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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: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday July 21 2017, @02:41PM (12 children)
As I understand it, one of the biggest problems for people coming out of prison is getting a job. And not only because of their criminal record, but because of a lack of believable work skills. In this sense, having prisoners work absolutely makes sense.
A second aspect is this: it costs money to keep someone in prison. There is no reason why they should not pay a portion of their prison costs in the form of labor. However, this should not be directly tied to the prison budget, rather, prisons should be paid for, and any income from the prisons should flow into the general budget. Anything else would give the prison false incentives. In this same sense, privately run prisons represent huge conflicts of interest.
Finally, without work, WTF are prisoners supposed to do all day? People need activity and purpose. Provide them with something useful to do. Allow them to keep a portion of their earnings, so that they have a positive motivation, and also so that they don't come out of prison dead broke.
Prison is not supposed to be only punishment, it is also supposed to be rehabilitation. Work is, or should be, a huge part of that.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 21 2017, @02:55PM (2 children)
This might work even better if you teach them useful skills instead of milking goats.
Teach them to mine coal, I hear there is a future in that. I hear it from no less than the president of the US.
How about something more useful like hacking. You could even start with simple things like Arduino robot kits like school children use in school.
Or teach them cooking. Real cooking. Not prison cooking. (Put in 55 gallon drum, heat to 5000 degrees for nine minutes, serves 1,200.)
Maybe even offer classes with actual credit, or some kind of certificate for successful completion. Electricity. Plumbing. Auto mechanics.
Of course, then you start to introduce security problems for the prison. Not everyone wants rehabilitation. Some people want to be criminals. That is their career goal. Formed by growing up with the reality of no possible opportunities for them. Something that as a society maybe we should fix to address the prison problem before criminals choose that as a profession.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snospar on Friday July 21 2017, @03:10PM (1 child)
Totally agree, there should be far more education in prisons. Let's face it, a lot of people are in prison because they made dumb decisions or were "stupid enough to get caught". People without skills, on low income jobs, have trouble managing their limited finances and end up doing something daft that eventually lands them in prison. Simple classes on avoiding debt, not getting suckered into expensive contracts (think mobile phone, cable TV, car loans, etc.) and some basic life skills to try and make them aware of the consequences of their actions - if prison hasn't hammered that message home.
For the majority of inmates we're not talking about training them up to be the next super villain, just teaching them how to live without ending up back inside again.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 21 2017, @03:31PM
> Simple classes on avoiding debt [etc.]...
...would be salutary not only during, but before incarceration.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 21 2017, @03:23PM
Charging them room and board when they would rather be evicted is a bit questionable at least. So is paying less than legal minimum wage. Yes, there are arguments for both, but there are enough landmines and perverse incentives to make both a bad ethical risk.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday July 21 2017, @03:40PM (1 child)
When the US incarcerates more people than all other countries on the planet, then no, they shouldn't be paying for the right to be abused by the corrupt authoritarian regime that put them there.
Planting evidence: http://abcnews.go.com/US/bodycam-video-appears-show-baltimore-police-officer-planting/story?id=48723372 [go.com]
Statistics: http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All [prisonstudies.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:37AM
So your solution to police planting evidence, lying in court, corrupt judges, and idiot jurors is to have prisoners sit there and not work while people that have nothing to do with their crime pay 100-200k/year for their living and security expenses. Gotcha. You're a moron.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 21 2017, @04:19PM (4 children)
Seems like the only goat farm that can run around there is the one staffed with cheap prison labor.
Once you get out, will the non-prison goat farm hire a convict?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Saturday July 22 2017, @12:49AM (3 children)
See, there's one of the problems: there aren't any non-prison goat farms, they where driven out of business by the prison goat farm.
Why? Because there are too many "workers" in prison goat farms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:44AM (2 children)
That's cute. You think the dollar the inmate gets paid is how much the goat company spends on them. No retard, the goat company pays a market wage to the prison, which then throws a bone to the inmate after using the money to pay for about 20% of their expenses associated with that prisoner. Knowledge is power. Before posting your little theories, get some.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:17AM
Right, the goat farm will gladly pay the going wage to have prisoners employed. Like there's a shortage of workers in this booming economy.
So is the grid. Feed some though you brain, it's not like is going to male the brain worse than it is now.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:26AM
Here's the bit of knowledge you are after. If this is the power you are after, feel free to feed it to your flashlight then.
TFA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday July 21 2017, @05:08PM
The alleged lack of believable work skills something that should be called into question. As in, somebody who's trying to hire for completely unskilled labor like pushing a broom or making sandwiches looks at the criminal record, looks at the skin color of the person trying to get the job, and says "Oh, they don't have the skills to do it." Heck, I know first-hand that some employers will make excuses like that even for non-white guys without a criminal record. The claim about skills is an HR-weasel way to get around the fact that they simply don't want to hire that person for reasons which have nothing to do with their qualifications.
For white collar jobs, instead of claiming the person doesn't have the right skills, they'll say that the person wasn't a fit for their company culture.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.