Should prisoners be used as cheap farm labor?
Re: “Inmates may step in as farmworkers,” Feb. 28 news story.
Colorado farmers are hurting. Many lost half their crops last year and are on the verge of financial ruin because they couldn’t find workers to harvest their fields. Contracting convict labor is not a viable solution, however. Farmers will actually pay more for convict labor and its accompanying costs than they do for traditional workers, but the extra money won’t go to the workers; convicts will earn less than $1 per day. Also, many convicts will be unskilled, unmotivated and unreliable workers, thus resulting in high turnover. Finally, convicts are a population vulnerable to exploitation since they do not have the right to organize for humane working conditions.
As a consumer, I want to know that my food is being tended and harvested by skilled workers who are being fairly compensated for their labor. Rather than resorting to convict labor with all of its shortcomings, Colorado needs to enact comprehensive immigration reform that is humane and just.
Teresa Louis, Loveland
. . .
First of all, using Colorado prisoners as farm workers is not slave labor when only volunteers are accepted into the program and they are paid fair-market wages. True, they don’t receive but a fraction of that money themselves, but any job an inmate is paid for requires some reimbursement to the state for providing his room and board, reimbursement to any victims of his crime as ordered by the court, and deductions under any child support order against him. So, the pocket change they net may still be enough because it is accompanied by fresh air, sunlight, freedom of movement, exercise and colors other than the gray of concrete. While stoop labor may not be the best entry on a resume, it’s honest work and better than nothing at all. I say get real about what prison is really like and let the inmates decide for themselves if it’s a good deal – as long as they are paid fair-market wages.
S. Williams, Lakewood
. . .
Every time the Department of Corrections wants to add a helpful program for inmates, such as inmate farming, sex offenders are omitted. A Department of Justice report, with statistics on prisoners released in 1994, states the following: Car thieves re-offend 78.8 percent of the time, larcenists 74.6 percent, and robbers and burglars are in the 70 percent range. The report says that sex offenders re-offend 5.3 percent of the time and child molesters have a 3.3 percent re-offense rate. (All statistics are for within three years of release.)
The one or so horrendous act per decade by a released sex offender is so over-publicized that people have come to think all sex offenders will commit such acts. The facts show that treated sex offenders pose little or no risk to the public and we have laws to keep the real sickos in prison. It seems unreasonable for the half-million imprisoned sex offenders be marked the same as the 1 percent or less who would be a real danger.
Carolyn Turner, Parker
Re: “Reinventing education; Legislators from both parties eye radical reforms,” Feb. 27 news story.
Given the National Assessment of Educational Progress report of educational failure, I’m glad state Sen. Peter Groff is calling for “complete and total reformation of the educational system” and is looking to “take the discussion out to the whole state.”
I suggest we try letting kids run their own education. Since 1968, the Sudbury model schools (www.sudval.org) have given kids from age 4 through high school complete freedom and democracy, with the kids ending up testing on par with their controlled peers, but with far more initiative and creativity, at lower costs than public schools.
When I toured Wheat Ridge’s Alpine Valley School with former Colorado Board of Education member Jared Polis, I met poised, humble and accomplished kids doing exactly as they pleased within laws made at weekly school meetings, in which everyone from the youngest to the principal have one vote on everything, including the budget, hiring and firing. The principal/founder admitted he’d been disciplined more than once for not washing his dishes.
Evan Ravitz, Boulder
Finding tragedy in both deaths at Denver Zoo
It is quite sad that Jorge the jaguar had to be shot during the tragic events leading up to the death of Denver zookeeper Ashlee Pfaff. However, Jorge’s death was certainly not a result of the incompetence of Denver Zoo staff. They did everything they could to avoid killing Jorge by first attempting to fend him off using fire extinguishers and then considering tranquilizers before deciding it would take too much time, in the effort to save Ashlee, to take effect.
Jorge never lived in the wild and was not kidnapped out of the wild solely for people’s amusement and entertainment. He was raised by a family in Bolivia that tried to keep him as a pet before a conservation group rescued him and brought him to a Bolivian zoo at 6 months old. The fact is, many animals that end up in zoos were never in the wild, and to send them into the wild ill-equipped for life on its own would be a certain death sentence.
Zoos across the world help foster an appreciation and respect of wildlife and a place to encourage conservation through education, breeding programs and the study of the preservation of animals and their ecosystems. Many species of wildlife would now be extinct if it weren’t for the efforts of zoos worldwide to rescue injured or sick wildlife and to breed animals in captivity to ensure their continued existence. In this effort, they hope to curtail the continued encroachment of natural habitats and illegal hunting of all animal species.
Kelley Boland, Denver
Health care in the U.S.
Re: “Looking to California on health care,” Feb. 28 Al Knight column, and “Don’t use Canada as a model,” Feb. 28 Froma Harrop column.
In response to Froma Harrop and Al Knight’s columns criticizing other countries’ universal, single-payer health care systems, why do we not study other systems to see how we could improve ours? All other industrialized nations now have health care for all of their citizens, whereas we have nearly 45 million people with no health insurance at all. Consequently, according to the World Health Organization in 2003, we rank 33rd in infant mortality, 25th in male life expectancy, and 26th in female life expectancy. And for this we spend 14.6 percent of our gross domestic product, the highest percentage of all the 192 nations reported by the WHO.
Virginia Johnson, Denver
More trouble for city
Re: “Off-leash flap puts attorney in the doghouse,” March 2 news story.
Thank you for your excellent story about Denver assistant city attorney Dani Eliscu’s inexcusable disregard for public safety in letting her unvaccinated dog (potential rabies carrier) run loose in Congress Park.
If the city attorney’s office is to retain any credibility, Ms. Eliscu should join Larry Manzanares in the ranks of ex-city attorneys/ so-called code enforcers.
Kudos, too, to animal control officer R. Mouton for standing ground against Ms. Eliscu in the interest of protecting our children from potential rabies carriers. Keep up the good work.
Frank Ohrtman, Denver </i
El Paso prison tent plan
Re: “El Paso County sees tent jail as option during renovation,” March 2 news story.
I read with interest and some alarm of a plan by El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa to house inmates inside a large tent. A state survey suggests Colorado Springs is second only to Limon in hailstorm days each year. Hail is not kind to tents.
On the other hand, authorities might ponder using the Colorado Springs tent as a statewide holding pen for incarcerated gang members. Then we could all sing, “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here.”
Neal Ulevich, Centennial
To send a letter
E-mail: openforum@denverpost.com
Mail: The Open Forum, The Denver Post, 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 600, Denver, 80202
Fax: 303-954-1502
Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 200 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.
To reach us by phone: 303-954-1331
