TacoMac
Well-Known Member
Absolutely. But the way it's presently done is just awful.
Prisoners that want to work should be paid a fair wage. That wage should be put in escrow until the prisoner is released. That way, you don't drop a guy off outside the gate with 20 bucks in his pocket and nowhere to go.
If he was working a job doing construction work, then he should be paid no less than half the going rate for that job. If he does a good job and serves his time well, then he'll have not only a job waiting for him a few years later when he get out, but the money to get an apartment and some basic furnishings and food to start his life over again.
As it is now they're paid shit, not given any opportunity at all, hurled out into the world yet again without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of with a scarlet C tattooed on their forehead and told, "Now get a job, convict!"
One of those ways works. It's been proven to work time and again in every civilized nation on earth.
The other is our way...and it is a catastrophic failure.
