Colorado sends female prison inmates to harvest onions, corn and melons; Iowa is considering similar steps; Arizona prisoners (NOTE; This is also going on and has been for quite some time in Texas.) have been working in agriculture for nearly 20 years. About 10 percent of Arizona's 37,000 prisoners are cleared to outside work. They must be paid a minumum of $2.00 an hour. Thirty percent of their wages go for prison room and board; the rest goes for victim-restitution payments, applicable child support, and a mandatory savings account. Labor acivists consider the system to be demeaning to agricultural workers, yet there are not enough harvesters to go around. Arizona's Jack Dixon, one of the country's lagest watermelon growers, says that he would have sold out long ago if not for year-around inmate help. Even so, 400 acres of his unpicked watermelons rotted last year for lack of help. With the crackdown on undocumented workers and on those who hire them, more farmers may be turning to prisons for harvest hands.
And why not.... since the populations of the prisons are guarenteed to get larger as more and more people within the United States have to turn to crime to live.
And if there is anybody who does not understand how dangerous it is to permit the 'government' to tap a slave labor market such as prisoners, then, you need to do some serious soul searching.
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