State considers inmates to replace immigrant labor

It's about time to consider using this huge pool of cheap able bodied labor that the tax payers are forced to feed, clothe, and house.  Take away the gyms and give them a shovel.

i am in agreement with you!!!we are the ones that pay for no crops,thats when everything goes up,because they want hire anybody legally.

and they had rather it all die,and reap from the government.

Well , in the first place the prison system should be self-sustaining. I don't know about Alabama's but Parchman Farm was in the '60s. In later years the Republican idea was to have private prisons and pay so much per day to a private industry to run them. I have never thought that was a good idea.

Like I said, I don't know about Alabama's prison but it used to be that Parchman, and I believe Angola and Tucker and Cummings in Ark were as well, and we all know from Cool Hand Luke that Ga prisoners worked on road gangs (which I have seen in the past)

I think if prisoners are going to do farm work, raising their own food , and cotton or whatever to sell from the prison farm is  better than hiring them out to pick tomatoes. Something about that practice just seems to wave a flag in my brain that says "WARNING - CORRUPTION AHEAD "

I think most miss the point of the story. The inmates will all be "work release" and most of them already have jobs. They can add to that pool, but they will have to house them, as in find room. They should let regular inmates with minimum security settings do this work. You see them along the road picking up trash, etc. This would solve the problem.

Georgia is using prisoners as firemen. 

I think that is a fantastic idea. 

Since the inmates are on duty 24-7 the national agency that rates fire protection risk likes it too.

i believe i was one that mised the point! sorry,you are right.

I really have no problem with farming inmates out to various government places to do that work, for example in Corinth there is a prison and some of the inmates work on the garbage trucks picking up garbage, in Baldwin Co. Al, inmates also work picking up garbage and trash.

This is a lot different from the potential abuse that would come from using them as slave labor to harvest crops for different producers. Imagine that young kids could be "slaved out" for minor charges. (remember the judge up in Va that was convicted and jailed for putting kids in a private prison and getting kickbacks from the prison for doing so).

Also, who could get one of these "slave prisoners" ? If I needed some yard work done, would I be able to get one or two , or would I have to cross the palm of some state official to be able to get a few to work ?

I just think if this is done, it will be one of the most corrupting things done in this state for years, and that's saying a lot.

Won't happen.  Can you say ACLU?

This is a lot different from the potential abuse that would come from using them as slave labor to harvest crops for different producers. Imagine that young kids could be "slaved out" for minor charges.

Part of the problem right there. Slaved out to do what teens have done since time began, what some teens still do? Since when is making them work considered "slaving them out"? Could be if they had some hard work to do they'd be too tired to run around and get into trouble. Sheesh, help us, help us if working has become slavery.

Thanks, I didn't know that was an option. If you don't mind me asking, did you pay the inmates directly, or did you pay the jail system, or some other city/county/state person?

Yes slaved out.

Children have been working in the fields, for and alongside their parents for money or just on the family farm. On the family farm most didn't get paid but it was just part of the price of being raised on a farm. Eventuallly , they would in all likelyhood inherit the farm (whether they wanted it or not)

The corruption I can invision here is like I said about that judge up in (I believe ) Virginia.

The state ran no Juvenal corrections facility. Private corporations ran them and got paid so much per kid per day.  This particular judge was on the take from the private corrections facility, and the more kids he sent to the "prison" the more money the prison corporation sent him, and as I remember , he made a bundle.

Kids were sent to "prison" for very minor crimes, and the maximum sentence was always given,. no exceptions.

It was eventually found out, and was reported in the news media (don't remember which ones), and he was fined and went to prison himself I believe for 20 years.

Well, good enough for him, but he managed to permanently ruin the lives of literally thousands of young people for things that most judges would have just given a year's probation.

What I can forsee, is that level of corruption .

Yes, it is slave labor to force people to work for no money for the private sector. Like I said,  I don't mind them working on some work-release for a city or country, doing whatever they would normally have paid help to do, young or old for that matter. I just think that putting them in the fields of private farmers is slaving them out. If that happens, you can expect something like I described above to take place in the near future. 

Make them farm , plow, plant, harvest,  whatever, ok with me,but that should be done on a state run farm for their own food  and support of the farm.

Seeweed, there have been some articles in the papers over the years about this. The work release center will take out around 35% for housing. They also charge for transportation and there have been some lawsuits over that, about how much the rides cost the inmates. I once had an account in Decatur that I visited once a week and would eat at Jack's on 6th St. for breakfast. You would always see the state vans dropping off workers.

Money left over goes to pay restitution if the prisoner has any and then the workers get a weekly or biweekly draw to have money to eat and buy whatever they need. It's a pretty good system. The state may charge a little too much for some things, but you can't argue with them, and it gets the victims paid off.

From what I've read some areas just don't have enough work release inmates to go around. I don't know about Decatur.

These discussions always make me think of a "America's Most Wanted" episode. They were looking for a man who had "escaped". They had taken him out to the middle of no where to work on a farm on a work release program, when they came back to pick him up he was gone. They said he had escaped, I say they had turned him loose. My question, if he was so dangerous or whatever to deserve a spot on AMW after his "escape" what the heck were they doing turning him loose in the first place?