Your predecessors put our prison systems in a terrible mess. We accumulate far more prisoners than other nations, and at far greater cost, with disastrous consequences. Paying more for prisons and less for education is a sick trend.
Each prisoner costs us about $50,000 a year, and that cost must be multiplied by $2,300,000. You may have heard that it costs less to feed, clothe, house, and provide medical care to prisoners, but that lower figure doesn’t include the astronomical lost opportunity costs. Locking up so many people and not providing them with useful work means that the value of their work is also lost. On average, each inmate can earn around $25,000 per year if assigned to a regular job. Add this to the out-of-pocket costs of $25,000 per year, and the cost equals $50,000 per year. This is not counting the increased costs of welfare outside of prison, the social costs of breaking up families and marriages and allowing children to be raised without parents. This also does not include decreased productivity caused by criminals unable to find employment. Our nation incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world, and a higher percentage of our population is in prison than any other nation in the world. If inmates were counted as unemployed in unemployment statistics, official unemployment would be 1/2% higher due to our prison population of 2.3 million. As you can see, this is a drag on the entire economy at a time when we can’t afford it. Yes, we are in a tremendous predicament. Please do something.
Let’s face it: the modern prison doesn’t work very well, at least not for its original purpose of rehabilitation, and it doesn’t deter crime enough. It keeps criminals out of the way for a while, and that’s good, but unfortunately prison leaves them in worse shape. Prisons are an expensive way to make bad people worse. Many of us have been trying to get your attention. Help solve the massive prison crisis we have and create more jobs.
Every enlightened warden and prison reformer in history believed that prisoners should work useful work. Hard work is better for the prisoner, the prison administration and the taxpayers. Supposedly, many criminals are sentenced to “forced labor”, but now only a minority of the prisoners work, few of them in private companies. Restrictive legislation was passed years ago due to unfair competition created by prisoners working for free. But the tables have changed: Most consumer goods are now made outside of the United States. Products made in China’s prisons easily find their way into the US, while we strangle our own prison industries.
Our laws should allow private companies to make goods that are now made exclusively in foreign countries. You should repeal or amend the Ashurst-Sumners and Hawes-Cooper Acts, because those federal statutes deprive products made in state prison from being made in interstate commerce, making it more difficult for them to cross state lines or enter the marketplace. Every state should repeal their statutes that discourage or ban prison industries, at least to allow the manufacturing of goods that are now exclusively made overseas. Inmates don’t deserve the wage and hour protection and job protection that law-abiding Americans enjoy, but their workplaces must be safe. Let’s take some laws off the books so employers can freely bargain with inmates and not have to worry about most laws. Everyone can win: taxpayers, crime victims, families of prisoners, our economy, organized labor, businesses, prison systems, and prisoners. Prison industries will create jobs outside of prisons. If we don’t get more Americans to work, we will decline in the world, and that is not our destiny.
