Earning an honest wage
Today, put prisoners on payroll
SJR 8212, a constitutional amendment to remove a barrier to private companies establishing businesses in prisons and using inmate labor, brings the Washington state constitution up to date.
The old language in the Washington state constitution was provided to prevent wardens from abusing inmate labor for personal purposes, in the days when wardens were czars over their prison. That wording was recently uncovered in a court proceeding and used to shut down a well-administered program providing real-world job training for inmates in Washington state. Inmates were getting job-skills training. There were inmate waiting lists for most of the job opportunities.
Portions of wages earned are required to be paid to a Victim Restitution Fund, a Cost of Incarceration fund and court-ordered legal financial obligations.
Wages are required to be near the average outside wage for each skill in the geographic area.
This change in the constitution will make private-industry manufacturing inside the walls legal, but will still leave it under the control of the Legislature and CI Advisory Board to minimize the impact on Washington state jobs.
Prime industry participants are those employing offshore and out-of-state labor. Each company proposal is carefully reviewed by the labor, private industry, legislative and at-large members of the CI Advisory Board before it is accepted. This system of screening was very effective, with a few exceptions, for the 10 or so years that it operated.
I would encourage your voting to approve SJR 8212 to lift this out-of-date block on private-industry jobs inside our state’s prisons, and allow a carefully administered win-win rehabilitation tool to be restored.
Jack Roos of Bellevue is a former member of the Washington State Corrections Industry Advisory Board.