Should prisons pay minimum wage? (to prisoners)

[sweetheart]

Following is an article on paying prisoners minimu wage. I've never
considered ths idea. It seems like a good idea to end recidivism,
what do you think?

Porridge with a legal rate of pay

Giving prisoners the chance to earn the minimum wage could be a way to help them to escape from a life of endless crime, writes Jon Robins

Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer

Inmates of a British prison are, for the first time, being paid the national minimum wage as part of an experiment to reduce the rate of reoffending.

Six prisoners in the south of England are taking part in a pilot scheme organised by the campaigning group the Howard League for Penal Reform under which they are earning at least £5.05 an hour for skilled work at a printing press - compared with the average prison wage of £7 to £12 a week - and are paying income tax and national insurance.

But why should convicted criminals be paid the national minimum wage? 'It's very simple,' says Frances Crook, the League's director. 'They are far less likely to commit another crime when they are out. Our main objective here is to work for a safer society.'
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/cash/story/0,6903,1681301,00.html

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

1. If we pay you, will you be good? How about health benefits? Pension?

I don't know, having a tough time seeing where this would end. :shrug:

[TheBaldyMan]

8. it's the british prison system - we have socialised medicine here anyway

paid for by general taxation. Freely availiable to all, minimal charges for those that can afford to pay and you can get private health insurance if you feel the need.

[William Bloode]

20. No for the most part.

Having been in prison and done my share of work for .40 a day i have experience. A dollar or 2 a day is good. Allows you money to buy cosmetics and stamps etc. Besides in prison a job is a luxury. It gives you something to do to keep your mind right.

With that being said. If a prison is using inmates to makes a profit then yes minimum wage should be required. In my state all prison labor is used to benefit the Department of Corrections, the state itself, and local communities, no profit. We made beds, lockers, tables, and grew and processed food for the state prisons, and state metal institutions. We also made cleaners and furniture for government offices. Now if a prison is used to make a profit off said labor, inmates deserve a bigger cut.

I have no problem with inmates working for low wages to pay back the community and benin fit the prison system, and state as a whole. But not as a profitable business, especially if it's a private prison.

[Devlzown]

2. Depends.

Some prisoners work menial jobs in the cafeteria or doing laundry just to help pass the time. I think it's acceptable to pay these people below minimum wage. But prisoners who have exemplary behavior and do jobs that require more skill should definitely be paid minimum wage at least.

[converted_democrat]

3. I think it's a bright idea for two reasons...

One, I don't think ANYONE should be paid slave wages.. Now that we have "privatized" prisons, I think the situation is ripe for abuse. There is actually pressure to keep people in the system, and to find "more offenders" to gain profit. (There was an excellent article floating around here on DU about how this very thing is happening in a couple of the Western States.. I'm thinking it was Colorado, and Utah..but I'm not sure which states it was for sure, but if you could find that article it would really shed some light on this situation..)The prisons use the prisoners as laborers and assemblers and gain a huge profit off their backs.. This is just ripe for abuse.

Two, I think one of the biggest problems prisoners face when they get out is that they have no resources, so they turn immediately to the only survival skills that they possess, and that is usually crime. Most prisons leave a prisoner at the closest bus stop, with clothes on their back, and not much else.. I think if they had some money saved they would be better able to survive without having to turn to crime to do it.

I'm not saying that prison should be a cake walk, I'm just saying that they are human, and they deserve a real chance after they have completed their time.. And they should be given a real shot at survival. I think a program that could prove to them the value of a dollar, and hard work would be a good idea. If they can get this concept down while in prison, I would think it would promote good work ethic, and to some degree a sense of pride.. I honestly think it could keep many from re-offending. I think it's a good idea.

[ohio_liberal]

4. I think they should be paid more than they are now

I suppose the only way to accomplish that is by paying them minimum wage.

Many of these folks desperately need funds to set themselves up when they get out of prison. Imagine being released after X number of years in prison, and tossed on the street with only a few dollars in your pocket. How would you survive? In Ohio at least, people who are incarcerated in county facilities with a work program get regular wages. Why shouldn't a state inmate?

[MichiganVote]

5. Thanks but no thanks.

[theHandpuppet]

6. Sure. Then they can pay for their own expenses!

They can pay for their food, clothing, shelter, medical care, etc just like hard working folks who make minimum wage and aren't criminals.

Edited to add: They can then use what money is left over (if any) to make restitution to their victims.

[mntleo2]

7. Slave Wages = No Incentive To Rehabilitate

What I mean about this is, when prisons are privatized and not only get federal money to BE prisons and then also use prisoners for slave labor, why ever let these people go? So, you are given a 15 year sentence for possession of an oz of marijuana, and then the system uses every excuse to keep you in because they can use you for slave labor while raking in the bucks. If you ever do get out, there are few jobs making a livable wage for people with a record, so you will spend the rest of your life working for nothing either way.

In other words it is a way to create cheap labor and keep it cheap. Since we have more people in prison than any other industrialized country, we give to the rich and take from the poor, and we reward industry simply for being rich no matter how they treat their employees or that they do not pay taxes and if they are cronies of the administration, so this goal is no stretch IMO.

My 2 cents
Cat In Seattle

[slaveplanet]

16. Correct

They are utilizing these prisoners to make widgets for pennies on the dollar compared to neighboring free(so-called) society factories located nearby. Most of which are shut down because they can no longer compete on the uneven playing field. The incentive is already there to never let these people go.

give em minimum wage. Make the program voluntary so the prisoners can opt out if they choose.Charge those who enroll room and board. Cut all federal monies used for housing and feeding those who enroll.
And you'll see just how quickly these private prisons disappear.

[TheBaldyMan]

9. you are overlooking the profit motive

lots of high street low-cost retailers in the UK now source packaging and assembly in prisons because they can pay such low wages.

Prisoners take up the factory work as the alternative is spending their entire incarceration sitting in their cells doing nothing.

This may seem like a good idea for rehabilitation but when they come out of jail they find that all the factory jobs have been outsourced to prisons?

on edit: link to story on prison labour used for high-street profits boost

[sweetheart]

10. indeed, its the concept of working for a living

If i were to advise a king on how to conquor a nation and to totally destroy its
self respect, i'd advise him to put the whole nation on free welfare payments
that are living-wage level, and higher than entry-working wages.

Then, over time, you wind up with entire neighborhoods, like some in Glasgow,
where people don't work, and like this article mentions, most prisoners were
unemployed, and a good few, NEVER employed.. why, they are dole-addicts.

Succeeding economically in society does indeed involve perserverence, self
confidence and self-worth. Being paid a fair wage helps instill this.

If it was a victem crime, garnishing wages for victems is not such a bad idea,
so long as the prisoner gets some percentage of his/her wages.

I don't think the objective can be to set expectations about future factory jobs,
more rather, gettting persons off the dole-wheel and on to the basis of our
society, that you work for a living.

Most people in the UK prison system, according to HM inspectorate, are diagnosably
mentally ill, and the prisons serve, for about half the inmates, as a mental health
internment facility. For that 50%, i'm not so sure a minimum wage will change
anything... but indeed, the prison system should inspire and reward industry
with the same perks the outside world does, so that the dole-criminals can learn
how the rest of us do it in civilian society.

[TheBaldyMan]

11. benefit levels in the UK aren't high enough to live off

it's the big lie, everybody needs a sideline or be condemned to live way below the EU minimum decency threshold, compare these figures
Benefit level on Income support for single person £55 per week
EU minimum decency threshold estimate approx. £80 per week

There was a study done recently in the Channel Islands, a off-shore tax haven, that confirmed this gap. The reality for everyone dependant on welfare benefits in the UK is abject poverty with no prospect of the richest in the country being asked to re-contribute even a fraction of their many and continuing tax cuts dating from the '80s.

The myth of the UK being the most heavily taxed nation in Europe continues to this day. While flat rate taxes have their scope widened and hit the poorest hardest, tax concessions always benefit the richest most and have a welcome reception in the press.

It seems that the British want a universal coverage health system, welfare safety net, decent pensions and education system but any suggestion that this should be funded from a progressive income tax guarantees a united media assault on your political party.

The fat man's busy dancing but the poor man pays the band.

[sweetheart]

14. maybe they cheat

I was just reading quotes from kids in glasgow who were saying exacly that, that
they were better off taking dole (or maybe being a benefit cheat), than working.
Now say you are on the dole, and deal drugs on the side, then the income would be
just about fine. Methinks that is what those kids are really saying.

I can't locate the article, but it was pointing out a 20 year difference in
expected life-span between some postal codes and others. When they looked in to
the worst postal codes, mass unemployment and not opportunity, high crime and
all that, were rife.

Ending the drugs war would solve most of this, i believe, as the unsaid fact of
it all, is that the drugs trade is core to the economy in these deprived areas,
seeking the economic bottom where people have nothing to lose, riskwise, to make
a living.

55 quid per week, if you have a council provided flat and free medical care,
is a lot. American readers might presume that the 55/week would have to cover
rent or medical care, but these are already paid for. The council must provide
housing for any persons who are homeless... very progressive that, but the problem
with it, is that it creates poverty ghettos that become more a trap than a gift.

[TheBaldyMan]

15. the kids 18-25 are even worse off than normal

their benefit levels are scandalous. 16 and 17 year olds are not entitled to benefits at all. IIRC Legislation introduced in 1984 set lower benefit levels and 18-25 year olds have had to live with poverty ever since. Employers have been known to hire youths at lower wages than they would have to pay other adults. I have personal experience of this legislation when it was first introduced (my personal 'sideline' was theft) and found out the hard way what I'd do given the choice of going hungry or stealing.

The bottom line is, if you are on benefits you must have a sideline or you will not be able to pay your bills. This can take the form of working on the side or taking payment in kind.

In my experience no-one in their right mind stays on the dole voluntarily. Sadly young people today don't know that there was a time when 18 year olds were considered adults, generations continue to be sacrificed on the altar of Yuppie tax cuts.

Somethings don't add up. A welfare state needs to be paid for out of progressive taxation regime. This benefits everybody including the richest. A fairer society overall is a much more pleasant enviroment to live. All the societies that have a closer gap between rich and poor tend to have, amongst other indices of social well being, lower crime rates, healthier populations and higher records of educational achievement.

The Thatcher era ushered in a time where it is smart to be stupid, where your bank balance is the only real measure of your worth and to hell with anyone that thinks otherwise. Blair continues this divisive and destructive policy to this day, even worse he had a parliamentary majority that the tories could only dream about. Britain has woken up to the fact that he is a wolf in sheeps' clothing.

Poor? - it's your own fault, Unhealthy? - well I've got private health insurance and look after myself. Unemployed? - you obviously don't want to work, there's loads of jobs out there. These fallacies are expressed as fact in the media, pursued vigourously as a matter of policy by a deluded government. This path is followed because it is the line of least resistance and doesn't tackle any of the issues that are really at the root of a series of thorny problems. It may be dressed up as welfare reform but ignores the fundamental causes.

Are you really suggesting that miners and steelworkers in Britain were unemployed through choice? Their poverty and social alienation are a result of truculence on their part?

[sweetheart]

17. very passionate and heartfelt that

Some of the most crime ridden neighborhoods in europe are in south scotland, and
on driving round a few, what can be done?

Clinton's program of wefare-to-work was seen as a success, likely an inspiration for
blair, whether or not it was a success i frankly can't say, from a DU perspective.

Isn't the vast majority of persons on benefit, on incapacity benefit, and isn't this
statistically more likely in these more deprived areas, making "incapacity" something
that perhaps a doctor open to neighborhood extortion might sign up to.

Indeed, the rhetoric of "get a job" is nonsensical if there are no jobs, if you have
no provisions to move to a place where you can get a job, then you stay there and it
gets worse. That is what i read about constantly in britain. IN the US, those towns
are gone, "ghost towns" all over the place, where the economy dropped away, and with
it, the residents, without any welfare to rely on, without a job... people move away.

I frankly think those bad neighborhoods should become ghost towns. I don't think
the public should pay to sustain people in a failing economic area, as "jobs" don't
come from central planners like the "dole" does, but from investment and responsible
persons wishing to make a better life.

But who can build a better life, whilst surrounded by an enforced culture of poverty.
So, if they reformed the dole to raise the money much higher, would it be different
then? I don't believe so, the social-network has failed in those places. Should they
be written off american syle to become third world war zones of MS-18 (drugs gangs)?

I accept your healthy criticism of the wefare reforms that wrongly diminished benefits
below sustinance levels. As a person who's been fortunate in life not to have ever
taken state benefit, i can't say i understand. When i've been poor, there were no
benefits, i simply wound up homeless with the choice either to die of exposure or
get it together. I frankly am thankful my choice was so harsh at the time, as had i
an alternative to the tremendously difficult mountain of "getting it together", i would
have taken it.

I'm sorry about the mining towns, but i don't concede that it is the government's job
to make these towns rich. That is the citizen's job, and if the whoel project is not
working, then why invest?

You are right on, when you say that the whole thing comes down to a war on poverty, by
rich yuppes who judge the poor as too lazy to work and so much other claptrap.... including
the drugs war that the rich foist on the poor... and if the rich want to buy drugs, they
drive to a poor neightborhood as their laws export the trade-there.

Gosh, after the ravages of compassionate conservatism-1 (thathcher), and compassionate-
conservatism-II (bliar), needs the poor a third?

[TheBaldyMan]

18. I'll try and avoid entering into ping-pong posting on this

I agree with you about the social fabric of communities being destroyed but I disagree about the effects of welfare on a community. At no point am I saying that the job of government is to keep people perpetually dependant on benefits, ideally the local economy would regenerate over time organically. Some communities were in the position of losing everything - employment, self-respect and opprtunity. Any regrowth in the local economy was starting from a very poor baseline.

My surmise is basically this: What kind of society do you want to live in? The one I'd like to live in is one with a progressive tax regime that supports the less fortunate of our society.

Demonizing those on welfare only clouds the issue. There is not nor has there ever been a dependancy culture, it is a fiction touted as fact, no-one remains on welfare through choice. The recent 'reforms' of sickness benefits have nothing to do with welfare and everything to do with making the government look good. It is compassionate conservatism in action.

[sweetheart]

19. on demonizing welfare

No mind ping poing, its a discussion, you have passion. In my time on DU, my
advise to any poster here, is to ping pong pong pong on the issues you feel in
your heart, and in that process, the rest of uz catch the fire. YOu clearly have
more knowledge and wisdom on the coal face of this issue, and in meeting minds, you
are explaining that to a less-aware person who's not experienced what you have.
Its very good stuff what you have written... please pong.

I live in one of these deprived areas, as an immigrant who moved in to a deprived
house that was borderline-collapsing, and fixed it up. I've spent years investing
my life in to a deprived area, and i notice other "incomers" do as well. The incomers want
to make it "not" a deprived area. The existing unemployed are ambivalent, as you
know in long-term british villiages, the locals go back hundreds of years and claim
a sort of gang-superiority over the community, no matter newer residents.

The newer residents bring ecomomic diversification to the area, often travelling
far and abroad on business matters, not purely local in the sheep markets, and this
mixture of professional classes and traditional working classes is happening all
over britain similarly.

I wouldn't wish anyone to leave their abode unless it's not working for them. Human
beings are nomadic creatures who have lives that are not dictated by a grazing ground
or a hunting ground. That is why we arn't animals. Why the political sense is that
we *ARE* animals and must stay on the same ground, i don't accept. If the ground sucks, leave.

A bad community will naturally rejuvinate when people who are successful in their
lives decide to make it vibrant. This is not by the tyranny of taxing those who do
succeed to finance the poverty shadenfreude no opportunity status quo.

Would YOU set up a business near a housing estate. Myself as once having sold a company
i formed in silicon valley, i would never form a dynamic new business near the crap
medicority of britsih housing estate life. It is so far from successful living in the
modern world, it has no place near a dynamic endeavour... and so we are stuck... as by
the sort of thinking you are saying, nothing is done, and the housing estate poverty and
19th centruy coal mining towns will stay poor because the 19th century is not coming back.

So i wholly support welfare, but with limits on time. I believe in paying mothers a living
wage to be home with thier kids until school age, but outside that, do not accept that a
working-age adult needs more than 2 months welfare to get a job, not a job in the mining
town with no opportunities, but a job in the UK. We are a wandering species, and if work
involves wandering, then i say the welfare agency has the right to ask a person to move.

It is not right for the taxpayer to finance long term pockets of squalor, and that is
basically what current policy has done... financing bad management (home and life management)
with squandered investment on mediocrity.

[TheBaldyMan]

22. time limits on welfare make a bad situation worse

Any form of social cohesion in a deprived area tends to take longer to develop and is more fragile than in an area where there is a high level of employment and a better standard of living in general.

These areas are so low you would have to be incompetent or vindictive to make matters any worse. Consider the riots in France or the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans as examples of poor, powerless, voiceless masses in a situation that was disastrous yet the authorities managed to screw things up even more.

There is no quick fix, it is expensive and time-consuming. Blocking benefits after a few months would only add to the socio-economic burden of a group that is less able to deal with the day to day grind than groups that have a higher level of social mobility and economic independance. Indeed the chances are that most people that could move away already did so. The ones that remain are tied to the area because of health, family or simply through poverty.

Any progress for these areas must come from the grass roots, that is where effective, lasting change for the better originates, it cannot be imposed from on high.

Withdrawal of welfare benefits would increase the burden on local support networks such as family, friends and social organisations in an community least equipped to deal with this added weight.

Admittedly, the evidence I could provide to support my standpoint is purely anecdotal. I wonder if anybody could cast some light on the Reagan years when lots of americans were jobless and living in their cars or had experience of Clinton's Welfare to Work programme? Did the direct experience of poverty change anyone's view on welfare and it's availiability.

[Pavulon]

12. Nope.

Drug rehab fine. Vocational classes, great. Pay someone who broke the law to sit in jail. No way.

[Greyhound]

21. No, they're paying them to not sit in jail.

They do a job that produces something (product or service) that is sold at a profit. It will reduce the recidivism rate because they will leave with some cash and the ability to do something other that robbing to make their living. No work, no pay.

[SmokingJacket]

13. Yes, because corporations/states shouldn't profit from crime...

but when the prisoners do make money, some of it should be set aside to get them resettled when they're released, and some should go to pay their food and lodging, and some should go to their victims (if applicable).