[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 23, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S322-S323]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                        RULES INHIBIT RETRAINING

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, Pete Du Pont, former Member of the 
House and former Governor of Delaware, chairs the National Center for 
Policy Analysis. Recently he had an op-ed piece in the Washington Times 
about giving prisoners skills and giving them a chance to work which I 
ask to be printed in full in the Record.
  I don't know how this gets worked out, but there really is a need to 
face this problem. And it is a need that should be worked out with 
labor unions and people who are trying to protect other workers.
  We hear a great deal about slave labor in China producing things. I 
remember a conversation I had with the late Chief Justice Warren Burger 
in which he said there is another aspect of this. First of all, China 
has nowhere near the numbers of people in prison that we have in 
prison. But while they are in prison they are required to work and 
produce things, and it reduces the recidivism rate.
  Obviously, the restrictions on freedom in China have something to do 
with the lower prison rate, but many nations with a great deal of 
freedom have a tiny fraction of our incarceration rate.
  I urge my colleagues to read the Pete Du Pont article. There are no 
simple answers but the answer we have now is simplistic and wrong.
  The article follows:

                        Rules Inhibit Retraining

       Most people would agree that if prisoners learned a skill 
     while they were in jail they could more easily get a job when 
     they got out, and that an ex-prisoner with a job is less 
     likely to commit another crime. Since nearly one-half of 
     people released from prison return to prison within three 
     years, job skills could mean a significant decline in the 
     crime rate.
       The problem is that most productive prison work--other than 
     food or laundry work within the prison itself--is against the 
     law.
       In 1936, Congress banned convict labor on federal contracts 
     exceeding $10,000 in value. In 1940, the Ashurst-Sumners Act 
     made it a federal crime to transport convict-made goods in 
     interstate commerce. And many state legislatures have enacted 
     laws to prohibit the sale of convict-made goods within their 
     borders. States like New York compromised and adopted the 
     ``state-use'' system, which permitted convicts to manufacture 
     goods for sale to governmental agencies 

[[Page S323]]
     only, which provides a very limited market for the fruits of convict 
     labor.
       These statutes were a form of protectionism--to protect 
     providers of goods and services in the free market from 
     having to compete with convict labor. Small businesses and 
     labor unions view such competition as unfair, and have 
     successfully prevented relaxation of the statutes. When 
     Congress tried to change the laws in 1979, the best it could 
     do was allow prisoner work if they are paid the prevailing 
     wage, labor union officials approve, local labor is 
     unaffected, and no local unemployment is produced. These 
     criteria are nearly impossible to meet, so a mere 1,660 
     prisoners, out of 1 million, were working under these waivers 
     in 1994.
       It was not always this way. In the last century, prisons 
     earned a major part of their daily cost by leasing convict 
     labor to private employers. In 1885, three-fourths of prison 
     inmates were involved in productive labor, the majority 
     working for private employers under contract and leasing 
     arrangements.
       By the 1930s only 44 percent worked, and nearly all worked 
     for state industries rather than for private employers. A 
     1990 Census found that only 11 percent of prisoners worked in 
     prison manufacturing or farming, down from 16 percent in 
     1984. If part-time work in laundry and food services is 
     included, only about half of prisoners work.
       Many prisoners are eager to work, if only to relieve the 
     tedium of prison life. But more important is that the work is 
     good for society in the long run because it reduces crime. A 
     1983-87 Federal Post-Release Employment Project study 
     confirmed that employed prisoners do better than others 
     without jobs. Prisoners who work have fewer disciplinary 
     problems in prison and lower rates of rearrest; they are more 
     likely to get a full-time job; more likely to quit their job 
     in favor of a better-paying job; and less likely to have 
     their supervision revoked for a parole violation or new 
     crime. In the words of Thomas Townsend, president of the 
     Corrections Industry Association, ``It's a matter of public 
     safety; inmates who have worked in prison, and gained new 
     skills have a significantly better chance of not returning to 
     crime and prison.''
       The only disadvantages of more work opportunities for 
     prisoners are the feared competitive effects on local labor 
     markets. But the government's first responsibility is to 
     citizens, not to narrow interest groups. New production 
     benefits all Americans. It raises the demand for their 
     services and creates new goods for purchase. Competition is 
     the strength of our economic system, not a wrong to be 
     righted, so our policies should be breaking down, not 
     erecting, barriers to work--especially when the work will 
     make the streets safer for the rest of us.
       Allowing prisoners to work makes sense. Begin by repealing 
     state and federal limitations on inmate pay. Let responsible 
     private businesses competitively bid for the use of prison 
     labor. Let prisons ``profit'' from accepting these contracts. 
     Provide monetary incentives to prisons and their wardens for 
     leading their institutions to self-sufficiency.
       It won't be easy for the private-sector bidders, because 
     prison labor is not easy to use. Difficulties include 
     security problems, lack of skills and good work habits, 
     remote prison locations, and poor worker productivity. At 
     least at the beginning, the market value of prisoner labor 
     will be very low and the quality of their work poor. But both 
     will improve as skills improve.
       Across the country a million prisoners are serving time in 
     jail. Each month, 40,000 of them are released under mandatory 
     supervision, on parole, or at the conclusion of their 
     sentences. Our streets would be safer and the crime rate 
     lower if these men had a skill, a job, and the beginning of a 
     future.

                          ____________________