Posted on 05/31/2011 10:52:45 PM PDT by RC one
Languid days of potato-peeling, sweeping floors, afternoon naps, and reruns of Dog the Bounty Hunter may be over for inmates serving two years or less in Ontario's provincial prisons. The provincial Tories have announced their plan to put inmates to work if they're elected this fall.
The notion that inmates ought to work is far from novel, beginning with England's notorious penal labour programs and the infamous chain gangs of the 1930s in the southern American states, briefly resurrected in the 1990s.
In the 1950s, Hollywood regaled us with prison movies where inmates made license plates and sewed mailbags.
Canada's version of inmate labour has historically focused on prison farms — but farming has not provided inmates with skills that translate into employment, resulting in the federal government's closure of the farms, including the controversial shutdown of Frontenac Institution farm in Ontario last year.
The hue and cry from protesters was not enough to convince the Harper government that Canada's mostly urban prison population would retire to the country post-incarceration. Some of Frontenac's inmates are now servicing military vehicles, an occupation that is more likely to turn into stable employment.
Work for prisoners is an issue that finds consensus, no matter one's political stripes.
/johnny
how does that turn a profit off the dirtbags? Put them to work. I’m not kidding around. We can’t afford to house them and we dang sure can’t afford to release them. They need to start paying for the food they eat, the beds they sleep in, and the guards that guard them.
What about the poor union workers they put out of jobs? /s
you mean the illegal mexicans that we supposedly need for our field work? what about them?
Prisoners and Welfare moochers. Send the illegals, and their anchor babies, home.
No, the illegals that CA has now approved for free tuition...and free medical stuff.
I can’t think of anything more threatening to freedom than adding a profit motive to incarceration. That’s what Stalin and Hitler did.
They should do make-work. Yes - it costs society more that way. But it’s worth it.
Saw the movie, then read the book. The book was much better.
Put them on stationary bikes that feed the energy produced into the power grid.
Instead of giving them 5 to 10 years, they can be sentenced to producing X amount of kilowatts of electricity.
“The provincial Tories have announced their plan to put inmates to work if they’re elected this fall.”
English not required for reporting job.
Lots of prisoners now want to be on the work crews that have GPS leg bands instead of leg irons and no shotguns for the same reasons.
Correction Officers Unions are already lobbying against changes in drug laws because that would lower the inmate population. Abuse of the Civil Forfeiture process has been well documented on, FR and elsewhere. It’s not hard to see where using inmates as money makers would take us.
Don’t get me wrong - I want dangerous people locked up. I’m a conservative because conservatives are the ones who realize power will always be abused. Liberals don’t; that’s why they’re dangerous.
It’s interesting that we call China’s unpaid use of prisoners for all sorts of jobs “slave labor” but ignore the similarities to our forcing of prisoners to work on all sorts of manufacturing and agricultural jobs.
Why is one ‘slave labor’ and the other ‘justified punishment?”
we have had chain gangs in the past. It was a good idea then and a good idea now. Prisons need to be filled with hard labor, not idle hands. Your acting as if the status quo “shall endure”. It shall not. did you see the link I included in the last post? Prisons are being forced to release prisoners early due to overcrowding and lack of money. releasing criminals back into society during these hard economic times can only lead to higher crime rates. So, what alternative do you suggest?
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