solar panels.

According to Unicor's website: http://www.unicor.gov/about/faqs/top_ten/index.cfm

Okay, here is why Fox takes such a liberal stand against Unicor

http://www.bop.gov/inmate_programs/unicor.jsp

If they had the opportunity to learn skills that would help them on release to acquire good paying jobs it could be a good thing.My neighbor is in the big house right now and he does back-hoe work there.He says it beats sitting in his cell.If people would take a chance and hire ex-cons after release we probably wouldn't see the rate of repeat offenses,it's sad that you can do one stupid thing and be judged the rest of your life.

The shelves in my office are made by prison inmates. They work just fine.

In my opinion it is a far better use of prison time than to run around and stab each other with knives made from razors and toothbrushes...

Put them to work, so that their lives are not totally wasted.

I have absolutely no issue with prison labour, per se.

However, I take a great deal of exception to exploitative prison labour. A basic proposition should be that prisoners earn a living wage for the work that they do. From that living wage, they can then pay a reasonable cost for their food, clothing and shelter. Prison labour can be incentivized by allowing prisoners to use money accumulated from their employment towards enhanced goods and services.

But when prison labour is used to produce inexpensive goods and services that unfairly compete with goods and services created in the marketplace, that's when I begin to view it as distortive.

Prison labor wouldn't be so totally abhorrent if the majority of inmates weren't locked up on BS politically legislated charges and the savings were actually passed onto the taxpayers who pay an exuberant price to lock them up instead of private interests. I have no reference for this but I'm almost sure that it's true, that we spend more per-inmate than we do per-student.

It plays into the whole prison-industrial complex, when it's profitable to certain private interests what do you think they're going to lobby for?

The prisons most of the times in small towns or rural areas, there whole way of life depends on them a lot of the time. What do you think those people are going to vote for?

Merriam-Webster has it defined differently

Profits off prison labour encourage more imprisonment. The corporate people make good money off prison labour, lobby the government to increase prison time and find ways to get more people in prison, and so more people end up being imprisoned. This happened by the way in the South during the Jim Crow era. It's happening again. A sort of a Gulag.

The only problem I see with this is the possibility of bad incentives on government, which other people have pointed out. It may be worth opposing on those grounds.

Beyond that, there is little problem that I can see. We don't want prisons to be hellish, but at the same time, I doubt that this will make prison more hellish, so long as it isn't turned into a 16 hour a day sweatshop, particularly given that one of the biggest problems with prisons is other prisoners. By taking up their time, I wouldn't be surprised if we're also reducing this possible harm. I could be wrong though, and research would be interesting on this issue.

There was a Judge in Pennsylvania I believe who basically convicted every youth that came in front of him of some BBS charge (Trial by judge) and sent him to this 'reform' facility....which was ran by one of his friends who paid him for it. Yeah totally unbiased.

Remember in stalinist USSR there were arrest quotas so people could be sent to the GULAG to make stuff or do public works projects.....a bit like modern day (and historical) USA, only with more racism involved

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 34248.html

Now that cheap illegal migrant labourers are becoming scarce, farms are turning to convict labour at harvest time.

It was either that, or raise wages to the point where free legal residents would be willing to accept the work.