Inmates Doing Work Illegals Won't Because They Are Afraid Of Colorado's New Law

Inmates Doing Work Illegals Won't Because They Are Afraid Of Colorado's New Law

www.denverpost.com

Pulling at band-aids wrapped around her blistered fingers, Linda Buckham remembered how elated she had felt seeing a peacock and hearing cattle.
.
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.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.organicconsumers.org
NY Times.com

[edit on 7/16/2007 by shots]

From the sound of the article the prisoners and farmers are both happy and as expected the trial workouts appear to favorable to all.

Now if other states will just follow Colorado's lead.

www.denverpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This story's been here for a while:

www.abovepolitics.com...

This should have started many years ago. Instead of our tax dollars paying the bill for the crimes they committed, they should have to work their behinds off to pay for what they've done.

8 hour work day
40 hours a week

They can be paid under minimum wage, since they don't have families to feed, or rent to pay, and their take "home" pay should be about 5% of what they make. Put the money into the prison system, so we don't have to.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
This story's been here for a while:

www.abovepolitics.com...

Ah it would appear ATS search is having hiccups again. At least this post is within ATS guidelines when it comes to word count. Surpirsed Um Gazz has not thrown it in the trash as he has done with some of mine???

Posting news guidelines by Um Gazz

[edit on 7/16/2007 by shots]

Originally posted by Mekanic
They can be paid under minimum wage, since they don't have families to feed, or rent to pay, and their take "home" pay should be about 5% of what they make. Put the money into the prison system, so we don't have to.

lol well the military works longer than 40hr weeks for less than minimum wage...ok granted thats when you calculate that technically the military is on duty 24/7 but still, why should prisoners get more money? $1/hr is fine with me cuz then even if teh states charging $3/hr for their work they're still coming ouit ahead

I think that is the best idea ever thought about.

Lets do the same on all states and see how much money can be save by the farmers.

Very interesting read indeed. Most of the inmates I have visited with will tell you the exact same thing...they don't mind the work (although they constantly complain about the pay, which is around 40 cents a day here in KS). The reason most of them don't mind doing the labor is that it breaks up otherwise repetitious prison life, and saves them from engaging in or being forced into...um, how do I say this..."homosexual sex". Please realize I say this with all due respect, but it is a fact about prison life, and I couldn't tell you the number of times that willing inmates have told me that the reason they want to work it to get away from these "behaviors". I'm only speaking from experience here and I can tell you I have never seen an inmate (man or woman) that is willing to do anything unless they get a reward for it.

On a personal note, I believe that inmates should not be paid for labor while they are incarcerated, but should still be forced into labor...lets call it their debt to society.

Actually Damocles, you may want to re-read that. I said they should only get about 5% of whatever they make, and the rest should go back to the prison for upkeep. Even at wage of $5/hr, that would put their take at $.25 an hour. That leaves $4.75/hr going back into the prison system. If even 50% of the inmates in the U.S. prison system did that, think of how much we wouldn't be putting into the system.

Excellent idea sounds like the way they used to do things in the old days.. err... before liberalism and the modern idea of how to destroy a mighty nation and its people and their culture came along.

I found this little tid bit on the internt that comes from Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA :shk:

Note the spin they put on the story by calling it Colorado’s Farm Plan:
Replacing Immigrant Labor with Slave Labor

Talk about a bunch of idiots! Obvioulsy they do not understand the meaning of the word Volunteer

mekanic, no, i read it right, i was just trying to be a little generous. call it a weakness lol.

but, upon further reflection i do think youre right and 5% is more than fair considering that they get room, board, and better healthcare than military or their families in most cases.

so, all in favor say aye, all oppsed say nothing and we'll carry this sucker in a heartbeat


spose we could get congress replaced with the membership of ATS? we'd get things back into shape in no time

of course that would make "us" "them" and in retrospect who wants that?

/babble

I don't think that their pay should be taken to pay for their incarceration. If they owe fines or restitution then their money should go toward that. Anything left should go into an account to be made availible when they are released. I'd consider this money an investment against their ending up in jail again. Think about it. When a prisioner is released they often only have the clothes on their back and maybe a few dollars. If they have the money they earned availible, there should be enough to set them up with a place to live and keep them on their feet long enough for them to find a job. A company that I used to work for was involved with a program that provided jobs for recently released prisioners who were still on probation. Yes we had a few hard cases who eventually ended up going back to jail, but most of them worked their a$$es off to keep from going back. Let them reap the rewards for their hard work and it just might keep them from going back to jail.

Damocles, I have to disagree on the healthcare bit. A friend of mine was doing time for a collection of DUIs. He had a maybe 2 months left to serve when he died of cancer, that was mis-diagnosed by a prison doc. By the time it was caught, it was too late. This guy was a good person. The only thing he did wrong was make a bad judgement call, and drove drunk. He only went about half a mile each time, in the dead of the night on a rural back road where there was no traffic.

Anyway. The doctor was ignorant. He treated Jeff badly, and had no cares for what he had done. Even his nurse swore to testify against the docs in the system because of it.

My friend died in prison. His family petitioned hard to get him out so he could at least die with a little dignity in a real hospital, or at his home, where he might have seen his kid. The system delayed the process so long, that it was too late.

Point being, don't give the prison healthcare system any more credit than they deserve.

JIMC5499, here's how it works, I've seen it many times. If a prisoner gets out, and they have no money, one of two things will happen.

1. They get a job to earn money, which in turn keeps them occupied, and out of trouble for the most part.

2. Commit another crime to get money.

If they have a bunch of money already when they get out, they are more inclined to not go out and find a job, which leaves them idle. Being idle usually leads to being bored. If bored, most ex-cons will go back to what got them incarcerated in the first place. Or they get used to not doing anything, and when they start to run short of cash, they start to look for alternative ways to acquire it. While I'm the type who can't be off of work for more than a few days, some people don't feel the same, especially after being in the prison system for many years where they don't have to work.

If the prison system had the money that the prisoners earned, a portion of that could in turn be put toward finding other ways to rehabilitate the inmates.