Budget Problems? Just Use Prison Labor
February 26th, 2011The New York Times outdoes itself with this one. “Financial experts agree.” Oh sure.
See, Land Of The Free: Never In The Civilized World Have So Many Been Locked Up For So Little, for a bit of context.
Via: New York Times:
Before he went to jail, Danny Ivey had barely seen a backyard garden.
But here he was, two years left on his sentence for grand theft, bent over in a field, snapping wide, green collard leaves from their stems. For the rest of the week, Mr. Ivey and his fellow inmates would be eating the greens he picked, and the State of Florida would be saving most of the $2.29 a day it allots for their meals.
Prison labor — making license plates, picking up litter — is nothing new, and nearly all states have such programs. But these days, officials are expanding the practice to combat cuts in federal financing and dwindling tax revenue, using prisoners to paint vehicles, clean courthouses, sweep campsites and perform many other services done before the recession by private contractors or government employees.
In New Jersey, inmates on roadkill patrol clean deer carcasses from highways. Georgia inmates tend municipal graveyards. In Ohio, they paint their own cells. In California, prison officials hope to expand existing programs, including one in which wet-suit-clad inmates repair leaky public water tanks. There are no figures on how many prisoners have been enrolled in new or expanded programs nationwide, but experts in criminal justice have taken note of the increase.
“There’s special urgency in prisons these days,” said Martin F. Horn, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction. “As state budgets get constricted, the public is looking for ways to offset the cost of imprisonment.”
Although inmate labor is helping budgets in many corners of state government, the savings are the largest in corrections departments themselves, which have cut billions of dollars in recent years and are under constant pressure to reduce the roughly $29,000 a year that it costs to incarcerate the average inmate in the United States.
Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, introduced a bill last month to require all low-security prisoners to work 50 hours a week. Creating a national prison labor force has been a goal since he went to Congress in 1995, but it makes even more sense in this economy, he said.
“Think about how much it costs to incarcerate someone,” Mr. Ensign said. “Do we want them just sitting in prison, lifting weights, becoming violent and thinking about the next crime? Or do we want them having a little purpose in life and learning a skill?”
Financial experts agree.
Research Credit: ED
I see the obvious problem here.
The state gets “free” labor by way of inmates. If they can become self sufficient (growing their own food, repairs on the facilities, etc), the jails end up being zero cost. If they are tending to what would otherwise be paid jobs, the state doesn’t pay contractors, and if done right the can actually turn a profit.
It sounds great for them, doesn’t it? No tax money spent on inmates, and a profit is made.
The financial downside of this is, for every person in jail, you have a person who isn’t working. They aren’t paying sales tax, income tax, etc. So the economy takes a hit by every “low risk” inmate that they put in jail to cover government jobs.
This could easily and quickly make a “prison economy”.
Plenty of jails are already owned and managed by private companies (CCA/Wackenhut). Each inmate is already viewed as a commodity. In a past life, I worked in a jail. The warden had a whiteboard showing the number of inmates, and the value (amount paid by the state).
If the prison economy were to increase in favor of the state, we would see more lower crime convictions being turned into jail time. Don’t forget, the law enforcement works for the state. The judges work for the state. Virtually no part of the judicial system works “for the people”. Many departments have removed the “to protect and serve” from their cars, publicized banners, etc. They aren’t to protect. They are generally working to increase and protect the revenue of the state.
It wouldn’t be unimaginable that if this continues, prisons will become forced labor camps, where anyone committing any crime will end up serving time in jail. Many people in the industry (LEOs, defense and prosecuting attorneys) know that anyone can be found guilt of a crime if observed for long enough. That observation can frequently be up to 15 minutes. Did you J-walk? Did you stop just over the curb. Did you walk even an inch on someone’s lawn? They’re little things, but they can put you in jail while awaiting trial, and if you can’t make bail that can be months to years.
“What the hell is this guy saying”, I’m sure some are asking. Catching a murderer isn’t all about stopping someone from killing. A murderer is reducing the taxpayer base. He/she is reducing income by sales taxes, as people may be afraid to leave their homes. Removing such an individual from the community sets things right, so the capitalist state is put back into its normal mode of operation.
That’s not to say there are many LEOs who honestly want to protect and serve, but when their first few years on the road are spent writing BS tickets for traffic violations (again, revenue for the state), they quickly learn that they are primarily a revenue generator for the state.
[soapbox mode off]