NPR visits a prison goat farm that was the subject of an activist's ire back in 2015:
Whole Foods loved [Jim Schott's] cheese. His company [Haystack Mountain] grew. It also changed. Ten years ago, Haystack Mountain started buying milk from a farm in a prison. Schott doesn't recall telling Whole Foods or his other customers about that change in the Haystack Mountain story. In any case, Schott felt that it was a good thing — "a model of good prison management."
Then, in 2015, a prison reform activist named Michael Allen sent a letter to John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods. Allen demanded that Whole Foods stop selling Haystack Mountain's cheese because it was made, in part, using the labor of prisoners earning pennies per hour. The way Allen sees it, Haystack was "taking advantage of helpless, powerless individuals. They're fair game for corporations to make money off of. And I just told [Mackey] that we wanted him to get out of that business."
Many things besides cheese are made in prisons. Across the country, tens of thousands of inmates work for businesses that have set up operations inside prison walls. They make flags and furniture. Most of the time, they attract little attention. People may feel differently about something they eat, though, especially a boutique food like goat cheese. To Allen's amazement and delight, Whole Food caved to his demands. In a statement, the company said that some of its customers weren't comfortable with products made by prisoners, so it would no longer sell them.
The inmates are still milking those goats, though. I was curious about this farm, and set up a visit.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Friday July 21 2017, @02:19PM (7 children)
yeah, having taxpayers spend over 100k per prisoner as they sit there, eat, look at the wall, and work out is a much better way to go. sorry bud - I don't give a fuck about the "incentive" crap. learn about the separation of powers (I recommend finishing 5th grade for that) - specifically the executive an the judicial. and if there's a problem where the judicial gets money from corporations administered by ties to the executive, well that problem needs to be fixed.
In the meanwhile, my opinion is this: we put you in a prison, you work for free, every day, or you don't get to eat and you die. good thing this is a step in that direction.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday July 21 2017, @03:37PM (6 children)
How do you explain China with 4x our population, have a half million FEWER prisoners than we do. You can go on blaming the prisoners, but maybe the problem is our government and those who support it. http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All [prisonstudies.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 21 2017, @04:39PM (3 children)
China executes a lot more people than we do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States#Lethal_injection_era [wikipedia.org]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21 2017, @06:43PM (2 children)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 21 2017, @07:09PM (1 child)
Note that that 5000 is in a single year...3.5x as much in one year as the U.S. executed in the last 41. But sure, the U.S. locking up drug offenders for a few years is exactly commensurate to China executing thousands of basically yoga practitioners [wikipedia.org] for their organs to transplant.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21 2017, @09:32PM
You're right, the U.S. executes far fewer people, and for far better reasons: mental illness, mental retardation, poverty, and race.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 21 2017, @11:39PM
Underreporting their number of prisoners. It's not like there are any consequences to the Chinese to lying about how many people they put in prison.
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Saturday July 22 2017, @01:23AM
I don't. I and other people are talking about something else - not your topic.