Why not take all those jobs Americans won't do and...?

turn them over to the local sheriff?
The sheriff could use volunteer jail labor and bus prisoners to their work assignments in the fertile valleys where fruits and vegetables are harvested.

These are the prime areas that draw illegal immigrant workers. If they had to compete against prisoners on work release programs they would go somewhere else rather quickly.
The Sheriff could reduce overcrowding in the jails by transferring inmates to agricultural areas to live in housing similar to Joe Arpaio's jail in Maricopa County, Az.
Shutting off the magnet of farm work would do a lot to slow down the flow of illegal immigration and would help to argue against the need for a guest worker program.

How many problems would this solve or create?

Raichasays: I think it's cheaper than building new prisons (competing for bunk space for immigrant detention centers) or risk letting tens of thousands of violent offenders back into the cities because there is not enough jail space.
I wouldn't want to pay for that either.

Many states have laws, some written into their constitution, that prison labor cannot be used in the private sector. This is to protect the economy and jobs for the law abiding.

But, of course, if all of those jobs are filled by illegal immigrants, the prohibition against prison labor no longer makes economic sense.

There are non-economic, non-immigration issues involved in your proposal, however. You are talking about plunking large numbers of criminals down into the heart of our farmland and transforming our "fertile valleys" into open air prisons. Do you want to live next door to that? Do you want to pay for that?

OK.get them to do that .but pay the a little something. hardly a soul would want to do that for free.violent prisoners should be put on chain gangs and made to work the sides of the roads cleaning them. and all violent prisoners should stay in solitaire after working.dont mix non violent with violent prisoners.

Works for me.
There may be issues with having inmates working on private property, but I think they should be forced to do anything possible to help us pay for their incarceration.

Because there are really no jobs Americans won't do. There are just jobs Americans won't do for significantly less than minimum wage (all of them)

I think the people laying on thier @ss on welfare would be good candidates to work crap jobs....bet they'd get real jobs and get off welfare in a helluva hurry!

good idea especially since we are building more prisons than schools.

A lot of people don't want criminals working out in public either. It's a hazard.

My mother used to work in a prison and they had a labor program set up for prisoners to do things like that (another country). They would end up stealing things and getting into all sorts of trouble.

Well...first of all, it isn't that Americans "won't" do these jobs, it is that American CUSTOMERS would rather pay the cheaper price to the illegal alien who doesn't have the cost of operating a legal, legitimate business...unemployment tax, worker's comp insurance, etc.

But with that exception noted...Hey, put 'em to work. And pay them a salary comparable to what the job pays. Charge them for their room and board. How many of these people in jail, sitting on their butts, have child support obligations that aren't being met?

Non-violent offenders should be working doing something, or using the existing pell grant/gsl program to get training. Watching the "chain gang" scene at the start of the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou" kinda makes a person think.

It is hard for a person to turn around...nobody wants to hire a convicted felon. But it's not impossible. Maybe if they had to work while they're in, or on probation, it wouldn't get to that point.

Hmm...
Sounds good to me.

The problem with taking prisoners out to work is that they are all such animals these days, they would probably just use the tools to kill the guards and escape. The days of chain gangs are over.

"You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice you got yourself two sets. You ain't gonna need no third set, cause you gonna get your mind right."