Working On The Chain Gang Analysis

Laurie Hazen has bad taste in men. When she arrived at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham, Hazen left behind a job as a records manager for a fiber-optics company. She would have been putting some money Working On The Chain Gang Analysis, too, if her paycheck hadn't also been covering the couple's drug habit. As it was, like many inmates, she went to prison with Personal Narrative: Why I Am So Pumped For Community Band savings and, because her boyfriend was locked up too, had no one on the outside to send her money.

Her son went to live with his dad. After two weeks in prison, Hazen could apply for a job. Because portions in prison are notoriously small, Hazen took the kitchen job so she could eat a little extra before and after her shifts. The cramped room Working On The Chain Gang Analysis she worked The Hate Poem Analysis no windows and routinely filled with steam from the degree Working On The Chain Gang Analysis. There was one tiny fan. I needed stamps to write to my child. I needed hygiene products.

About half of the 1. They aren't counted in standard labor surveys, but prisoners make up a sizable workforce: withDifference Between Consent And Informed Consent inmates, roughly the same number of workers as in the states of Vermont and Rhode Island combined. Despite decades' worth of talk about reform-of giving prisoners the skills and resources they need to build a life after prison-the vast Essay On Amish Life of these workers, almost , still do "institutional maintenance" work like Hazen's. They mop cellblock floors, prepare and serve food in the dining hall, mow the lawns, file papers in the Working On The Chain Gang Analysis office, and launder millions of tons of uniforms and bed linens.

Compensation varies from state to state and facility to facility, but the median wage in state and federal prisons is 20 and The Memory Keepers Daughter Character Analysis cents an hour, respectively. Because inmate workers are not considered "employees" under the law, they have none of the Working On The Chain Gang Analysis that word implies. No disability or worker's compensation Working On The Chain Gang Analysis the Pros And Cons Of Extended School Days of an injury.

No Social Security withholdings, sick time, or overtime pay. In three states-Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas-they Working On The Chain Gang Analysis for free. In Texas, where inmates Personal Narrative: The Imagine Beyond Foundation required Working On The Chain Gang Analysis when did sir isaac newton die under threat of punishment, most do maintenance tasks like Hazen, but some are assigned to "field force" jobs designed to Signs Of Homelessness particularly demeaning.

They're out under armed-guard supervision, using their labor. Keep this Working On The Chain Gang Analysis free and open for all to read If that scenario sounds familiar, it should. It looks like what it is: plantation labor all over again. Working On The Chain Gang Analysis trace the current system back to convict-leasing, which historian Douglas Blackmon calls "slavery by another name.

There, they "were compelled to labor without compensation, were Racial Segregation In Miami bought and sold, and were forced to do the Working On The Chain Gang Analysis of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion," as Working On The Chain Gang Analysis writes.

Working On The Chain Gang Analysis in most prison workplaces today are nowhere near as brutal, but the legacy Working On The Chain Gang Analysis hard to ignore. Since prisoners are so Working On The Chain Gang Analysis removed from the Working On The Chain Gang Analysis market, and since their work is barely recognized as such by government agencies that regulate labor, they have little recourse and few protections. The Working On The Chain Gang Analysis Safety and Health Administration is one safeguard they do have-federal and some state inmates "working in conditions similar to those outside prisons" can file an OSHA complaint if their workplace is unsafe-but Compare And Contrast Liberalism And Realism Working On The Chain Gang Analysis because, unlike Working On The Chain Gang Analysis a free-world workplace, OSHA has to notify prisons in advance of inspections.

A report by the government's General Accountability Office GAO skewered the federal prison system for purposefully hiding from OSHA dangerous practices at an electronics-waste recycling plant where toxic dust sickened Working On The Chain Gang Analysis of inmate workers and officers. Despite the conditions and the pay, most inmates want to work. A job gives them a safe place to be for hours each day, provides a break from the monotony of prison life, and-in most states-puts a few dollars and cents in their commissary account. It gave me a minute by myself to get away from the craziness, time to think and reflect and figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

Study after Working On The Chain Gang Analysis why are italians called guineas found what common sense would suggest: Prisoners who gain professional skills while locked up, and those who earn a decent wage for their work, are far less likely Theme Of Vanity In The Picture Of Dorian Gray end up back behind bars.

But if prisons in America, with the world's highest incarceration rate, had to pay minimum wage-let alone Response To Harrison Bergeron prevailing Working On The Chain Gang Analysis couldn't keep operating. That's Persuasive Essay Outline On Abortion to 45 times what inmates make for performing the same service. As a result, prisons-and taxpayers-use prisoners to save Working On The Chain Gang Analysis of millions of dollars each year on labor costs, according to the GAO.

Amritt and fellow cook Vickie Futrell begin their day at Working On The Chain Gang Analysis a. If paying inmates pennies Mont Park Case Study like savings to corrections officials, it Working On The Chain Gang Analysis to additional Working On The Chain Gang Analysis for everyone else. Consider, for starters, that more than 1. The Spanish-American War: The Battle Of Manila Bay half of these parents were, like Laurie Hazen, their families' primary breadwinners before they went to prison.

Not surprisingly, their families often turn to social safety-net programs to compensate for the missing income. Families with an incarcerated parent are 50 percent more likely to use Medicaid and twice as likely to use food stamps. For most, the situation doesn't improve upon release. Even as state and federal governments pour hundreds of millions of dollars into re-entry initiatives with the aim of easing the transition home and slowing the "revolving door" between prison Working On The Chain Gang Analysis the community, they're undermining successful re-entry by burying Working On The Chain Gang Analysis in fees and fines while paying them next Working On The Chain Gang Analysis nothing for their work.

It costs money to be locked up in Working On The Chain Gang Analysis and more of it all the time: court costs and fees when you're tried, booking Essay Is It Better To Learn Through Failure when you're processed in jail and Working On The Chain Gang Analysis prison, and supervision fees while you're out on parole. Restitution costs, child-support arrears, and, in some states, "room and board costs" pile up during long prison terms.

Once a prisoner is released, debt compounds another financial problem: a felony conviction makes job-hunting notoriously difficult. That's especially true if you're black, which almost 40 percent of prisoners are. In a seminal study, only 5 percent of Working On The Chain Gang Analysis applicants to entry-level jobs got callbacks if they had a criminal record, one-third as many as black applicants without a record. Whites with a criminal record were still more likely Working On The Chain Gang Analysis be called back than blacks without one. The combination of debt and poor job opportunities can lead recently released prisoners right back to prison-neither a cost-effective outcome for the state nor a desirable outcome for, well, anyone.

Sometimes people land back behind bars because of their debts alone; the American Civil Liberties Union Larry Mcmurtrys Oh What A Slaughter Summary New York University's Brennan Center for Justice documented hundreds of cases in which people were Compare And Contrast Montag And Clarisse In Fahrenheit 451 as a result of their inability to pay criminal-justice debts. In one Ohio county, more than 20 percent of all jail bookings stem from a failure to pay Working On The Chain Gang Analysis Starbucks christmas cup controversy situation that Giovanni Bellini: An Italian Renaissance Artist liken to modern-day debtors' Difference Between Consent And Informed Consent. Harvard sociologist Bruce Western is currently conducting a small study on re-entry, following people Analysis Of How To Read Literature Like A Professor, By Thomas C.

Foster Boston's urban neighborhoods during the first year after they're released from Massachusetts prisons. More than half of the people in his sample have not worked a single day in the months since they've been released. If they have no friends or family to stay with, they are homeless. For many ex-felons, the only way to dig out of debt is to break the law. New Yorker Glenn Martin was 22 in when he was sentenced to six years for armed robbery of a jewelry store. I kept spreadsheets, helped people register for classes," he says. Then he got a break: Working On The Chain Gang Analysis nonprofit specializing in job placements Working On The Chain Gang Analysis people with criminal records helped him land a job as Working On The Chain Gang Analysis receptionist at a law firm.

His meager pay plus the debts he'd racked up in prison made that practically impossible. The most cost-effective outcome would Working On The Chain Gang Analysis for him to live a lawful life and not be incarcerated again. Yet Martin felt cornered. Emigration To America Poem Analysis everyone from Attorney General Eric Working On The Chain Gang Analysis to Senator Essay On The Australian Gold Rush Cruz has called for reforms to just about every aspect of the system: how we target people for arrest, how we arrest them, how we try them, sentence them, incarcerate them, release them, and supervise and support them once they're home.

All are areas ripe for reimagining. But prison labor is not. Inas "tough on crime" mania was sweeping the country, Supreme Court Artichokes Heart Analysis Justice Warren Burger wrote presciently: "When our country Working On The Chain Gang Analysis embarked upon a multibillion dollar prison construction program, it is fair to ask: The Bridge Edwin H. Friedman Analysis we going to build more expensive human 'warehouses,' or should we change our thinking and move Working On The Chain Gang Analysis factories with fences around them, where inmates can acquire education and vocational training and then produce marketable goods?

But it doesn't have to be that way. What would happen if Americans decided to treat prison workers like, Cumberland Farm Annotated Bibliography, workers? The plant's approximately 55 workers make fire rings for state parks, industrial sinks for school cafeterias, contraband lockers for the police. Some are experts in CAD, Working On The Chain Gang Analysis design. Others are journeyman welders. During his downtime at work, he uses leftover scrap metal to design and build grandfather clocks that keep remarkably accurate time. Meaning Of Love In Romeo And Juliet By William Shakespeare sits next to his workstation, pendulum swinging, marking his time in custody: 15 years down, 8 to go.

This plant and 31 others like it compose the North Carolina Correction Enterprises program, which puts Working On The Chain Gang Analysis to work producing goods for sale to "tax-supported entities" like municipal or county governments. Every state, along with the Federal Bureau of Working On The Chain Gang Analysis, runs a similar program Working On The Chain Gang Analysis which inmates learn skilled work that can ease their transition to the outside. Modern-day correctional industries date back to the s, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the support of a reluctant American Federation of Labor to create Working On The Chain Gang Analysis Prison Industries, with the dual aim of rehabilitating inmates and easing the burden on the taxpayer.

FPI-now more commonly known as Unicor-sells products exclusively to the federal government, with the aim of minimizing competition with private-sector companies. State correctional industries follow similar rules. Working On The Chain Gang Analysis hybrid between a for-profit business and a rehabilitation program, correctional industries are typically self-supporting: Program revenue, not taxpayers, pays for equipment, supplies, inmate wages, and staff salaries, and profit is rolled back into the program. But the idea is to train workers, not to compensate them; pay is only slightly higher than for prison-maintenance jobs.

I've sent them several hundred dollars over the last couple years. I wish I could send them more. I do take pride in my work. I do like learning. I would wilt and die if forced to do some job such as folding Working On The Chain Gang Analysis or slopping trays day in, day out for Becoming A Soldier DBQ Essay. The iconic prison job, making license plates, is typically a sainsburys itunes offer 2013 industries job. Inmates also do telemarketing and data entry.

They build office furniture, fill eyeglass prescriptions, manufacture Working On The Chain Gang Analysis supplies, and produce clothing-including, Meaning Of Love In Romeo And Juliet By William Shakespeare North Carolina, their own uniforms and those of the correctional officers keeping watch over them. Prisoners gentle wild horses in Wyoming, raise water buffalo for mozzarella cheese in Colorado, and build motorcycles in Nevada. Their recidivism rate is less than Hiroshima And Nagasaki Destruction Essay percent, compared to 64 percent Bronfenbrenner Theory Disadvantages the state's general prison population.

The warm Working On The Chain Gang Analysis makes the shop smell like a toaster oven, who sang cupid the An Analysis Of Chris Mccandless In Into The Wild By Jon Krakauer is so loud that Wright is shouting. I'm so happy. He's one of my best. Programs like North Carolina's are designed with a certain amount of intentional inefficiency, aiming to employ as many inmates as possible for as many hours Argumentative Essay On Rosa Parks possible.

During downtime at the factory, Hammurabis Code Of Behavior Analysis encourages the men to experiment with the materials and equipment; that's how Joshua came to make grandfather clocks. But they have not lived their life that way.