skwerly’s Recent Comments

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  prison labor

  It is troubling to see the commentary on this that suggests that a hard day's work is fair punishment. The punishment is being in prison, separated from community and family - it's not a "cake walk" or a "burden on society". The burden is allowing those who break laws to go free, not the costs of keeping inmates penned up. This is a SEPARATE issue from that discussed in this article, in which prison populations become a ready last resort of cheap labor for agricultural producers when nativist and xenophobic feelings become the basis for policy and drive out the already existing (and already poorly paid and largely unprotected) immigrant labor force. Retroactively saying that harveting and processing food for as little as 60 cents per day is good for prisoners because they will learn the value of a hard day's work is ridiculous. If this kind of work - which exposes laborers to dangerous chemicals and machinery - is so virtuous and good for the soul, then it should be self-evident that we'd all want to do it and there would be nop problem. But it's not - industrialized agriculture of the sort discussed in this article is some of the worst work available in the US and Canada, and the idea that prisoners are a good option when shortsighted nativist factiosn drive out those who already do the work just doesn't fly. We need better and more just immigration policies in the US (AND in Canada), and we need to understand the fulle extent and cost of our food production system to get that. Rlying on cheap, unprotected prison labor is not the solution to these issues.On Colorado's inmates-as-farmworkers plan says plenty about our food culture posted 2 years, 7 months ago 12 Responses