Posted on 07/11/2007 1:23:49 PM PDT by JSDude1
Pulling at band-aids wrapped around her blistered fingers, Linda Buckham remembered how elated she had felt seeing a peacock and hearing cattle.
"'All we're missing is a rooster crowing,"' she recalled telling a fellow prison inmate at the time. "And then a rooster started crowing."
Buckham, incarcerated for embezzlement, is one of 15 prisoners at Pueblo's minimum-security La Vista Correctional Facility who plant crops and pull weeds as part of a new prison farm-labor program.
Buckham, who spoke with reporters Tuesday on an onion farm outside Avondale, is so happy to leave prison each day that she doesn't mind rising at 3:30 a.m. and working in 100-degree heat.
The farmers are equally pleased
My grandfather and his fellow farmers employed German POWs in Kansas, and my uncle now lives on the former site of the POW camp outside of Concordia. The guard tower is still there.
Great, get inmates out of confinement helping do jobs that may bring about transformation in their lives.
Not much as satisfying as growing food and seeing it mature.
Rather inmates do this kind of work as opposed to illegals.
How about picking citrus is Florida?
If you propose using prisoners like this here in California, organized labor goes nuts and says it’s a scam to give employers scab workers. Plus the prisoner’s rights crowd starts screaming about “slaves”.
“Any man playin’ grab-ass or fighting in the building spends a night in the box.”
well the Bible does say “the borrower (even thief) is a ‘slave’ to the debtor” some of these people have to be theifs (for drugs or whatever), mayby this is they way to “give back”! I HOPE THIS IDEA CATCHES ON.
We actually used to have this in every state in the country, it’s called convict leasing. I think it is a positive sign that it could be returning
The prison I was at was in the country and had its own Dairy farm and piggery. Some inmates worked there.
Others got Highway detail (picking up trash on the roads, mowing and weed whacking the exit ramp areas).
Beach detail (picking up trash on the beaches at the shore)
Some were on work release where they had real jobs in factories or McDonalds. Letting them have some responsibility and giving them something to do is a motivator.
An excellent idea.
I like the idea. When I was a kid we lived on land that was surrounded by Southern Michigan Prison property that was farmed by inmates. The prison was much more self supporting then.
Great to hear it Jersey Repub. Biker Chick!
Plus it gives the inmates skills when they eventually leave prison (some may actually like the work and go into agriculture ;)).
Got to shut off their tv’s first... Then the ACLU will sue because they missed the latest Paris update.
I absolutely love this idea.
I think the inmates SHOULD be growing their own food and maybe helping on for-profit farms too. I do not think they should be watching TV and working out with weights. I think those that refuse to do farm or other decent hard work, should remain in solitary cells with a cot and a pot.
Doesn’t really matter at this point. Guv’ner Jenni is turning them loose and closing the prisons.
Southern Michigan Prison used to supply the bulk of their own food along with food to both the county and city jail.
Parchman in Mississippi used to sustain itself with its farms.
Perfectly legal, Per Section 1 of the 13th Amendment:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
In general, when people are caring for something or someone else, they are more likely to get rehabilitated. This is true whether the thing cared for is a couple of piglets or a tomato patch.
Lieberals can never figure out why giving the criminal class or the homeless class somebody else's money just doesn't seem to motivate them. They just think it is because they can't spend enough or do it often enough.
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