Posted on 04/21/2014 8:34:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Melvin Ray
Inmates at an Alabama prison plan to stage a work stoppage this weekend and hope to spur an escalating strike wave, a leader of the effort told Salon in a Thursday phone call from his jail cell.
“We decided that the only weapon or strategy … that we have is our labor, because that’s the only reason that we’re here,” said Melvin Ray, an inmate at the St. Clair correctional facility and founder of the prison-based group Free Alabama Movement. “They’re incarcerating people for the free labor.” Spokespeople for Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and his Department of Corrections did not respond to midday inquiries Thursday. Jobs done by inmates include kitchen and laundry work, chemical and license plate production, and furniture-making. In 2011, Alabama’s Department of Agriculture reportedly discussed using inmates to replace immigrants for agricultural work; in 2012, the state Senate passed a bill to let private businesses employ prison labor.
Inmates at St. Clair and two other prisons, Holman and Elmore, previously refused to work for several days in January. A Department of Corrections spokesperson told the Associated Press at the time that those protests were peaceful, and told AL.com that some of the inmates’ demands were outside the authority of the department to address. The state told the AP that a handful of inmates refused work, and others were prevented from working by safety or weather issues. In contrast, Ray told Salon the January effort drew the participation of all of St. Clair’s roughly 1,300 inmates and nearly all of Holman’s roughly 1,100. He predicted this weekend’s work stoppage would spread further and grow larger than that one, but also accused prison officials of hampering F.A.M.’s organizing by wielding threats and sending him and other leaders to solitary confinement. “It’s a hellhole,”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
I once had a client that manufactured all the components for office furniture and seating systems, etc. to sell as kits to prison systems that used inmate labor to assemble them. They were then sold to state offices by various states across the country.
“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate!”
Said by the “Captain” played by Strother Martin.
Movie Cool Hand Like.
“Like” = “Luke”! (I’m tired and the keys are close together.)
I guess that depends on what you believe what is meant by justice. For me, justice is a systematic tool for society to enact a level of punishment that is approximately equal to,the crime committed. I do not define justice as exacting as much punishment as possible from those duly convicted. I do not believe, as you seem to, that prisoners should be screaming in their cots at night over the horrors inflicted upon them during the day.
If that’s what the majority of Freepers believe, you’re right I probably don’t belong here. But it would seem to me that anybody who believes that prisoners should be subjected to Dante’s seven levels of hell probably aren’t fit for society in general.
It is amazing to me how cold hearted some on the right come across...actually it is many on the left that over react to that harshness which creates many liberals. Penitentiary comes from the word sentence, or repentance...which Jesus would like even from murderers. There are some pretty famous people who were killers that ended up great...Moses was one. Paul in the new testament another.
WHAT jobs are being done for private companies???
FWIW.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/privatization-of-the-us-prison-system/5377824
Exactly what he said.
Are the inmates forced to work, or do they volunteer for jobs?
I don't know about other states, but I am pretty sure that is not true in California. For instance, they make license plates at Old Folsom and furniture at San Quentin, but I think it is only for state agencies.
it is true that they are kept there for slave labor, but that’s not the reason they are there in the first place.
I tend to agree with that. Prisoners are not there to make profits for companies but to pay their debt to the public. Making them into free labor for business invites large scale corruption into the legal system that has enough already. They can be worked plenty hard without going down that road.
It's similar to how Academi (once Xe and before that Blackwater) and Halliburton effectively can handle military tasking.
For me, it depends on both the crime and the criminal. Someone in prison for fighting the IRS certainly don't merit harsh punishment which begs the question of why they were imprisoned in the first place. But for pedophiles, the skies the limit in my book. Likewise, criminal invaders (or euphemistically, "illegal aliens") should be subjected to harsh, painful punishment just shy of cruel and unusual. IMHO, of course.
If the negro wants to consume drugs/poison, let him. Prohibition is just an end run around anti slavery laws.
Would you rather see them growing weed, sitting on their ass giggling, or out in the streets shooting up the town Al Capone style, while the poison junkies rob grannies to get a fix?
Unfortunately we have the latter at present. Face it prohibition does NOT do what you have been told it would do. It never has.
Isn’t it possible that the money the companies pay to the prisons go towards the prisoners’ meals and housing, instead of making the money come from tax payers?
We currently have that system in place. Are you complaining, citizen?
In a perfect world it’d be great, in the real world you are opening the door to deep and widespread corruption. There will be a huge incentive to arrest, convict and serve very long prison sentences that are hugely out of proportion to the crimes committed, assuming one is even committed.
Given how out of control our legal system and police are already, I’m not sure I’d want to pour gas on the fire.
I think there are more than enough legitimate prisoners to keep it going without having to railroad people.
Like Richard Pryor said, “Thank God we got penitentiaries.”
Why wasn’t this punk executed?
“They’re incarcerating people for the free labor.”
The person making that statement is a lying, murdering sack of ****.
Melvin Ray is serving a term of life without parole, and he is serving that because he is a violent murdering stain on the community. He isn’t incarcerated because he somehow miraculously brings in more money than it costs the state to feed, house, police and corral his sorry murdering a**, he’s in prison for life BECAUSE HE MURDERED SOMEBODY.
Someone needs to smash those smuggled cell-phones to bits, shove them back up the inmate orifices used to smuggle them in, and put this murdering piece of filth in front of an executioner where he belongs.
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