It depends. If the conditions are human and up to OSHA standards, yes. I also think we should bring back work farms. Only the healthiest prisoners should do this work. Passing a physical examination would be manditory. And the work should not be contracted privately. This is to avoid the situation we had in the South and other places in the U.S.
One cousin was the sheriff, one a judge, two or three on the county commission and one cousin a construction contractor that would lease prison labor. A need for a road or school building would arise. The cousins on the county commission would issue a no-bid contract to the contractor cousin. The sherrif cousin would start arresting vagrants and minorites on trumped up charges to meet the labor demand. The judge cousin would set obnoxiously high bails for the newly arrested. The contractor cousin would bail the vagrants out and “owe the court” the bail money. The judge cousin would remand the prisoners into the care of the contractor cousin who would keep the prisoners in barracks on their property under guard and behind barbed wire (think Cool Hand Luke). The prisoners would have to work off the debt to the contractor including their “food and rent costs.”
That is how roads, schools and municipal buildings got built in the South for a century after the Civil War. And all the cousins got kickbacks which they poured into Cadillacs and their election campaigns including the campaigns of more cousins to ensure they had all the local government bases coverd—and jobs for life.
If the vagrant earned his freedom too soon, the contractor would contact his cousin the sheriff and re-arrest the vagrant for vagrancy as they were walking out of town. Some people spent fifteen years in those barracks on misdemeanor charges. Some were shot while trying to excape and others died from poor living conditions. All that can be avoided.
I think that it would be better for many prisoners to work out in the fresh air daily growing the food for the prison on the prison work farm with the same legal protections and sanitary laws workers on the outside have. No more than 40 hours a week. No overtime. This would prevent abuse. I don’t think they should be contracted out to do county road and constructin work unless some independent government body outside the county can monitor the transactions closely in order to prevent the abuse described above.