Ignorance and the Realities Underlying HB1233
Watching the House floor debate on HB1233, an act intended to inject common sense practices and dignity back into the arm of the incarcerated labor force, illuminated an alarming fact: House Republicans have an assumed and wildly inaccurate understanding of how our prison system works.
Rising in opposition to this good bill are several untruths.
The first idea put forth is that allowing an incarcerated individual to freely opt out of a work assignment will undermine the ability of the system so catastrophically that a third party will have to be employed to handle inane and utterly manageable tasks like groundskeeping, janitorial work, or well anything. As an expert with lived experience in this environment for over thirty years, I can say with unbending confidence, nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact is there are job WAITING lists. At my facility, there are only two jobs that struggle to keep people (both food service related) and it has nothing to do with compulsory assignment and everything to do with being terrible jobs. And even these spots have never come close to shutting down or relying on outside assistance. The reality is there aren't ENOUGH jobs and those of practical use or substance are even fewer.
Which leads me to another untruth: Having a job, no matter its pay or requirements, is a rewarding endeavor. Tell that to the guy who gets paid $1.00 an hour to clean up after the individual who smeared fecal matter over every square inch of his hospital room, or has to navigate a confined space over a thirty foot drop in the middle of August in order to repair an air conditioner. What about having to clear a metal detector at least twice a day wearing nothing but socks in a "clean" room where the floor is covered in rain, snow, or mud? Or how about navigating an ever changing gauntlet of personalities? Any one of which could be the deciding factor in your liberty simply by saying so.
Few jobs in prison offer any real feeling of accomplishment or reward. To many, they're a necessity born of financial inability. Even fewer offer transferable skills and of those that do, they're of limited ability to procure, especially for those serving longer sentences. Employment is prioritized for those with shorter sentences and in some shortsighted way, this even makes sense, but by denying others, the system robs itself of experienced mentors. For all of this and more, is it no wonder some would just rather not?
The last falsehood I'll address (in summation) is the idea that compulsory work assignments can't possibly infringe on our rehabilitative efforts. In the free world, one can earn vacation, comp, and sick time. Not so in the incarcerated realm. And I say this not to evoke an expectation of reward but of practical need. The gal working on a pro se legal brief with a soul crushing deadline, isn't afforded a few days off to get it done in. The guy who just lost his son isn't granted more than a day or two before word arrives he should suck it up and get back to work. Then there's the individuals driven to improve who must choose between paying off their financial obligations or pursuing their education. Those who must choose to help their loved ones cover the costs of incarceration (phones, visits, hygiene, etc) or work on their sobriety.
Those who don't wish to pursue a prison job aren't doing so just to shirk work, they do so for any number of valid reasons: Mental health, exhaustion, burnout, betterment, and being financially stable are just a few of the reasons to pass on institutional employment. Being punished for opting out of an unnecessary assignment is ridiculous and causes nothing but strife.
It's frightening to see our lawmakers on the Right tout one glaring inaccuracy after another on the House floor. I like to think they've simply been misled or misinterpreted something somewhere, but the facts are available to anyone who actually cares to look. Ignorance, willful or otherwise, is unconscionable in a lawmaker.
HB1233 seeks to address those facts and make right the inadequacies found therein. Management from afar has never been good policy or practice. To inform, you must be informed, and to be informed you must go to the source. Choose facts not fictions.
Nothing about us, without us.