Hampton
26th September 2003, 17:18
Up in San Francisco State University's procurement offices, a thick catalog sits on a small conference room table. Almost one-third of the catalog more than 90 pages is devoted to office, library and dormitory furniture with distinguished-sounding names such as the Heritage Line and the Vanguard Line. There is even one type of office modular system dubbed Century 2000. The catalog advertises page after shiny page of credenzas, executive desks, computer stations, bookshelves, lounge furniture and chairs. One sheet shows small squares of actual fabric swatches, boasting such colors as claret, vertigo, robin marine, and cameo.
Legislators created the PIA in 1983 as a successor to an older program, the California Correctional Industries Commission (CIC), because they felt that California's prison industries needed to be run "more like a business."
The PIA's labor costs are dirt cheap: inmates earn between 30 and 95 cents per hour, and the PIA is not required to pay them for holidays or provide workers' compensation, sick leave, health insurance or other benefits also monies earned by inmates are subject to a variety of mandatory deductions, depending upon the specific kind of work program and amount of wages earned.
The PIA does not pay local, state or federal income taxes.
The PIA holds a captive customer base: state agencies are required by law to buy from the PIA.
The PIA can set prices for its products at whatever levels it chooses, and the PIA's are often higher than those on the private market for comparable goods.
If there is one thing conservative politicians hate more than liberal attitudes toward crime, it's the notion that criminals have it easy in prison: watching TV and eating three hot meals a day on taxpayers' money. For this reason, the California legislature, like other state legislatures around the country, passed laws in 1985 and 1992 that required all able-bodied prisoners to work, necessitating the expansion of the prison industries program to provide the necessary jobs. Part of this is the idea that prisoners are paying for their say while they're in prison.
On average it cost $36,131 to house an inmate for one year, is it at all feasible that they will make and sell $36,131 worth of chairs and desks in one year. Not likely, which is the reason why most of the factories in prisons lose money each year.
With the upcoming California governor elections it's a wonder why these issues aren't brought up. Ever since the three strikes law was signed in 1994 which mandates that the mandatory sentence for any new felony conviction is 25 years to life. Eighty-five percent of those sentenced under the law in California faced prison for a nonviolent offense. Two years after the law went into effect, there were twice as many people imprisoned under the three-strikes law for possession of marijuana as for murder, rape and kidnapping combined. More than 80 percent of those sentenced under the three-strikes law are African-American and Latino.
http://www.prisonactivist.org/prison-labor/
http://www.prisonactivist.org/pipermail/pr...ary/003509.html (http://www.prisonactivist.org/pipermail/prisonact-list/2001-February/003509.html)
http://www.pia.ca.gov/piawebdev/index.html
http://www.state.nj.us/deptcor/index.html
http://www.kcitoday.com/
Legislators created the PIA in 1983 as a successor to an older program, the California Correctional Industries Commission (CIC), because they felt that California's prison industries needed to be run "more like a business."
The PIA's labor costs are dirt cheap: inmates earn between 30 and 95 cents per hour, and the PIA is not required to pay them for holidays or provide workers' compensation, sick leave, health insurance or other benefits also monies earned by inmates are subject to a variety of mandatory deductions, depending upon the specific kind of work program and amount of wages earned.
The PIA does not pay local, state or federal income taxes.
The PIA holds a captive customer base: state agencies are required by law to buy from the PIA.
The PIA can set prices for its products at whatever levels it chooses, and the PIA's are often higher than those on the private market for comparable goods.
If there is one thing conservative politicians hate more than liberal attitudes toward crime, it's the notion that criminals have it easy in prison: watching TV and eating three hot meals a day on taxpayers' money. For this reason, the California legislature, like other state legislatures around the country, passed laws in 1985 and 1992 that required all able-bodied prisoners to work, necessitating the expansion of the prison industries program to provide the necessary jobs. Part of this is the idea that prisoners are paying for their say while they're in prison.
On average it cost $36,131 to house an inmate for one year, is it at all feasible that they will make and sell $36,131 worth of chairs and desks in one year. Not likely, which is the reason why most of the factories in prisons lose money each year.
With the upcoming California governor elections it's a wonder why these issues aren't brought up. Ever since the three strikes law was signed in 1994 which mandates that the mandatory sentence for any new felony conviction is 25 years to life. Eighty-five percent of those sentenced under the law in California faced prison for a nonviolent offense. Two years after the law went into effect, there were twice as many people imprisoned under the three-strikes law for possession of marijuana as for murder, rape and kidnapping combined. More than 80 percent of those sentenced under the three-strikes law are African-American and Latino.
http://www.prisonactivist.org/prison-labor/
http://www.prisonactivist.org/pipermail/pr...ary/003509.html (http://www.prisonactivist.org/pipermail/prisonact-list/2001-February/003509.html)
http://www.pia.ca.gov/piawebdev/index.html
http://www.state.nj.us/deptcor/index.html
http://www.kcitoday.com/