According to the Christian Science Monitor, farmers are turning to prisoners to harvest their fields, at wages ($2.00 per hours) even an illegal immigrant might turn down. The trend is a result of the crackdown on those very illegal immigrants.
We already have the highest documented prison population in the world. If we find ourselves needing a bigger supply of near slave labor than we can look forward to even larger prison populations. It is a fact that incarceration rates in this country are not driven solely, or even largely, by crime rates.The prison construction companies, private prisons and the prison guard unions lobby for tougher laws and mandatory prison terms, both of which, coincidentally, result in more prison construction, more prisons and more (and better paid) union members. It has created a vicious cycle as those political players seek more prisoners to satisfy their ever increasing appetites. Imagine the pressure there will be to create a new stock of impressed labor if the farmworker trend catches on.
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