Re: "This is an IDEA that is making the rounds again (having prisoners work
in some sort of farm setting.  Make sure that it is not done with evil
intentions and Amnesty International may give out awards to USA Prisons
rather than dis them as being the American Gulag."

I think the issue is not "evil" as much as putting profit before
rehabilitation. It's the raising of food for the hungry, not for money to
fill the warden's or some politician's pockets.  The issue is will and
oversight. 

As always, I prefer family farming to anything else. The family farm was the
basis of our democracy when our republic was founded. I wish there had been
a family farm amendment in our consitution (alongside the right to bear
arms.) The gleaning process and use of excess production from family farms
to fight hunger

That being said, we need to rehabiltate our prisoners and we have a level of
hunger in our country that shames us all. 

Citizens need to hold our elected officials and the prison administrators to
strict accountability standards - there is no reason why state land can't be
used to raise good low-cost food for our nation's hungry and that convicts
be given the opportunity to give something back to society. Convicts are
deployed to train "helper and seeing eye dogs" and other positive products.
It's time to change the "stamping out license plates" stereotype.



-----Original Message-----
From: a.h.steely [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 8:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [cg] concerning farms run by prisoners


In the state of Pennsylvania, the prisons were set up to sew uniforms, farm
food, make furniture, etc. for all the state facilities.  Those included the
prisons, the state hospitals for the insane and state run orphanages.  That
all ceased in the 1970's through 1982.  The last prison farm was White Hall
in Camp Hill which had the infamous riots in 1989 after being renamed as
Camp Hill Correctional Institution.  I met a man who received his training
in running construction equipment at White Hall.  He told me that the last
of the huge tractors and trucks that had been used to farm and transport the
food stuff were buried in 1984.  He lived in Fulton County where I did at
the time.  The AFCSME union took over the unionizing of the state workers
about 1984.  The federal laws were making it very difficult for any work to
be done by the prisons that would interfere with the sale of goods by union
labor to state facilities.  In 1988 the election of Gov. Casey sealed the
end of truly rehabilitative activities in our prisons.  I realize that
states like Georgia used prison labor in chain gangs and it was horrid but
the state was provided with the needs of the state offices through the
prison industry which did rehab people to some extent.  White Hall is
supposed to have had a cannery also.

Now the taxes go up and Jesse Jackson says that it costs more to send a guy
to Attica than to Harvard according to one quote I read in a Criminal
Justice text.

This is an IDEA that is making the rounds again (having prisoners work in
some sort of farm setting.  Make sure that it is not done with evil
intentions and Amnesty International may give out awards to USA Prisons
rather than dis them as being the American Gulag.

Sincerely,
Helen Steely
Hbg., Pa.
(graduate of the Shippensburg Univ. Criminal Justice undergrad program)




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