Hochul Proposes Bringing Back Private Prison Labor

[douglas9]

Vidal Guzman worked as a mason, a porter, and a food server during his four years of incarceration. At Riverview Correctional Facility, a New York state prison near the Canadian border, he earned 16 cents per hour working in the cafeteria; his paycheck was around $3.50 per week. When he went to the prison’s commissary for the first time, he remembered scrounging together money to buy one stamp and two packs of ramen noodles.

“It’s a very embarrassing moment when you’re looking at commissary and you’re dividing pennies to see how much you have,” Guzman told New York Focus.

As part of her executive budget, Governor Kathy Hochul included a proposal that takes aim at low prison wages—not by paying them more in their current jobs, where they’re employed by the state, but by passing a constitutional amendment to overturn New York’s century-old ban on private employment of incarcerated people.

Hochul argues that private employers would pay higher wages—the same wages that would be offered for comparable work outside prison—and offer more job training. The measure is part of a broad agenda she has proposed, dubbed “Jails to Jobs,” to reform the state’s reentry system and help people secure jobs and housing after they’re released from prison or jail.

The proposal has led to something of a fissure in the criminal justice reform movement.

https://www.nysfocus.com/2022/02/23/hochul-proposes-bringing-back-private-prison-labor/

[Voltaire2]

1. Slavery is wrong.

[IrishAfricanAmerican]

2. WTF?!!

[Rhiannon12866]

3. No.

[wnylib]

4. Wrong move in so many ways.

It sounds good that prisoners would have private jobs with higher pay than 16 cents an hour, but the reality would be exploitation of prisoners and a lowering of wages in general paid by private companies to all their employees, both in and out of prison. Why pay a decent wage to their employees in the general population when they can pay prisoners lower wages and profit off of prisoners from not having to provide benefits?

If Hochul really wants to try this, set a decent pay standard that companies have to pay, including health benefits that prisons have to acknowledge, plus skills assessments, job training, and being an actual employee of the private company.

Her plan sounds like a bad idea in general, but also will not help her in an election year.