Denver - Ever since passing what its Legislature promoted as the nation's toughest laws against illegal immigration last summer, Colorado has struggled with a labor shortage as migrants fled the state. This week, officials announced a novel solution: Use convicts as farmworkers.
Here's the 'money' line, so to speak:
The inmates will be watched by prison guards, who will be paid by the farms. The cost is subject to negotiation, but farmers say they expect to pay more for the inmate labor and its associated costs than for their traditional workers.
I'm sure that's just fine with the Department of Corrections. I think prison guards cost more than agricultural workers.
"If they can't get slaves from Mexico, they want them from the jails," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which favors restrictions on immigration.
Ricardo Martinez of the Denver immigrant rights group Padres Unidos asked: "Are we going to pull in inmates to work in the service industry too? You won't have enough inmates - unless you start importing them from Texas."
Import them from Texas? Oh, the horror!
If this deal catches on, look for an upsurge of arrests of qualified legal immigrant agricultural workers, and more prisons built in farming areas. Win-win!
There's another solution to the lack of agricultural workers: the way Bush is mishandling the economy, we could have another Great Depression and fill the fields with migratory 'fruit tramps' ridin' the rods (do trains still have rods?) and following the crops like in the 1930s. See Grapes of Wrath.
There's yet another solution, but it'll never fly: hire American kids to do it. Yeah, right. Little fuckers are too spoiled to ever do anything remotely resembling actual hard work where they might get tired and dirty, or that is 'beneath their dignity'. It would damn sure do 'em some good though, might build some dignity and character instead of the unwarranted 'self-esteem' they're told they should have just for being alive.
I think this points up the need for immigration reform in the form of a guest worker program. I think it's funny that this is the only thing Bush has gotten right, and his party wouldn't hear of it.
From my own experience, I have nothing against inmate labor. I've done it, liked it, clamored for the opportunity. Our Nevada County jail, the Wayne Brown Correctional Facility aka "Wayne's World", sends inmates out every day of the week to work in the community. As far as I know, there's no charge for this. It benefits the community because they get workers they couldn't otherwise afford, and it's good for the inmates because they get to get out of the jail during the day.
There is no supervision by Correctional Officers. There's no need for it. Only non-violent offenders are in the trusty section that provides the workers and they'd be idiots to screw up a relatively easy way to do their time. Besides, the trusty section has girls, ping-pong, and vending machines. Hint: the jail doesn't make change. Folks around here know to take a coupla rolls of quarters with them when they go to jail. Heh.
The best deal was to go work at the local food bank. Easy warehouse work, loading trucks mostly, and they cook a big lunch and provide tobacco and papers and plenty of smoke breaks. There's no smoking in jail, so this is huge to us smokers. The food is a lot better, too. Sometimes you get to ride on a truck to somewhere and participate in food distribution programs, which is mostly unloading trucks and setting up tables, but extends to carrying groceries to the car for little old ladies. You get to interact with the locals, too. I've seen inmates call their friends to come out and bring them, er, things of the kind they were probably in jail for in the first place. Nothing that the COs could smell on their breath.
I also worked at the county recycling center and the Elks club. All the outfits provide cigarettes and food for the inmates.
My most memorable outing was when I was on a working party that policed up a murder scene at the county services building. One of their clients got off his meds and went and shot the joint up and killed three people. Another broke her leg jumping out the window to get away. The cops had cut out all the sections of wall with bullet holes for evidence, but there were still some blood stains. We just dismantled the joint so they could rebuild it to be more secure, and also to physically change it so the employees wouldn't be reminded of the horror every day. It was a county office, so it had to be open for business pretty quick, and the builders were rebuilding it while we were still doing the teardown. The cops caught the guy right away, and since the inmates were all locals and many of them knew the victims, put him in the medical ward for his own protection. He's off the streets for good now.
That deal took three of us three days. The first night we worked pretty late and missed dinner, so the county guy bought us dinner at Denny's, 'to go' of course. It wasn't like we could go in and sit down in filthy jail clothes. That would not have done much for 'community relations'. Believe me, folks, after eatin' jail food, Denny's is good eats!
Since I quit drinkin' I'm not keeping up with the latest at Wayne's World. That's good, but the experience was enlightening. I've been in county jails three times, in two different counties, for a grand total of about forty days. I'm over it now. It won't kill you, in rural counties anyway, but it's nothing to look forward to and I don't recommend it as a destination resort.
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