The New Labor Force: Jailbirds?

Despite its superficial appeal, Proposition 139, the Prison Inmate Labor Initiative, is a doubly defective measure and ought to be rejected by California’s voters.

As penology, its central notion--that enforced labor contributes to rehabilitation--is 200 years old and long ago discredited. As fiscal policy, its projected benefits are entirely speculative and its potential pitfalls all too clear.

Proposition 139 proposes to amend the state Constitution to allow the Department of Corrections and county officials running local jails to enter into joint ventures with private companies that would hire inmate labor. The legislative analyst reports that these private companies “would be allowed to lease real property on prison grounds at or below market rates.” They also “would be allowed a tax credit of 10% of the amount of wages paid to each inmate.”

Wages, at least in the state prisons, are supposed to be comparable to those paid free workers for similar tasks, though no benefits will be paid. The director of the Department of Corrections, acting solely on his or her own discretion, will be authorized to deduct up to 80% of the inmate laborers’ pay to defray the cost of their incarceration and for other purposes. The measure leaves the terms under which inmates will be employed in county jails to be established by entirely unspecified “local ordinances.”

While the legislative analyst’s report says that Proposition 139 “would likely result in net savings to the state,” it also says their magnitude “is impossible to quantify.” It also says it is impossible to calculate the measure’s direct or indirect fiscal impact on state or local governments or on “the number of jobs in the private sector.”

In the 18th Century, when John Howard and his fellow English reformers conceived the modern penitentiary, they thought forced labor would be one of its pillars. That--along with another of their precepts, universal solitary confinement--soon was abandoned because it was ineffective and, invariably, subjected the inmates to abuse. There is no reason for California to repeat their failed experiment, especially since even if it succeeds, it will do so at the expense of law-abiding workers forced to compete with convicts.