Prison labor and competition

Work programs serve a number of productive purposes at correctional facilities. They give some inmates the opportunity to learn basic vocational skills. They allow some inmates to assist in the operation of jails and prisons, saving taxpayers money in the process. Some studies have shown work programs have rehabilitative value and reduce the likelihood that inmates will re-offend. And the programs benefit correctional officials and inmates simply by giving offenders a productive way to occupy their time.

Prison work programs are not supposed to undercut the taxpaying private sector and kill jobs in private industry.

Yet that's exactly what's happening in Nevada.

Former Gov. and U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, an attorney, told the State Board of Prison Commissioners on Monday that his client, XL Steel, lost a contract this year to Alpine Steel because the company used inmate labor at High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs. By state law, prison industry programs must not impact private-sector jobs.

Had XL Steel not been undercut by "unfair competition," Mr. Bryan says, the company would have hired 20 workers at between $18 and $19 per hour. Nevada still has the country's highest unemployment rate at 11.5 percent - more than 20 percent if you include the underemployed and those who have given up searching for work. Every job matters.

State Corrections Director Greg Cox admitted that his agency is not doing the work necessary to verify that work programs aren't crowding out private industry.

"The process has not been followed, he said. "It should have been."

Mr. Cox said he would create regulations that require Board of Prison Commissioners approval of prison work programs. Currently, the Legislature's Committee on Industrial Programs reviews new work programs. "It is clear we should have done this in the past," Mr. Cox said.

If the legislative committee was performing only cursory reviews of work programs, then oversight should be shifted to authorities with more accountability to the public. The Board of Prison Commissioners is chaired by the governor, with the attorney general and secretary of state also serving on the panel.

At some point, however, someone within the Department of Corrections should have realized that there was a problem. Back in October, Mr. Cox told a legislative panel that Alpine Steel owed $40,000 in back wages to inmates for steel work on a now-halted Strip Ferris wheel project. That kind of work never should have been done by inmates in the first place.

Government-related work is a much better fit for prisoners. Nevada inmates have produced license plates since 1928 - that factory will be moved out of the now-closed Nevada State Prison sometime next year. Inmates have also done printing, among other tasks.

No one was terribly concerned about prison work programs when the Nevada economy was rolling along and anyone who wanted work could find it. Prisons and victims collected some money from inmate wages. Today, however, private-sector partners are pulling out of prison work programs all across the country.

Law-abiding citizens who are trying to live productive lives need jobs worse than inmates. If a business sees inmate labor as an opportunity to cut costs and hurt taxpaying competitors, prison officials have a legal obligation to say no.