A prominent Republican legislator proposes for Ohio to build and operate prison factories that would employ inmates to make and publicly sell goods that American manufacturers don’t offer.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Butler introduced legislation last week to set up a pilot program. The size and location of the program would depend on the number of inmates who ask to participate.
The Dayton-area lawmaker said he came up with the idea several years ago, before he took office, and was spurred on by reports by the Northeast Ohio Media Group and others about the state’s escalating prison population and work programs.
The prison factories, he said, would help to reduce Ohio’s prison population by providing job training that inmates need to show judges they are ready for early release and to avoid returning to prison after their release.
Under House Bill 407, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction would construct manufacturing facilities inside prisons for higher-risk inmates who want to work. Non-violent inmates could work at plants built outside the prisons.
The factories would be limited to making products that aren’t being manufactured in the United States, such as electronics and household items. The state would then sell the products on the open market for a profit.
Prisoners accepted to work at the factories would be paid under the same wage scale the DRC uses for its existing work programs. Ohio Penal Industries, which makes products ranging from milk to flags to office furniture, pays inmates between $0.21 per hour and $1.23 per hour, with highly skilled workers making the most money.
Right now, Butler said, DRC work programs employ only about 5 percent of Ohio’s roughly 51,000 inmates and can only sell products to government or non-profit institutions. The lawmaker said he hopes his program will eventually employ many more inmates. The legislation calls for a program that can accommodate 80 percent of work applicants within four years of the proposal becoming law.
“Everybody who wants to do it and is eligible to do it should, I hope,” Butler said, “because it’s a good thing all around.“
The factories, Butler said, would bring in money to help pay for the DRC’s $3.1 billion budget over the next two years, provide job training and income to prisoners, and help the economy by returning manufacturing work to the United States.
The initial money to build the factories would come from DRC bonds backed by future revenues from the program.
In previous discussions about the idea, he said, some skeptical civil-liberties advocates compared his notion of a prison factory to a Soviet labor camp. But Butler dismissed such concerns, saying participation in the program would be voluntary and the state would be prohibited from profiting beyond the recovery of tax dollars spent to run the prison system.
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