>but, on another related point: if prisoners increasingly work, then why
>would prisoners be counted in unemployment stats? wouldn't this mean they
>(the proportion of prisoners that do work) be counted as employed?
Actually I had a conversation with Christian Parenti, whose book on the U.S. carceral state will be published by Verso in the fall, on just this topic last night. Christian says that there are only a few thousand prisoners working for private corporations, and only about 100,000 (out of 1.8 million) working in traditional state pursuits like making license plates. He says the prison authorities object to more work than that because it makes the inmates harder to control. When I said, "I guess you can't beat free labor," he agreed.
Doug