Oklahoma death row inmate suffers through injection

[lvoc]

dI would think it is virtually standard for inmates to provide the internal services...cooking, cleaning, serving food etc.

But as you get outside of that it starts to get tricky. Say reupholstering furniture...what small business then loses the job?

Maybe art objects are OK but then you need talent...

The local prison got in to doing fabrication of some basic weldments. The buyer did not pay and we had the interesting problem of who sues when prison labor gets hosed...

I doubt it is feasible to ever get the sort of return on prison labor to pay their costs. One should however minimize the costs of the prison with internal labor.

[Three Wolves In Snow]

Originally Posted by lvoc

dI would think it is virtually standard for inmates to provide the internal services...cooking, cleaning, serving food etc.

But as you get outside of that it starts to get tricky. Say reupholstering furniture...what small business then loses the job?

Maybe art objects are OK but then you need talent...

The local prison got in to doing fabrication of some basic weldments. The buyer did not pay and we had the interesting problem of who sues when prison labor gets hosed...

I doubt it is feasible to ever get the sort of return on prison labor to pay their costs. One should however minimize the costs of the prison with internal labor.

I don't think you quite understand HOW much they put out, and HOW much those items sell for. It's a boat load of money.

What the prison used to be able to do, on that farm, was grow their own food, but then you had all the whining of the public about it, demanding regulations...seriously, inmates prepare the food in the kitchen, and someone is worried that they might do something to the food they are growing? Now, because they are NOT allowed to grow their own food, the costs have gone up, but yes, at one time, they grew many vegetables and it kept costs down...inmates did the work, inmates prepared it, inmates fed themselves, (except meat, of course).

No small business lost their job over the furniture upholstery. It was a need, the prison has fulfilled it.

[lvoc]

Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow

I don't think you quite understand HOW much they put out, and HOW much those items sell for. It's a boat load of money.

What the prison used to be able to do, on that farm, was grow their own food, but then you had all the whining of the public about it, demanding regulations...seriously, inmates prepare the food in the kitchen, and someone is worried that they might do something to the food they are growing? Now, because they are NOT allowed to grow their own food, the costs have gone up, but yes, at one time, they grew many vegetables and it kept costs down...inmates did the work, inmates prepared it, inmates fed themselves, (except meat, of course).

No small business lost their job over the furniture upholstery. It was a need, the prison has fulfilled it.

Who makes the money? As you get to art forms that gets tricky.

I would expect the objections to a prison farm would come from local purveyors. and they may have a point. The security nature of a prison farm may drive the apparent costs way high. However prison farms are very common around the US.

If a prison reupholsters a chair some local business did not get the job. You cannot get around it. Prison businesses, if they are actually useful, take work from the outside world. And if they pay "orison wages" they do so unfairly.