Question about labor camps?

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LandonJ

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In Canada or the u.s, would it be a good idea to have labor camps for prisoners to produce goods that we mostly get from china at minimum wage instead of getting it from the workers who get pennies instead of dollars.
 
At one time, this was a common practice in the USA; I'm not clear on why it stopped. Sheriff Joe in Arizona is bringing these traits back for prisoners; Hooray for Sheriff Joe!!!
 
The Federal Correctional Service of Canada has a prisoner training program that teaches inmates to produce furniture that is then used by other Federal Government agencies. The chairs, tables, cabinets and couches are not sold to the public so there is no competition with commercial furniture makers.

The inmates also operate farms, where they grow food that is used by the prison kitchens, to feed the prison population. Obviously, these prisoners are low risk to escape.

Canada Post has a contract with the Federal prisons, to make and distribute mail bags and mail shipping containers, as well as sand bags for the Canadian Forces, and emergency preparedness groups, for flood control.

So Yes, In Canada we use prisoner workers.

Jim b. Toronto.
 
Thats an interesting question. Prisoner labor is something you have to be careful about as it can easily become slave labor and in the past this has been a problem. The problem becomes bad when a private company utilizes prisoner labor and requires more labor than is available. There becomes a motive than for the state to arrest someone regardless of whether or not they committed a crime to satisfy the labor demand. You might think this is alarmist anti-government thinking but in the past that is exactly what happened here in the United States.
Public service labor is a separate matter. There is less money involved and mostly the prisoners are simply a boon and not a necessity. If there is a shortage of prisoners cleaning roads for instance than it simply takes longer to pick up the trash but if a company is obligated to deliver 10,000 units of a commodity than that company must deliver or face monetary fines so there is a strong economic incentive to maximize their prisoner labor by whatever means are necessary. Its generally a bad idea to mix the powers of government with the motivations of private business. We often do it but we also usually suffer as a nation when we do. Housing market is a prime example of that philosophy biting us in the butt.
There are of course other economic reasons for why this practice should be avoided but I am sure others will point those out.
 
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