Chandra Bozelko has this op-ed in the WSJ, including the above statement. The opening line is, "I made $1.75 a day in prison and I never felt exploited."
"Exploited" is a favorite term of people stuck in the past who still view the world through Karl Marx's glasses. One might as well try to do advanced mathematics with Roman numerals or study cutting-edge astronomy with Galileo's telescope.
Although I am skeptical of the claimed reduction in recidivism rates with most programs, I have long believed that prison employment is a program we need more of, and Bozelko provides strong personal, albeit anecdotal, support:
"Exploited" is a favorite term of people stuck in the past who still view the world through Karl Marx's glasses. One might as well try to do advanced mathematics with Roman numerals or study cutting-edge astronomy with Galileo's telescope.
Although I am skeptical of the claimed reduction in recidivism rates with most programs, I have long believed that prison employment is a program we need more of, and Bozelko provides strong personal, albeit anecdotal, support:
The clamor over low inmate pay neglects one essential fact, one that is central to the current preoccupation with justice reform: Inmate work programs are the best known way to rehabilitate prisoners. Honest work elevates people regardless of what they are paid. Work humanizes inmates; employed inmates seem less like caged animals. While they paid me less than two dollars a day, my supervisors valued me as a person and an employee, at a time when no one else did, including myself.
To the extent that the drive for minimum wage for inmates is based on genuine concern for the inmates, it is a misguided, "road to hell is paved with good intentions" position:
But those calling for a minimum wage for inmates who work are ignoring the likely consequences. A minimum wage for inmates would stop jobs for inmates. If governments and private companies were forced to pay inmates more, prison jobs would be outsourced to the free world because they can observe and supervise minimum-wage employees there but they can't see a "justice-involved" worker behind bars. It is the low wages that induce companies to establish so called "factories behind fences" and create prison jobs where they didn't already exist.Of course, some people who want to forbid low-wage inmate employment actually do want to eliminate those jobs. Historically, opposition to inmate labor has come in part from those who do not want to see prisoners "taking the jobs" of law-abiding people. That position is based on a very valid concern. In today's global economy, though, there is an obvious way around the problem. There are substantial segments of the economy where virtually all of the goods in the segment are imported. If these segments can be defined and identified, prison-made goods should be freely permitted to compete in them, knowing that no American jobs will be lost as a result.
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