With so many people unemployed in the United States, labor unions argue that criminals should not be trained in prison at the taxpayer's expense, just to come out of prison and take away jobs from innocent job seekers. Private businesses have an argument all to their own, for a prison to really train someone in a particular job and make it cost efficient, the prison becomes a business all on its own. And since the prison doesn't have to pay its employees (prisoners), or pays them below minimum wage, how can a private business compete. Representatives of these private businesses argue that prison run industries function and compete much like a slave labor industry would. I see their argument very clearly, but I still think that I would rather have released convicts competing for jobs than to be placed back into society with little options other than going back into a life of crime. .
Job training and college level classes also deter prisoners from learning negative things in jail. Obviously my research into this sector of education (ways of crime) behind bars is much more limited than the information I could find on real education, but I still came upon some information. A good example that comes to mind is Blow, a Hollywood movie based on a true story. In Blow, a marijuana peddler goes to jail only to come out an expert in cocaine and soon thereafter becomes a cocaine kingpin. Obviously I can't base my argument purely on a movie, even the one based on a true story, so I personally spoke with 6 individuals who had spent time in Massachusetts state prisons. The majority of them had either been to Billerica or Walpole prisons. They told me that if someone wanted to, they could learn about almost any illegal activity. And if they wanted to or not, they would almost always learn about the illegal activity that their cellmate had been caught and convicted for. I would rather see a convicted carjacker be released from jail with a degree in carpentry than a degree in bank robbery.
