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The Pros And Cons Of Inmate Labor In Prison

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Prison labor is not a new phenomenon of the correctional system. The idea of inmate labor has been instilled in penitentiaries for a great while. In recent years, the idea of prison labor has regained popularity among numerous correctional institutions, both prisons and jails. I, personally, believe inmates should work while incarcerated. After all, citizens in the free world must work to survive. Inmates are no different in this aspect. Inmate labor was designed with the purpose of “offsetting the cost of incarceration” (Derrick, Scott, & Hutson, 2004, p. 74). The operational cost of prisons, and jails for that matter, is exponential. Tax-payers have the burden of monetarily contributing to the overwhelming cost of housing criminals. …show more content…

However, we, as tax-payers, are paying for our living expenses as well as those of inmates. Therefore, I believe inmates should work for free. The allotted money for working inmates should be given back to the state and tax-payers. There are a multitude of work programs for inmates. The Fair Labor Standards Act does not pertain to correctional institutions (Derrick, Scott, & Hutson, 2004). Meaning, the correctional system is exempted from abiding by the laws under this act. Therefore, inmates can be paid any wage with no benefits. There have been a multitude of heated debates on the topic of low wages for inmates. However, a great deal of working citizens is paid meager wages with no benefits. Besides income, work programs can be extremely beneficial to inmates. The act of working assists inmates with learning a variety of skills, accountability, and other knowledge to prepare inmates to enter the workforce upon release. While learning the necessary skills to gain employment outside of prison, inmates can also assist with feeding the prison population through agriculture. Many correctional institutions incorporate agriculture into their inmate work programs. Not only does this program assist with feeding inmates, it saves tax-payers money. Some inmate agriculture programs also assist with feeding the

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Free Labor From Behind Bars Picture yourself laying on a thin foam mattress at the end of a long demanding day. You lay tired and restless all at once behind a set of cold steel bars. You’re referred to as inmate on a daily basis, slowly losing sight of your identity, who you are, and who you want to be all because for you time stands still behind the concrete walls and heavily fenced perimeter you call home. Though there is a sense of normality, you go to work every day just like the people who are not referred to as inmates and who live on the other side of the fence. You do not get paid much but the job keeps you busy and sane.

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It’s in many ways beneficial to society that inmates are used for cheap labor in exchange of shortened sentences or a work assignment that pays a small amount to their commissary. Inmates cost americans millions in tax dollars per year. Without knowing it, Americans spend their taxes on the increasing amount of “rehabilitated” inmates in the u.s. and by the average increase in those incarcerated the prison system essentially gains income based on the amount of inmates. This costs the real rehabilitation and reality of life after prison in exchange of mass incarceration. It’s certainly costly to house and feed nearly 2.3 million people in u.s. Prisons.

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The amount of questions that we the people would have will flood our congress. Let us start with, are these prisoners in for a short amount of time or are they in for life? The crime that was committed should be taken into consideration. Why do we keep rewarding the ones that choose to keep committing crimes as opposed to the ones that never go to prison? For example, as it stands prison inmates have free health benefits, dental, three square meals, cable, a warm place to sleep in the cold and a cool place in the summer.

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The authors Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans, writers, and filmmakers, published "The Prison Industrial Complex." This text discusses how the government and private corporations increase mass incarceration for profit. The text states, "For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing.

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First, there are not enough staff to monitor the inmates in private prisons. The reason is because labor costs is controlled by reducing number of staff, wages, and fringe benefits. The reduce in staff has caused inmates to lose their lives. Secondly, many workers within these facilities are inexperienced with key corrections

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This is because the work is mainly for the profit of privately run prisons, the amount of which has increased by 2000 percent in the past decade. 12 13 These prisons are allowed to lease out inmates and their employers rarely care about their health or safety, using them for hard manual labor. 14 15 Although this issue is not apparent for the entirety of America it has been widely overlooked. The systems in place during the release of an inmate in Australia and America

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Inmates are constantly violated by cellmates and prison guards, both physically and sexually. Violence is often associated with prison gangs and interpersonal conflict. Prison guards are bribable and all kinds of contrabands including weapon, drug, liquor, tobacco and cell phone can be found in inmates’ hands. Crime within the fence is rampant, only counting those with violent act, 5.8 million reports were made in 2014. If the prison is really what it claims to be, shouldn’t prisoners be serving their time with regret and learning to be obedient?

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Journal Response Angela Davis wrote “Are Prisons Obsolete?” as a tool for readers to take in her knowledge of what is actually going on in our government. In chapter five of “Are Prisons Obsolete?” it starts the reader out with an excerpt from Linda Evans and Eve Goldberg, giving them a main idea of what she thinks the government is doing with our prisoners. Then, on her first line of the chapter she begins with “For private business prison labor is like a pot of gold No strikes.

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developed—the first institution in which men were both “confined and set to labor in order to learn the habits of industry” (LeBaron, 2012, p.331). Although prisons had been designed to enforce and promote punishment, retribution and deterrence, they have also fallen into the conceptual belief that they were in many instances, nothing more than a sweat shop for the socially-undesired. At this point in history, there was very little reform and an immense lack of regulation for prisons or for the proper way they should be ran. Finances. In modern-day calculations, prison labor has been rather beneficial to the U.S. government, bringing in an average of 1.6 billion dollars in 1997.

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The prisoner's barrier to accessing proper healthcare is one that is not easy to break down, especially without any help. Social workers can advocate for proper healthcare access as well as implement harm reduction programs like education on safe sexual and substance abuse treatment to help reduce transmission and make the prisoners feel heard. Sexually related and HIV and AIDS education can also help reduce stigma and discrimination. This will ensure no one is treated poorly based on their status and also encourage people to come forward when facing HIV related issues, rather than hiding and pretending it doesn’t affect them, which only makes transmission worse. Lastly, social work can also make a huge difference in an inmate's reentry into society and their community by providing support.

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According to Bentham privately owned prisons is the right thing to do. This is true if you are a firm believer of Utilitarianism. Knowing that they believe that the best moral action is one that maximizes utility, using prisoners as workers makes sense. Its one less thing the government has to manage. As more people are sent to prisons the government cost increases thus creating huge political issues.

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Thesis: It is very important for the sake of Americans tax dollars that we change the way that prisons are run and increase the productivity of inmates so when they are released from jail they are ready to be a productive member in society and have the confidence to achieve new goals. Introduction: Day after day, millions of inmates sit in jail doing nothing productive with their lives. We are paying to house inmates that may not even have a good reason to be there. For example, drug offenders are being kept with murderers and other violent offenders.

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People may say that prisoners must pay an unreasonable amount for cost to go get supplies in prisons or how that maybe prisoners can’t help support their families or pay doctor fees. In contradiction to this, those prisoners are already being cared for and they get all the necessities to live such as a good shelter, food and clean water. Duwane Engler, a former prison inmate who worked at a goat cheese farm within the prison says “When you're in prison, you have to work anyways. If you're in a maximum facility, you're going to do work... These guys actually get out, they have a purpose, and they make more than 60 cents a day.".

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Admittedly, some have argued in the article “Do prisoners have too much luxury/ too many privileges?”, “...prison can be a harsh and difficult time with some people spending many years there, so because of this they should at least have somewhere ‘comfortable’ to serve their time and receive as much

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The government treats prisoners as if they are nothing in this world. The U.S prison system needs to be reformed by building new and better prisons and making it more humane and fair. Looking back to the prison history. Incarceration has not always been a common form of punishment. Back then people wanted to reform and change the way

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