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New prison work program proposed
TIFFANY L. PARKS
Special to the Legal News
Published: July 22, 2014
Rep. Jim Butler has said the billions of dollars spent by taxpayers for the health care, shelter, food and security for inmates will continue to be spent whether or not the inmates work.
“If offenders volunteer to work, and in the process help to shoulder some of their own financial burden to the state which would have been incurred regardless, why would we not act to make this possible? I believe we should,” he said.
For inmates, each day they would spend working in the program, he or she would have time subtracted from their sentence.
Butler, R-Dayton, is sponsoring a bill that would require the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to establish a pilot work program for offenders and operate the program at factories that are not in or on the grounds of a prison or jail.
The program would initially accommodate 50 percent of eligible offenders and eventually expand to include 80 percent of eligible offenders.
The proposed legislation, House Bill 407, is known as the Repayment, Retraining and Reclamation Act.
“This program will alleviate the strain on our budget, and provide rehabilitation to offenders in the form of hard work and responsibility,” Butler said.
Earlier this year, the total number of inmates housed by the DRC topped 50,400.
Over the biennium, Ohio is slated to spend $3.1 billion to house, feed, clothe and provide health care to its incarcerated population.
“The bill requires DRC to establish a new, innovative work program that will significantly lower the costs of incarceration, provide valuable skills and on-the-job training for offenders, improve our trade deficit and create jobs,” Butler said.
“Since the turn of the 20th century, there has been a slow and steady decline in American manufacturing, and there is now an ever-growing list of products that are currently not produced anywhere in this country.”
Under the program, offenders would work 40 hours a week to manufacture good that are not currently being produced within the U.S.
“It is an unfortunate reality that countries like China, Vietnam and Indonesia have been able to undercut our once thriving manufacturing sector by paying workers wages that simply aren’t economically feasible in our country,” he said.
“The small numbers of goods being produced by DRC’s current work program are goods that are currently made elsewhere in the U.S. which compete directly with those made by American businesses. The goods manufactured through the R3 program will be sold on the open market and the revenue generated will help to significantly reduce and offset that $3.1 billion (tagged for the DRC).”
By participating in the pilot program, Butler said offenders would be literally repaying their debt to society.
“Another way HB 407 will reduce the cost of incarceration is by reducing the sentences of the non-violent, low-level offenders who choose to participate in the program,” he said.
“Our prisons are already overcrowded; by providing offenders with an opportunity to earn (emphasis on earn) an early release through hard work instead of simply through “good behavior,” the state will save money and, hopefully, the offenders will come to realize that choosing a course of productive action will benefit them personally.”
The R3 program would be voluntary.
“If they opt not to participate, they will never be forced to work in or join the program. However, offenders should want to volunteer because they will have the opportunity to gain valuable work experience and acquire new skills which will facilitate their return to society,” Butler said.
“Furthermore, by working hard while incarcerated instead of being idle, which is often the case for many inmates, which I saw firsthand on several of my visits to prisons, offenders will gain purpose, self-worth and self-respect.”
Butler said offenders who opt to participate in the program would earn the same nominal wages as they would under the current DRC work program, but a quarter of their earnings would be deposited in individual accounts “so offenders won’t be starting from square one upon their return to society.”
“I have had many law enforcement and corrections professionals tell me that too often, parolees are often doomed to fail from the outset because they come out of jail with nothing to their name,” the lawmaker said.
“(There are) no marketable skills, no recent work history to put on a resume and not even a modest nest egg to help move them toward even an extremely humble future. Consequently, many of them return to their previous bad habits which led to their incarceration in the first place.”
If the pilot program is established, Butler said participating inmates would have an opportunity to mitigate such issues.
“If the R3 program is successful, it has the potential to drastically improve our trade deficit by reclaiming products the country has long since surrendered to exclusively overseas manufacturing,” he said.
“Currently, the U.S. has over two million people incarcerated; if other states start imitating this prison work program model, we will no longer need to import many goods that are currently being produced by international rivals.”
HB 407 is before the House State and Local Government committee.
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