Prisoners should have to work off their incarceration expenses: room and board, meals, clothing/laundry, electricity, heating/cooling, water for showers, waste disposal costs, health care, etc. No more free rides for having broken the law. In addition, hourly work load is based on a system that considers several factors: criminal record (each subsequent incarceration results in more work hours,) degree of crime committed (the harder the criminal, the more work hours,) behavior during incarceration (incentive to not cause trouble, and to help others). The result: Inmates have less time to cause trouble, and waste electricity on television and internet. More time: dedicated to overall health and physical fitness thus reducing or eliminating health care costs.
I agree
Voting is Disabled
93 votes
Rank107
Idea#2161
This idea is active.
Vote Activity Show
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
-
Agreed2 years ago
(latest 20 votes)
Similar Ideas Show
Ideas to Make Other Parts of Government More Efficient and Effective
»
Feedback Score
14
Rank1598
Add your comment
for Idea: Health Care reform
Increasing Trade, Exports, and Overall Competitiveness
»
Feedback Score
14
Rank1598
Comments (11)
-
When those who are incarcerated work, learn a skill, learn to read, everyone is better off. Lack of parenting, lack of education, lack knowledge of proper nuitrition and physical exercise got each individual in this mess. Nothing would be better than for people to learn and earn while in prison. Learning to read, learning personal responsibility and anger management should be part of the rehabiitation process and WE should not resent paying for it (or getting them to pay for it, for that matter, through their labor). Giving prisoners better conditions that are condusive to educating or re-educating, work with your mind and your body, learn personal responsibilty--it either costs society, or.... it still costs society.
0 -
Also the benefit of giving them better job skills/work ethic to help them move on and be successful upon release.
0 -
what work do they do? Inmates need to be trained and employed on jobs that will be available on the outside. employers will need to be given incentives to hire the inmates. Neighborhoods will have to be consulted, to make sure no-one objects if a work operation is opened in their area. Safehouses and prisons always create protest because they sometimes lower property values if they are opened in a neighborhood is a popular, possibly mistaken, impression. Excellant idea but needs work at federal, state and county/city levels.
0 -
I submitted the original idea post, and in response to "what work do they do?" One innovative idea is a prison garden. I learned about this listening to books on tape. Please see:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/is-it-time-to-close-the-prisons/seeds-of-change
http://www.cityfarmer.org/prison.html
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/prison-gardens-growing-trend.html
0 -
Wow! What great sites ! That is TOTALLY the answer to the dilemna of how to cure the revolving door of prisoners returning to prison because society rejects the fact that they have been rehabiltated. And simply, the person has no marketable skill. Gardening, landscaping, caring for the land is the answer. It is as back-breaking a job as any you'll find, but the resulting feeling of accomplishment is enormous. Feed the prison population and feed the homeless with the bounty.
Every prison must have available land, they are at the city's outskirts. If not, there is raised-bed gardening, that can be done in pockets of sun. What working with one's hands can teach, these people have missed. Burning off energy, seeing fruits of one's labor, teaching and being taught, the abscence of those things landed them in jail to begin with. Thank you for sharing these websites...not sure how we can get them in the hands of movers and shakers, but we have to try.
We can't expect that state officers are any different than the mean prison superintendants you see in movies. Think about the governors in the news at this moment, does it seem they would be willing to change the prison system for any reason?
Teaching gardening and landscaping to prisoners has only positives for the prison population and the comumunity at large. This has to be implemented in every state---the money saving because of food production and the transportation costs saved is enormous. What great sites---thank you.
0 -
Prisoners do work on the farms, grounds, laundry, kitchen, etc. for anything they wish to purchase like tampons, tunafish, tv, etc. If there were work there would be less people in prison. Remember the devil makes work for idle hands? I belive they should be offered training programs too but most prisons are so crowded that they are sleeping in the gyms and there is no budget for it.
0 -
No budget for it is right...as long as we depend on legislators whose middle name is Windbag--they can't find any solution for any dilemna. They don't fund schools properly, prisons come at the bottom of any list. We know what doesn't work. Recidivism costs every taxpayer. The answer is teaching prisoners marketable skills...teach 'em building trades. They can build schools, roads, expand prisons. The It Won't Work mentality is oldthink....We have to acknowledge what does work. Nobody gets out of this prison without learning how to read. Make them Learn by Doing, is the answer. Marketable skills, payback for what they destroyed, with a percentage going back to the victim first and the state for room and board, that kind of thinking will break the cycle--pay for what you have destroyed, that should teach you not to repeat your errors. Society has to look at itself too. Many people being released whose DNA did not match. There are people in prisons serving 40 yrs for a rape, the victim has forgiven, it's time to release the person. There must be a large percentage of people who have been rehabilitated, society has a responsibilty to acknowledge it. It is costing us too much to keep doing it the same old way.
0 -
It is interesting to see how excited people are in terms of their overweening enthusiasm for inflicting punishment on others. As if conviction is the same thing as being guilty in reality! There are conservative estimates of 10,000 wrongful convictions annually. Exoneration accounts for a miniscule percentage of your falsely convicted brothers and sisters. This doesn't even begin to address the fact that imprisonment is substantially repackaged Jim Crow since the Civil Rights era. So the big solution is to heap on more punishment instead of demanding a more functional system. And nobody seems to have a problem with the fact that some of our biggest criminals causing global economic collapse and/or leading us into false wars are rich beyond imagination and roaming free. Finally, prisons are big business. Look at what profits did in an especially egregious case, in Wilkes-Barre - what they did to their own teen population throughout 2000's. Maybe for some people understanding only comes from walking in those shoes themselves.
0 -
There are plenty of tasks inmates can do. In fact, some states already have "Prison Industries" like Nevada. Inmates learn skills that they can then use when released.
0 -
Prison Industries with staff receiving a Law Enforcement retirement. Jobs..20 inmates to a toilet. A job assignment or promoting nmate industries may look good but it comes with a cost. Save your money and spend it on your youth. Provide oppourtunities outside institutions during incarceration to inmates who deserve it.
0 -
They should also have to pay for their health care and dental by working in the system
0