Prisons

If I were President, I'd make the prison system a for-profit enterprise.

Here are the sad facts:

• 1 out of every 133 Americans is behind bars.
• The U.S. has 5% of the world's population, but 25% of the world's incarcerated population.
• On a percentage basis, England imprisons 1/6th the percentage of its citizens compared to the U.S.
• Only China approaches the U.S. in terms of the percentage of its population imprisoned, and most of those are political prisoners.
  

Are Americans as a group more unlawful than those around the world? Or are we a nation run so afoul of laws that it's impossible to go through the day without breaking the law?

There are a lot of factors that go into making up these shocking numbers. Yes, we have a lot of laws. Yes, the same freedoms that we enjoy as Americans make it easier to comtemplate "bending the rules", in the name of equality for all and free speech. Stricter sentencing guidelines require those sent to prison to stay there for longer periods of time. Poor rehabilitation techniques result in a high recidivism rate.

This is too big a subject for me to cover in this brief blog entry, but I'll tell you what I would do if I were President: I'd put them to work. I could write entire essays on why so many Americans go to prison, and write other essays on why so many go back again and again, and maybe some day I will write those essays, but today I'll ignore all the causes and talk about the reality of the present.

As more and more Americans go to prison, more and more prisons must be built to accomodate them. More guards must be employed and more and more dollars are spent on this unproductive part of our country's economy. It costs $88 per day for each prisoner, over $60 Billion a year! I say, lease them out and make them pay for their keep.

These prisoners mostly spend their days locked in their cells or exercising in the prison yard. Some of them work within the prison in the kitchen or the laundry, or even making license plates. They are paid between $0.25 and $1.25 and hour for their work, money which they can spend at the prison canteen to buy small luxuries.

What's wrong with leasing prisoners out to American business and forcing them to contribute something positive to our economy? Factory owners could staff their production lines with prison labor, and the wages would go to the prison to pay for the cost of the prisoner's incarceration. It's a win-win-win situation, where the factory owners pay lower wages for labor, taxpayers are relieved of the cost of supporting the prison system, and criminals earn job skills and experience in the workplace.

This might even be a solution to our illegal immigration problem, too. If cheap prison labor is readily available it might drive immigrants out of the jobs for which they come to America. Why not let rapists and murderers pick our lettuce? Why not let drug pushers wash dishes and mop the floors at Dennys? Why not have embezzling CEOs working the sewing machines in the fashion district, turning out High School Musical 3 fashion tees?

Of course, not all jobs are appropriate for all classes of prisoners, and not all prisoners will want to do all types of jobs. There would need to be guidelines about which types of criminals would be allowed to work which types of jobs. Dangerous criminals would need to stay in a controlled environment, so perhaps some factories might build their plants adjacent to maximum-security prisons to take advantage of the ready labor pool.

This system could be the basis for completely revamping our criminal justice system. Instead of criminals being sentenced to "do their time" and wait out a period of years and months before being released, criminals would be forced to "pay their debt to society" and be sentenced in dollars and would not be released until they had done the work to "pay their sentence." There would be different pay rates for different jobs, with the more undesireable jobs paying higher rates than the easy ones. A low-risk prisoner could hold a road-work sign for $3 per hour, or he could be the one working the jack-hammer, breaking up the roadway for $7 per hour. It's up to him how hard he wants to work and how quickly he wants to be released. Prisoners could be rewarded for good behavior (and a strong work ethic) by getting a raise or being promoted to a better-paying position, effectively shortening their time behind bars. Those who refuse to work, or who don't work hard enough can have their pay docked or be demoted to a truly undesirable job, like digging ditches or doing brush clearance.

The companies who benefit from this arrangement would have responsibilities, too. They would be required to bear the cost of security to prevent escapes and protect the public. Companies would be required to hire any prisoner who had completed his sentence working for that company, and to pay him 150% of his last wage as his new pay rate. This assures that the criminals will have jobs waiting for them when they leave prison, and have a place to apply the job skills they learned while inside.

If I were President, criminals would truly pay their debt to society.