Sarah Taber
Ok. So. Um. As somebody who's had some experiences with prison labor, I want to talk about what we're seeing here with CECOT's "work off your sentence" program.
(I had multiple manual labor farm jobs where I got to work & found out most of my coworkers were inmates. Long stories for a different day.)
Sarah Taber
The last thing prison labor programs want is honest-to-God violent offenders. They know how to fight back.
So my farm inmate coworkers were just standard-issue 19 year old boys. Weed & Xbox kids.
I spent a lot of time seriously outnumbered with these dudes out in the fields. At no point was I worried ~harm might befall me.~
The worst thing about them? They were just clumsy kids who didn't know where their feet were. Kept stepping on seedlings we'd just planted.
They were not scary people!
Sarah Taber
When you think "prison labor," especially *farm* labor, most people think Hollywood-style chain gangs. "Ah yes. Hard labor for hardened criminals. Murderers & the like."
Nope!
Think about it. What kind of person is ideal for giving a shovel & ordering them to work?
Not someone who's good at murder! They'll just use the shovel to chop you & run off!
a facade of abundance
@sarahtaber what is your dirt doing in Boss' hole, Sarah?
Kit Rhett Aultman
@h2onolan @sarahtaber Sarah, why you throwin' dirt all over Boss' yard?!
Sarah Taber
I'm also just gonna point out that if these inmates are in fact working off a sentence, then the prison system absolutely knows who they are.
They're tracking people through the system well enough to know which people are a good fit for sweatshops, & how many days they've worked.
Sarah Taber
Again, this is a business decision. Every overseer you have to hire is a financial drain.
So the best investment a prison labor program can make is fill it up with nice people who are easy to dominate.
All you have to do is tell them "You're working off a sentence" & they'll supervise themselves.
Sarah Taber
Looking at footage of that workshop, I see the same thing at work.
Sewing machines are fragile. Destroying equipment is a go-to move for unhappy workers for a reason- it costs the bosses a lot of money. And they literally can't make you work on busted machines.
Sarah Taber
Strictly from a business POV, gangsters who do murders are the last people you want to lock up with expensive equipment. They don't want to be there & have way more experience busting heads than you do.
You want nice, quiet people pleasers who will do what they're told- with minimal supervision.
So check out the ratio of workers to wardens in there. It looks like at least 20:1. Could be up to 40 or 50:1.
They *know* those folks aren't a threat to anybody!
Sarah Taber
So when they say "Ohhhh sorry the prisons are a labyrinth! We just can't find this person," that cannot be the whole truth in a prison system where people are truly working off sentences.
So. Either they CAN track people & are lying to the US about having lost our people in there. Or they can't track people, and they're lying to the prisoners about how every day they work in there takes 2 days off their sentence. I'm just saying.
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