Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
As long as they're doing jobs for the county, or city, or state, or whatever, I don't see a problem with it. Taxpayers are already paying to keep the prisoners in jail. Why not get some benefit from them? And if it's a voluntary program, and the prisoners can accrue good-behavior time along with it, then everybody wins.
Tax payers do not get anything, the private firms do, and the convicts earn time off their sentence. Ordinary people loose jobs.

Using them to do work for private contractors, on the other hand, is a problem. Too much room for fraud and graft.
I believe that is the idea.