Colorado's Slave Labor
In an attempt to reduce reliance on immigrant workers, Colorado has found a cheaper substitute: prison inmates. The Colorado Department of Corrections is paying farmers $9.60 an hour for female inmates to work on their farms. Immigrant laborers had charged $3.00 less per hour. The inmates are paid $.60 per hour. The name for this, in my view, is slave labor. As I wrote here, the inmates shouldn't stand for this and neither should we.
Comments
Submitted by JSN (not verified) on Fri, 2007-06-01 14:33.
This identical practice is also used by some county jails. In some states the prison inmates are paid the standard wage by the private employer but the prison takes out a long list of fees so the prisoner if lucky may get to keep about 20% of what they are paid.
I doubt that this is forced labor. I suspect the women are happy to do anything that will get them outside of their prison.
Submitted by Kevin Jones (not verified) on Fri, 2007-06-01 12:33.
Prisoners, having been deprived of their liberty by due process of law, are already slaves whether they work or not. There is such a thing as justifiable slavery. It seems more obviously unjust that free labor(illegal or not) has to compete with convicts than that convicts face forced labor as part of their sentences.
Submitted by Tim Allport (not verified) on Thu, 2007-05-31 23:59.
Right on Counselor. My views have done a 180 on the issue. Cheap labor is a primary goal. But many inmates need that .60 an hour which is high in prison. We can do more from the outside.
We also need to steadily decrease the profit motive for illegal drugs and for what now must also be described as a prison industrial complex. The continued expansion of privatized prisons is another notable example of failed public policy and an example of our society ignoring an issue that could ultimately bankrupt a lot more than our finances.
