@Dutchess_III: “If it’s voluntary, @notnotnotnot, it’s not exploitation. I think any wage is fair. After all, they have no bills.”
Of course it is. It’s exploitation of the prisoners, the taxpayers, and the working population as a whole. Not everything is an isolated issue. The entire prison system – from drug laws, sentencing, prosecution, to private prisons and prison labor is a much larger issue than what you are talking about here.
Please look into the whole concept of the prison-industrial complex, and how it is really a perpetuation of slavery. We fund this through private prisons, and through these work programs that have prisoners producing goods and getting paid peanuts for their labor.
And if you just take this fire situation – if prisoners are doing the work and getting paid less than average firefighter salaries, it is stolen wages or slave labor. There is an incentive to fill prisons due to profit motive for both prisons and slave labor. There is a reason why the US imprisons more of its people than any other country.