Bill would let state prisons contract out inmates as farm labor

Idaho’s state Board of Correction could contract out prison inmates as farm laborers, under legislation making its way through this year. Reporter Sean Ellis of the Capital Press has a report here on the bill, SB 1374 from Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston. Ellis reports that fruit growers in southwestern Idaho have struggled to find enough workers to pick their fruit in recent years, and last year, pear were left unpicked in the Sunny Slope area. The inmate workers would be paid under the same payment standards used by Correctional Industries, and part of their earnings could go to pay restitution orders, to offset their costs of incarceration, to buy prison commissary items and to help them re-enter society when they’re released.

SB 1374 was amended in the Senate yesterday. It has backing from the Idaho Farm Bureau and fruit growers. The bill says the inmate labor could only be used when there are labor shortages; the inmate workers couldn’t displace any other workers in the region.