Prisoners should be required to work while serving their time

To begin, I apologize for my grammatical errors. That was an oversight on my part, and I will do my best to be clearer for you. I will also attempt to address your issues in the same order in which you laid them out. To first address your concerns about why I believe your proposition to be inefficient. I use the term "inefficient" to describe how your proposed idea, to make inmates work to earn their keep while incarcerated, offers a limited solution to the ultimate goal of inmates working in order to pay for their living costs. It is inefficient because you have not offered any actual solution to how inmates will be able to work in order to earn their keep that is different than current programs. Many inmates across the country are already working in jobs with-in the prisons, some are bussed to off-site jobs, and many are eligible for work-release programs. All of these pre-existing programs allow inmates to earn minimal wages, which are delegated to cover court related costs and judgment mandated costs. Until you can describe an actual plan that is different from the already existing programs, and that has more beneficial results, than your proposed plan is inefficient. I agree with you when you asked, "how ethical is it for someone on the outside to be forced to pay for a prisoner's way?". It is not necessarily ethical for the government to force us to pay for the cost of incarceration, but my point is that we will be paying for it not matter what. Where do you think the wages earned by the inmate's labor will come from? Like previously stated by me, inmates eligible to leave prison grounds for work release already do so. The majority of other prisoners are in prisons and separated from society because they cannot be trusted to safely live and work amongst regular society. Therefore the jobs they are eligible for will be prison appointed jobs, which are funded by taxpayers. The last point I will make concerning how ethical it is for taxpayers to be forced to pay for prisoners' living costs is that I, as a taxpayer, am paying for a prisoner's basic needs while they are safely separated from society. Versus having no prison system to keep them separated from us, just so that they were eligible to earn a living to support them. To force inmates to work in order to eat, have shelter to sleep under, and be clothed is not unreasonable. Like you said, "As a person in the society of America we are expected to take care of ourselves, working, schooling and the like." However, to only pay them less than a dollar an hour and still force them to cover these costs through the wages they are able to earn is unethical. They have lost their rights to exist in society, but they are still human beings that need basics to survive. This brings me to your last two concerns about me mentioning taxes paying their wages and minimum wages. I really have addressed this concern in the last two paragraphs. But you mention that the inmates would not be working for an actual wage. I am aware that they will not be receiving actual money, but it is important to make a comparison to the cost of living in terms of monetary compensation. There must be a monetary value assigned to the unit of measurement used to evaluate the worth of their work. If it costs around $22,000 to keep and inmate, then we must determine how much they have to work in order to earn the $22,000. This is exactly how it works in real society too. No matter the determined worth of their work, we still are faced with the practical reality of who will pay the earned money to the prisons to care for the inmates. It is not the issue of actual funds concerned here, but where will the finds come from? We could send them to install solar panels on a plot of federal desert, but that would still be paid from designated public funds- taxes. Even private corporations who win the bids for programs such as these are paid by the allocated federal funds. And the cost to train prisoners to set solar panels up is an added cost that the State must take on, as well as the extra cost of hiring extra guards to monitor the inmates. And on a side note, this would take away useful jobs from free Americans in order to hire cheap labor. Much like the outsourcing we already participate in to save money as a nation. Lastly, I will retract my statements about states inability to monitor safe working environments. Only because it is based on recent past experiences similar to the incidents in GA's prison systems, but that is all based on opinion and not conclusive fact. So I am willing to rely on my other arguments. Now that I have addressed your definitional and clarity concerns, at least I hope I have, I ask you once again to try and actually give a reasonable proposition to how inmates can effectively and ethically earn a reasonable equivalent to an income that will support their living costs while incarcerated?