I believe that there should be a federal law requiring all prisons to turn a profit. Prisons, the way I see it, have huge manpower at their disposal and should be factories. All prisoners should be assigned jobs and required to work to earn money, with which they pay their rent, buy their food, pay taxes and so on. They can be paid .20 an hour to produce coffee makers for instance. It does not matter, as long as they are producing a commercially viable product which can be sold domestically or abroad to support their prison system.
Granted, this is a complicated idea, but some incarnation of it very doable and in my mind, very important.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of young men behind bars who grew up living off the welfare system and who have never held a job, paid taxes, and don't know anything about being a constructive member of society. They are thrown in prison (usually at very young ages) and exist, whether comfortably or not, for a period of years and are then released into society where they go right back to crime in many cases.
I believe these people should be taught to get up in the morning, report to work, do their job, get paid and buy what they need. If they want to get fed, they better be able to buy food from the prison kitchen. If they save their pennies and want to upgrade to a better cell, as long as they can pay the rent for a better cell, let them spend their money on it. They can also earn some money to pay restitution to their victims. Prison time served is only counted against days worked, so if a guy get sentenced to two years, he as to report to work for two years. Any day he does not report to work is not counted and so if a prisoner refuses to work, he is sitting in prison permanently.
I talk about this idea with friends and always hear the "slavery" argument. This does not turn prisoners into slaves, it teaches them how a real, functioning society works and what will be expected of them when they are released. We taxpayers should not be paying for some 3 million healthy souls to sit behind bars and wait out their sentences. Let the prison system earn some money for our country, and I will bet when these guys get out, they will be much less likely to return, and if they do, we will have a job waiting for them.
