Is it a crime that prison inmates only earn 74 cents an hour? Voters say absolutely not

The Californians didn’t know what they were doing.

So say advocates who want state prison inmates to be paid the minimum wage of $16 an hour for tasks like cleaning cells, doing laundry and cooking three meals a day for their fellow convicts.

They are appalled that voters overwhelmingly rejected Proposition 6 on November 5th.

It was the measure that would have made “involuntary servitude” illegal in California prisons. Proponents argued it was a form of slavery.

Therefore, they claim that Californians were misled by Attorney General Rob Bonta by not allowing the proposal’s title and official summary to state that what happens in prison when inmates are paid 25 cents a year get hour, slavery is. And they point to the fact that Nevada — a state that is definitely much redder than California in Republicans’ dreams and probably ever will be in the years to come — passed a similar measure on November 5th.

To be honest — which is Bonta’s job when it comes to the titles and summaries of proposals that appear on the ballot — that’s not the case.

The Nevada ballot measure noted that “slavery and involuntary servitude” were illegal in the Silver State’s constitution.

California cleaned up its constitution in the 1970s to remove all references to slavery.

Yes, slavery was generally abolished in the United States in 1865, with the exception of criminal punishment through the passage of the 13th Amendment.

The reality of what the California Constitution actually says is why Bonta refused to cave to pressure from advocates and include the words “slavery of any kind is prohibited.” The terms “involuntary servitude” and “slavery” are not mutually exclusive.

Inmates in California prisons and jails can be forced to work, punished with solitary confinement, or lose privileges such as the ability to make phone calls. The U.S. Supreme Court, whether it had more liberal or more conservative justices, has not found involuntary servitude of inmates unconstitutional.

People who have been convicted of a crime are allowed to make people work against their will. “Free” picking up the trash of those convicted of drunk driving and the like is involuntary servitude.

In California state prisons, inmates essentially fill the jobs needed to run the prison. For part-time and full-time employment, they will receive 16 cents to 74 cents per hour from April 16th. That amounts to between $24 and $112 per month. These are approximately the equivalent rates for 7-hour working days and 22 days per month. By the way, the new tariffs are twice as high as they have been for decades.

Of the 94,600 prison inmates statewide, 39,000 work in construction, maintenance, food service, laundry and custodial jobs.

There are 1,100 inmates on a varying scale from $5.80 to $10.24 per day as firefighters. That’s twice as much as before April 16th.

When fighting active fires, inmate firefighters are paid an additional $1 per hour.

Prison rights advocates argue that paying such low wages leaves offenders living in poverty upon release. They also note that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation withholds approximately 55 percent of all inmate wages paid to fund court-ordered compensation to victims

It is clear that forced labor as a punishment for a felony conviction does not per se amount to slavery under the U.S. Constitution.

What Proposition 6 supporters fail to mention is that the Nevada measure was very different in one important respect: It did not actually eliminate involuntary servitude in Nevada prisons. Unlike Proposition 6, which would have banned it outright in California if passed, the measure passed by Nevada voters still allowed judges to enforce it, but not prison officials.

Still, prison rights advocates argue that Californians are not necessarily demanding tougher government action against criminals. They don’t see the passage of Proposition 36 and the rejection of Proposition 6 as a sign that voters in the nation’s leading state when it comes to “progressive” solutions to fighting crime want to fundamentally change course. Instead, they view the rejection of Proposition 6 as a coincidence because the attorney general of the most progressive state in the union refused to fundamentally lie and mislead voters to advance a progressive agenda.

Voters are not stupid. They are already in search of shelter and food – as well as medical care, which can include expensive gender reassignment surgeries – for convicted murderers, rapists, armed robbers, con artists who put people down and those who inflict bodily harm on others.

Proposition 6 would essentially have increased the top hourly wage for inmates doing work necessary to feed and house them from 74 cents to $16 an hour. Worse, it would involve an inflationary increase in the minimum wage. That would mean an inmate working a full-time job at a prison laundry would have earned $2,400 a month. Explain that to someone who has followed the law his entire life while toiling in relatively low-paying jobs that gave him a $1,600-a-month Social Security death benefit.

It’s kind of strange that prison rights advocates have a one-way view of incarceration.

Maybe all prisoners should be charged $900 a month for a cell – at the low end of rent for a room in a house. Enter $40 per day for food service, $20 per week for laundry, $50 per month for their share of utilities (electricity, sewer and water), and any other “services” for which California taxpayers must pay in addition to personnel and other maintenance costs such as: B. New roof. That would be $2,230 per month. Subtract all that out, and an inmate working full-time would collect $100 per month instead of $112.

Oops, almost forgot. Since they make enough money to pay federal and state taxes and are single, that means they owe Uncle Sam and Sacramento at least $500 a year. That would reduce her take-home pay to $700 a year, or $58 a month.

That’s almost exactly what they were making before their pay was doubled on April 16.

And they still have the deal of the millennium compared to their victims who they either killed, paralyzed, terrorized, maimed, mutilated, raped or robbed of their life savings.

— This column is the opinion of Dennis Wyatt and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Courier or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at [email protected]