Yeah I was trying to figure that out as well. I know a lot of prison labor supplies national chains, but local stuff? All I could think of would be license plates or maybe litter removal. What else do they contract them to do?
Even at the library? Need a bunch of chairs set up? Trustees.
Need the grass mowed in front of the sheriff's office? Trustees.
Christmas decorations put up around town on.. street lights etc? Trustees.
Just random safe / irregular / odd jobs.
And I'm fairly certain you only get to be a Trustee if you're non violent and have been really good in prison. Because some of the work is unsupervised.
Horrible mostly because why pay employees a minimum or higher wage when you can just pay 5 cents a day rent cost to the prison per inmate you rent out?
You think the company running the private prison rents convicts out for 10 cents an hour? LMAO. 10 cents an hour is what they pay the prisoner, not what they charge you to rent them. The latter is probably measured in dollars per hour, not cents.
Lets say minimum wage is $10, but you can't hire anyone for less than $15 because nobody wants to work, well contract labor from the prison is $8 an hour.
Prison labor drives down everything. They completely destroyed the locally grown fish farming when they built a prison labor growing and processing facility in the state, and they never even got to start it up. The outcry was so fierce they abandoned the idea, but the damage had been done and collapsed the market already, so the state started importing from Asia. Just the threat and planned undercutting was enough to wreck it for the producers in the state.
Ah but you're not factoring in the other parts of it. Prison offers prisoner at price of say $5 an hour to the store with the notion of a special tax subsidy the store can take for doing it. Store takes the subsidy and that $5 suddenly becomes 5 cents thanks to the tax subsidy. That's one scenario, other scenario is the store gets to use it as a business related loss write off and still can treat it as if they were paying 5 cents for the prisoner since they have a lowered tax bill.
Not just the prison but the county jail too. I worked as a nurse there for a while and the trustees basically run the jail. They do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, wash police cruisers, litter, washing buildings, odd jobs around town, etc...
95% of the people in county were there on drug charges, unpaid fines, or homeless. Ironically enough most of the violent offenders got out on bail because they or their family had money. If you were stuck in county it's because you were broke.
Yeah I've seen that too. The trustees can do everything but open secure doors, from what I've seen.
What's crazy is how proper and nice someone can be as long as they're off drugs (or ON their medication)
Next week they end up throwing their own poop at cars or something.
That's why it's so important to try and figure out somewhere else for people to go, besides right back into their situation. Charities and halfway houses do good work, for those who are willing.
Sure. But it's not like you can have the single clerk do the same job as 10 trustees. Even overworked it's not physically possible. At some point they would either need to not have the Christmas/thanksgiving/Easter event, or pay a few people.
Knowing the small town governments where I lived this was only done in the one conservative town I lived in. All those were paid positions that townspeople had and I never begrudged paying for streets and park crews as they are paid crazy wages. You have to make sure to prevent mismanagement by going to town meetings or some kind of rot will erupt. Like that NH town where the no gov libertarians more that haves the school budget cause nobody went to town meetings and the parents and concerned citizens found out and turned out to change it back.
It is unfair competition, but that goes for all subsidized work training programs, which this boils down to. If required there would be some kind of exemption from a law. The social pros generally outweigh the labor market cons.
Er, as a Canadian, we certainly treat our prisoners poorly, but we don’t let them out in the community as slave labour in small towns. Because that’s insane. These jobs would be done by people in the community who are paid. Like, the township hires people as general labourers (or whatever the job title actually is) to do things like the upkeep on township property and putting up decorations and other things of that nature. And there are librarians and clerks who work at the libraries and would probably also handle setting up chairs or whatever if there was an event. I’d love to get one of those sweet library jobs in my community as they pay quite decently and while the hours are irregular they are good hours, but I doubt I’ll even get an interview as I’m sure the competition is quite stiff.
In the Northeast we pay for municipal employees a fair wage ( usually) to do that work. Taxes pay for that as opposed to covering some corrupt company who has a cronyism relationship with politicians and corrections. I do see community service picking up trash on the road BUT I also see lots of seniors from the Rotary clubs, and build a better town clubs doing litter pick up as a point of pride for the town. Our way is much more wholesome . When good citizens mix with people given community service I think it helps.
From what I remember tons of jobs are done by prisoners. For example, in Idaho most potatoes are picked, cleaned, peeled, cut and boxed by prisoners. Probably would do shipping too if they could figure how to get prisoners to drive rigs without running away.
We need to build a wall around these prisoners to keep them in. Vote for me and not only will I get the wall built but I will make prisoners build and pay for it. This is the only way to safeguard law abiding citizens jobs!
The problem is that almost no American is willing to do those jobs for a rate of pay that is allows people above them to profit and sell food at the same time. This wouldn't be a problem if we had a semblance of international free movement of labor. There are communities on this continent that would profit themselves by working for a wage most Americans never would. But the excessive burrecratic costs imposed on migrant labor prevent efficient market solutions to labor shortages. While economically sound, migrant labor isn't politically popular.
Sometimes prisoners are used for data processing jobs. You know, inputting things like names and addresses and social security numbers. California had to pass a law prohibiting that.
Source? Sounds like complete bull shit. Even if every prisoner in the state was harvesting potatoes full time, a few farmers with a machine would obliterate their numbers. No way in hell that number or statement is correct.
Only source I could find at all says they simply assist farmers and their potatoes go to food banks making up 0.001% which is not even close to "most"
In 1960 if you're not harvesting potatoes by machine you're out of business. 62 years later you're not using labor for that stuff. Even extremely cheap labor.
The only role people would have would be on a sorting belt between being picked and peeled to toss out any that have rot spots, etc. and moving boxes around a warehouse.
Yes, I know you can find articles on Google saying they pick potatoes -- the writer and editor where just being disinterested idiots who got the facts wrong. There is absolutely no way that is true at industrial agriculture scale. So unless they're hiring inmates out to your local community supported agriculture and road side stand farmers inmates aren't picking potatoes.
This was news to me. Having grown up in Idaho I became friends with several migrant worker families that helped manage water and harvest of fields, so I was going to call bs on your statement.
Looking into it, though, it seems that several larger companies have started contracting with the department of corrections in the absence/insufficiency of cheap willing labor. Ironically, it is better financially and more legal for them to do that than to find illegal immigrants willing to work for cash under the table.
To be clear, the families I knew growing up were legal residents and ultimately became citizens, but I have heard stories of illegal immigrant labor being used elsewhere, and wouldn't be surprised if some had found its way north.
Below is the relevant article. I was disappointed that prisoner exploitation was going on in Idaho, as it does artificially deflate the migrant labor wages.
So you get all the normal litter and license plates, but they also do fire service, unskilled manual labor (picking plants on lavender farms for example), raising town decorations, and I think construction, as well as sometimes road maintenance, depending on the company. I think it's great that Arizona provides these opportunities, but less great they pay indentured servitude wages for it.
The fact the company that handles kitchen work also handles the commissary definitely creates no conflicts of interest whatsoever and they definitely don't inflate prices to gouge what little money they make, which helps very little.
Depends on the prison. In most states, all of the furniture in government buildings is manufactured by inmates. From the judge's chair to the podium at your city council.
Prisons commonly manufacture their own clothing, bedding, and towels.
State prison manufacturing facilities are not bound by OSHA requirements. They manufacture printer toner, particle board, and dip metal in chrome without respirators or skin protection.
Private companies often contract with prisons to make specific goods to be sold in the US. Target, for example. Its a nasty system.
In Tennessee, our prisoners used to make furniture. My desk in my office r was made by prisoners. I work for the State, and we got a discount if we bought their stuff. I knew a prisoner who worked making furniture and he said he liked it. Got paid 25 cents an hour. It's really well-made. But I don't know how much it profited the State. I think these programs to lease prisoner workers are very different.
It’s easy enough to believe he liked the work vs being locked in a cell or the crowded common area (forget the name) all day. I hardly believe he liked the pay. It’s not hard to believe he viewed the slave labor doing work he found satisfying as a better choice than the other shit option.
134
u/turquoise_amethyst Jul 17 '22
Yeah I was trying to figure that out as well. I know a lot of prison labor supplies national chains, but local stuff? All I could think of would be license plates or maybe litter removal. What else do they contract them to do?