Via Politico: Ala.: Inmates can replace Hispanic farmhands.
Déjà vu All Over Again (Didn’t we Try This in Georgia? Edition)
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19 responses to “Déjà vu All Over Again (Didn’t we Try This in Georgia? Edition)”
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@Doug Mataconis: Exactly.
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If they had been good workers, they’d probably not have resorted to petty crime and thus would not be in jail to begin with.
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Fair point. But I guess some in Georgia that they could apply the logic that uses some inmates to do things like pick up trash on the side of the highway — something I see done in New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia in my travels up and down I-95 — and apply that to farming. Obviously, they didn’t think it through.
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Side note to all of this… NPR’s All Things Considered Saturday had an exceptional feature on the current situation in Alabama. The transcript… especially the interviews with farmers points out the problems with trying to find replacement labor this late in the game (that not only is this hard work, but there are skills involved in doing it and that most people are not in good enough shape to jump in and do it successfully — this is not unlike jumping right from the couch to running a marathon):
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=141183030Even if one supported the legislation, I have to wonder who thought the timing of this — rolling out halfway through the harvesting season — was a good idea?
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@mattb:
I’m not sure about Alabama, but in Georgia the legislature, dominated as it is by members from metro districts, didn’t really consult farming interests before passing their legislation.
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Some gullible fools assumed that if the states threw out the illegal aliens, the market would demand that wages for farmwork would rise high enough to make it appealing. Instead the Southern states have decided to go in for what is essentially slave labor. And what a brilliant system it is — the state arrests and imprisons people, then leases them out to private businesses at some rate they choose, then pay the prisoners the usual 25 cents an hour or whatever for their labor.
It’s slavery with a happy face. Today’s Republican party.
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But I guess some in Georgia that they could apply the logic that uses some inmates to do things like pick up trash on the side of the highway
There’s no real consequence if the prisoners do a bad job at picking up litter, so it doesn’t really matter if they’re any good at it.
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Yes they did try this in Georgia, and the farmers found the inmates to be not very good workers.
Technically, they were probationers (not that it makes all that much difference).
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@Doug Mataconis:
This is pretty much the case in much of the country (and my guess too). -
@WR:
Thank you WR for saying this
Instead the Southern states have decided to go in for what is essentially slave labor.
Everyone else seems to want to focus on the poor quality of the prison workers and gloss over the fact that is is just another form of slave labor..
When you add this in with all the recent voting rights changes they’ve made, I guess the no-confederate Republican party is really trying to take us back to Reconstruction.
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@WRLoviatar
Would you also consider the state’s that use prisoners for litter patrol to be slavery?
My understanding is that there is some pay received for this work that is placed in the inmate’s prison/jail account so they’re technically not working for free
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@Doug Mataconis: I have mixed feelings about the litter patrol, but it doesn’t seem to be terribly hard work (from what I’ve seen while driving by). The difference is that in this case prisoners — who are generally paid something like 25 cents an hour — are being used to replace workers who were making at least eight dollars, and whose replacements clearly would cost a lot more than that.
There is also the difference that roadside clean-up directly improves the community, and can be seen as a kind of reparations to the community their crimes harmed. This is renting essentially unpaid labor to private businesses, with the state keeping the profits.
Oh, it’s my understanding the slave owners gave their slaves a shack to live in and sometimes even their food, so technically they weren’t working for free, either. They were still slaves.
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@WR: I will say this about liter patrol: that can at least be construed as “community service” in ways that picking veggies can’t.
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Would you also consider the state’s that use prisoners for litter patrol to be slavery?
In Doug’s mind using prison labor to benefit the community is equivalent to using prison labor to benefit a private enterprise. And as long as the person being used for slave labor is paid some minimal fee its “technically not working for free” so its not really slave labor.
.WOW
.There is something truly and pathologically wrong with the modern conservative party.
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@Loviatar: I’m not sure Doug was coming out in favor of this so much as asking a question, and I’m certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Because having the state incarcerate citizens and then lend them out as low cost prison labor is a hallmark of Fascist governments–for fear of invoking Mr. Godwin, I will not mention “arbeit mach frei” — and Doug, for all that his politics frequently infuriates me, is a libertarian, not a Fascist.
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@Doug Mataconis:
I once had a coworker who was in jail for 2 weeks. He said going on the litter patrol was a voluntary thing and that he preferred it over spending the day in the jail. I didn’t ask if he got paid.
