Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

Risks, rewards of inmate labor and the Thirteenth Amendment

I noticed several recent articles about the use of prisoner labor (both from TDCJ and local jails) to do free work for municipalities, a policy that sounds good on its face but in practice is a two-edged sword, with added security concerns, staffing requirements, a greater risk of escape, and potential displacement of free world workers. See:Benefits of inmate labor, Huntsville ItemHays Sheriff puts inmates to work at Hays jail to save money, Austin American StatesmanSentence to Serve program is one more way to do more with less, Caledonia (MN) ArgusBack in the 19th century and into the 20th, Texas prisons completely paid for themselves by hiring out what amounted to slave labor to private employers at cut rates. In fact, from the perspective of terminology in the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, it was literally slave labor...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 31, 2011 (boomark / email).