Will work for food

I love The Daily Reveille. I love to read the paper, I love their coverage of LSU, and I especially love working for them. But...I also like to read the opinion columns once in awhile. This one especially struck a cord with me because I very much disagree with it.

http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/freeman-of-speech-budget-woes-provide-fresh-excuses-for-prison-labor-1.1820097

I strongly disagree with this article. Most students have parents who go to work to provide a home for their family and food to survive on. Not prisoners. Not only do they commit a crime worthy for a long term prison term but they are rewarded with free board and food. Why is that? Because our taxpayers pay for prison inmates to enjoy life's commodities, commodities many other Americans are struggling to maintain. Excuse me but Elayn Hunt Correctional Center offers job opportunities in order to give prisoner's' work experience, job skills, ability to work to receive a GDE, participate in programs for literacy, and Louisiana Technical College programs which would later benefit a prisoner when looking for a job in the public workforce. Louisiana teenagers hardly have these opportunities so easily accessible and paid for. Dixon offers a wide array of vocational programs.

Why then should they not work to earn their keep? Seeing that we are providing them skills to assimilate into general public after their term and education to find a job to better themselves, we should also benefit from this relationship.

A relationship implies a mutual giving and taking. If we give prisoners food, shelter, education and skills to survive, the community should benefit from them. If LSU saves $600,000 by using prison labor, then so be it. Their work is to give back to the same community they took away from when they committed acts of crime.

Prisoners are lucky in general to be given such opportunity to gain vocational education while serving their term. States such as Florida have a 10.7% unemployment rate as of July, California 11.9%, and Louisiana with a 7.4%. (http://www.bls.gov/web/laumstrk.htm).

I fully support the use of prison labor in community beautification projects. These prisoners volunteer their time (which is pretty open and unlimited) in these work release programs so when they are up for parole, they have recommendations and capacity and willingness to work on their records. If they were unwilling to participate, they could occupy their time in their cell. All in all, it's a win-win situation.