Much of the prison population is illiterate, farm work is a learned low
skill profession that does not require literacy. Individuals would be
outside growing food which would provide emmence psychological and self
esteem benefits as well as practical job skills for their futures after
prison. The United States is increasingly experiencing a bulge in the
prison population, obviously the deterent factor of prison life is not
working. It is a cyclical problem which requires major social and
political overhaul. I have visited prisons and attended programs run by
the inmates. With increasing budget cuts, prisoners have less to do
inside of prisons and are becoming bored and angry. What happens when
they are released? How are they any better off?
I know there are several programs that work with prisoners to create
gardens and some agriculture, like those projects out in San Francisco run
by Cathrine Sneed. I'm curious if there are any farmers out there, who
contract out to prisoners, and how open growers are to this idea.
Prison labor for construction may have it's merits, but you can't eat a
highway.
Shoshanah Inwood
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail