< [Thanks to Kirsten Nielsen; from the Wall Street Journal]
USE OF PRISONERS for productive work simmers as an issue for unions.
The number of prisoners doing work -- like making gloves or furniture -- rose to about 80,000 in 1998, mostly in state prisons, from 76,500 in 1997, says the Correctional Industries Association in Baltimore. The AFL-CIO backs the idea of inmates working but wants it done "carefully." Low-wage or unpaid "prison inmates are just one more group being added to the ever-expanding list of sources for cheaper labor," says Joshua Miller, an economist for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Guards who are AFSCME members find busy prisoners easier to
manage, but the AFL-CIO says the union is losing work like computer-data
entry to inmates. The Federal Bureau of Prisons notes that Congress bars
an adverse effect on any one industry by the 100 federal-prison
factories.
>
Years ago I wrote a paper opposing Ribicoff's computer crime bill, and I touched on this very subject.
In 1980 prison programming was a very small but growing industry for the Feds. Leavenworth programmed all sorts of applications, including fund disbursing programs, for the Dept of Agriculture, in COBOL (now, that is true punishment).
But Federal prison industry is only part of the story. My impression was that the states were ahead of the Feds in using what amounts to slave labor for computer programming. At that time, Minnesota had a bill in Congress to permit interstate commerce for computer programs written in prison. The Federal law blocking interstate commerce in prison produced goods was seen as a detriment to the growth of such industry. I was unable to follow the bill closely enough to see if it passed.
Since I was a programmer, I felt very threatened. The proposed "crime" was so badly defined that it invited abuse. In effect it criminalized computer programmers by defining common practices as offenses. As a result, management and an obliging prosecutor could put any of us in prison for no other reason than management irritation (the General Treedle offense for those of you who remember Catch-22). In my opinion, this is what happened between Intel and Randal Schwartz a few years ago. And learning that I could be forced to write COBOL programs for state governments or the Feds didn't cheer me up.
I think that the Federal Bureau of Prisons is being disingenuous.