It seems that using involuntary labor hasn't grown any more efficient since antebellum days, when slave labor was the mainstay of the old plantation system. And eternal vigilance is just as essential now as it was then to assure a profit. Whoever's in charge has to supervise every worker to make sure he's earning his keep or knows what he's doing.
According to the latest audit of the state's prison farm, it's $2.6 million in the red--but the Arkansas Department of Correction begs to differ. It claims that, counting all the money the prison farm brings in by growing its own food and selling a lot of it on the open market, it actually brought in money. For the operation grows wheat, rice and soybeans. And other products include horses, cattle, pork, all of which can be sold back to the state or on the open market. But its most important product has to be all those convicts who are given a sense of purpose and self-esteem before being turned loose. They're the invaluable crop. Hundreds of them pick up specialized skills while thousands are at labor in the fields.
Buddy Chadick, whose family has an honored tradition in agriculture, points out that many of these convicts may start out knowing less than nothing about what they're doing, and they have to be taught the most essential skills. What's more, accidents will happen. As he notes, "some of these inmates we get don't even know what a tractor is." Any more than some of our legislators know what the principle of separation of powers is, which is a whole other but just as revealing a problem. There's nothing more frightening, it seems, than ignorance in action, whether on a farm or in a factory, at home or in the legislative halls.
One prisoner who was trying to drive a tractor with a notable lack of success ran it smack into a utility pole, cutting power to the prison's egg-producing plant, killing 41,000 chickens. Even to think about it hurts.
But why reduce prisoners to crushing rocks, or moving one load of dirt to a new location and then back to the old one? What educational value is there in all that? Anybody who's ever had to maneuver a tractor-trailer will soon learn to respect both and, if he finally succeeds, himself. But left on their own, without supervision, much like legislators at loose ends, prisoners can be clear and present dangers to themselves and the public in general.
To quote Wendy Kelley of the state Correction Department, "Where we don't have farming operations, we struggle to find jobs for [the inmates]. We do find jobs for all of them but they might be polishing the bars." There's got to be better way--one that looks ahead to a brighter future, not the same dark past.
Editorial on 10/22/2016