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Federal court rejects call for fair wages for prisoners

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

Court rejects call for fair wages for prisoners Bob Egelko, SF Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, April 12, 2010 After renowned attorney J. Tony Serra spent nine months in a federal prison camp for not paying his taxes, he calculated how much he was paid for watering the camp gardens - 19 cents an hour - and thought it might violate a U.N. standard that says inmates should get fair wages. But the lawsuit that followed in 2007, which sought higher pay for all federal prisoners in California, faced even longer odds than many of the cases in Serra's career, celebrated in the 1989 film "True Believer." On Friday, a federal appeals court delivered a thumbs-down verdict, saying the government can set prison wages at any level, including zero. "Prisoners do not have a legal entitlement to payment for their work," said the Ninth U...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on April 12, 2010 (boomark / email).