As I've written so many times before - resulting in tender digits - jobs continue to be lost all across our great nation. Private businesses trying to compete with prison made products using cheap inmate labor, and finding it more difficult to keep their doors open in this time of economic downturn.
Thursday another article hit the news, this time from Montana . A small business in that state has stated they can't compete against another business partnered with the Montana Correction Enterprises (MCE) and using inmate labor to undercut their pricing on products. In addition the private sector owners of J&R Planning claim that their proprietary technology to produce the products now made by prisoners was stolen from them by the other company's owners. Boy does this sound familiar to what has happened in Florida? Theft of technology by prison operators to feather their nests? Of course, it's all for the good cause of "training inmates, right?"
In a conversation today with the owner of J&R Planning, the discussion went something like this:
Me: "Jim are you aware of the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program, or PIECP as it is called?"
Jim: "The what?"
Me: "The PIE Program that is run by the Department of Justice that allows partnerships such as this one between the Montana Corrections Enterprise and Rocky Mountain Timber Products ?"
Jim: "No. I've never heard of pie program or anything with that name."
Me: "Did anyone contact you from MCE and consult about their opening that operation by the prison industries? Or ask if there would be an adverse impact upon your business or employees?"
Jim: "No. We found out about this other company and their involvement with the prison industries because they bid on some of the same jobs we do and tracked the manufacture of their products to MCE."
....
Me: "You explained that you spoke directly with MCE about this?"
Jim: "Yes we complained about the unfair competition they were providing to the other company by using prison labor and that we were unable to compete at the pricing that was allowing Rocky Mountain."
Me: "Did she say what they were paying the inmates per hour?"
Jim: "She told us that MCE paid each man between two and five dollars a day."
Me: "A day?"
Jim: "Yes, per day."
Me: "What was her response or position?"
Jim: "Lambert said MCE would offer us the same opportunity to move our operation into one of her prison factories and use the prisoners at the same wage of between two and five dollars a day. Lambert said she'd give me the same rate as Rocky Mountain, twenty percent below the going private sector cost on materials and labor."
Me: "No way!? What would that do to your employees? Did she have an answer on that?"
Jim: "No, that was the rate she quoted and didn't offer any comment on her offer costing my current employees their jobs. We would never do that to anyone working for us and depending on their jobs to live and feed their families."
Me: "PIECP says that any prisoner made product that stays within the state does not require the industry or private sector partners to pay prevailing wages, so maybe the payment of twenty to fifty cents an hour to the inmates would be legal. Do you think all of the products from rocky Mountain Timber Products will stay in Montana?"
Jim: "Absolutely not. Some of the jobs they bid against us are outside of Montana - some in adjacent states and some further away. No, we both sell our products on the open markets."
Me: "Jim did Lambert or anyone else mention the National Correctional Industry Association, or the Bureau of Justice Assistance to you in your conversations?"
Jim: "No, I don't know of either one and I'm pretty sure they weren't mentioned at any time. As you said though if Lambert didn't tell me about this pie thing, there wouldn't be a reason to tell me about the agency running it."
I explained to him about the BJA and NCIA and their role in PIE and the closure of Lufkin's Trailer Division in 2008.
Jim: "But that means the oversight is provided by those involved in the program. Right? And the same thing thats happening to us now in Montana, already happened in Texas to Lufkin Tools a couple of years ago? Didn't this BJA fix the problem back then after all those people in Texas lost their jobs and the company forced to close?"
Me: "Yes, the oversight is provided by the actors. Yes...almost the exact same thing occurred in Texas in 2007 and 2008, but no, the BJA did not 'fix' anything. The position of the agency was that it was a state issue to be handled locally. That's why I advise that you fight it right there on the state level. Texas was able to enact legislation to prevent this from happening in the future, but it came too late to keep Lufkin open. They, however didn't know that they had been competing against the prison operation for a number of years before they closed, or they could have fought it. In your case this is a new contract and you realized your disadvantage from this immediately and have taken steps to involve your legislative Representative, so hopefully something can be done there in Montana to stop the contract and let you compete against Rocky Mountain on a level ground."
Jim: "How can the government turn the operation of a federal program, over to this private group that's taking part in the program? They would never allow that..."
Me: "Jim they have and write down these links to the BJA and NCIA. Did you know that Gayle Lambert is a member of the NCIA and is on the Board of Directors, listed as the Vice President of Program Development?"
Jim: "I...no. No, I had no idea about that organization and their relationship with MCE or Lambert's involvement with them. Geez, what can be done about something like this?"
Me: "Isn't your state Representative from Florence fighting this in the legislature? I read that he'd proposed legislation to stop the contract between MCE and the other company."
Jim: "Yes he is. He's responded to this by filing a bill in the House but I don't think he's aware of this program either."
Me: "I sent an email about the program and provided links to all the articles and documents on PIECP to him this morning and copied the Reporter that wrote the article, Mr. Backus. I'll send you a copy of that email with the links and I'll also include other information we discussed along with the actual PIECP Guideline and mandatory requirements. I suggest you contact Representative Greef and make sure he or an intern go through the documents and then use it to seek an amendment to his legislation or at least let possible supporters of the Bill know about PIE and how the federal statute has been violated by your not being consulted and the payment of cheap wages and the impact upon civilian workers.
"I'd do that and also provide copies to your attorney pursuing this and let him contact the BJA and the DOJ about this and ask for their assistance in forcing compliance."
Jim: "I'll get the information to my partners and both the attorney and Congressman Greef."
Me: "If you need more of my help."
I have to wonder if the customers of all that lovely "old looking" wood sculpture and furniture and other products offered by Rocky Mountain Timber Products, know in actuality that much of it is new lumber worked over by prisoners to make it look old and weathered? Just as I've said over and over again, none of us are really aware that products all around us are made in prison and sold to us at retail prices. For those companies using that prison slave labor, their profit margins are more than double that of the private sector companies battling to just keep their heads above water.
Gotta' put that old video link in here once again so others who may not have read my past postings will be able to see it. Here is the link to the " partnership video made by the NCIA in cooperation with the BJA and DOJ (and funded by them, incidentally).
What I find particularly curious is the fact that this continues to happen state by state and it appears each state has no idea that the same thing happening to them has happened elsewhere! I guess the loss of Lufkin Industry's Trailer Division in 2008 didn't make it to the news media in Montana...just as the losses in Florida didn't make it to Lufkin Texas before they were forced to close.
But I digress...here we are with the same players being quoted in the article about J&R and MCE. I have to draw attention to the fact that the Administrator of MCE, Gayle Lambert, is also the Vice President of Program Development of the NCIA and sits upon their Board . This is a similar situation to Florida where Pam Davis sat as PRIDE's CEO at the same time she also served as the Chairman of the NCIA Board...and the corruption that has transpired throughout the involvement of Virginia's prison industries in PIECP. Don Guillory who is the CEO of the Virginia Correctional Enterprises is the sitting Chairman of the NCIA now. How about Brian Connett, the current Deputy Director of Nevada's Silver State Industries who was previously the PIECP Coordinator for PRIDE? He's now the President-Elect of the NCIA!
Connett, Guillory, Lambert, Davis...all connected with PIECP, the NCIA and program violations. I would say that a person with average intelligence would conclude that in order to reach the pinnacle of success within the NCIA (and a seat on the Board), prison industry operators must first demonstrate they are capable of committing serious violations of the PIE program on behalf of their corporate partners and get away with it.
Sadly, there in Montana the taxpayers are once again being raped by the PIECP program - not simply because of this one individual conflict between MCE and the other private sector company using slave labor - no, in researching the Montana law on inmate labor and PIECP, lo and behold there it was:
53-30-132. (Temporary) Inmate participation and status in prison work programs -- Montana correctional enterprises prison industries training program -- wages and benefits. 3(c) 'collect charges for room and board from an inmate employed in a federally certified prison industries program. The Montana correctional enterprises program shall deposit inmates' room and board charges into its enterprise fund to help defray the cost of prison industries training programs."
$234,308.00 so far taken from inmate wages to offset the costs of incarceration, being kept by the prison industry to offset their costs of running the industry - not to defray the costs of incarceration paid for by the taxpayer.
If our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin, Ohio and now Indiana that are now demonstrating in protest of the wage cuts and repeal of collective bargaining would consider including the loss of jobs to prisoners in their arguments, the entire country would suddenly know what we here at DKos have known for months now; that the same corporations sending jobs overseas, are funding ALEC and PAC's such as the Reason Foundation to increase incarcerations, for the purpose of insourcing civilian jobs to inmates trapped by the legislative efforts of the conservatives. Koch brothers and the foundations they also fund, have their fingerprints all over prison labor, pursuing the repeal of the Healthcare initiatives and laws, SB 1070 and of late, Union-busting.
I cannot understand how the mainstream media fails to connect the dots - literally. The signs are all around them as is the evidence linking all to one conservative cabal funded by the likes of the Koch brothers. The lack of attention to this is what is allowing situations such as the one in Montana to happen over and over again from coast to coast. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that is a concerted and deliberate agenda put in place by conservative Republicants and their corporate benefactors to depress wages on those jobs left in the private job market - you know, the ones not already outsourced to China, India and other third world countries or sent to prison - in an effort to further control wages and all employment in the U.S.
As I've said in the past, Republicans will not stop this crap unless we stop them. Just the other day there was an article that really stunned me. I mean, I've written about the laws passed by the Conservative right that resulted in high incarceration rates, longer sentences, less gain-time and abolishing of parole, so when I say I was stunned by this recent article, you have to understand how out of left field it was.
Here's the article:"Errors found in Indiana state lab toxicology tests" about deliberate alteration of drug tests performed for law enforcement by the lab used to test for marijuana and other drugs. As this article reports, more than 200 cases in just the past couple of years have been identified as having erroneous findings that were changed by lab technicians to show positive results! This lab run by Indiana University and they have been providing these services to Indiana prosecutors and law enforcement since 1957! The fact that it happened at all is unbelievable...and worse yet is the allegation it has been done purposefully:
"We see a conscious manipulation of results to produce a desired result," Newman said, "and that is the exact opposite of what scientific inquiry should be about."
The most egregious errors, he said, likely were caused by laziness, incompetence, time pressure and a lack of established operating procedures, rather than criminal activity.
Newman said lab workers casually used a technique called "manual integration" to "correct" machine readings. The technique, for when the machine has obviously made a mistake, is supposed to be done very sparingly and under strict written procedures.
"Unacceptable, . . . especially in a law enforcement situation," said Dwain C. Fuller, a board-certified forensic toxicologist and consultant from Mansfield, Texas, who is not involved in the audit. Fuller said that, as an expert witness for a defense lawyer in such cases, "I can make hay with that."
Just how many defendants since 1957 accused of testing positive for marijuana use in Indiana were sent to prison...or forced to take a plea bargain and plead guilty to use or possession where proper testing would have exonerated them? As the article stated, these are people's lives being affected here. Christ! How can we be sure that other states aren't doing the same thing? And what about other drugs tested for, are those tests also being manipulated to ensure convictions and prison for others?
The war on drugs is one thing, but this is something entirely different. Our former Marion County, Indiana (Indianapolis) Prosecutor, Scott Newman is conducting the investigation and says he may have to broaden that investigation to include as far back as 2006. My question would be why only go back five years? If there are men and women sitting in jail, prison or have undeserved criminal records that impact their ability to get good jobs or have lost the opportunity to apply for college loans or go to college due to having a "drug conviction" upon their record - that resulted from testing by the same labe prior to 2006 - shouldn't they have the right to challenge those tests and either be released or have their records expunged?!
If the statistics of what they've found so far, 200 false or erroneous tests out of 2,000 then the inclusion of the other 10,000 cases to be reviewed back to 2007, means there is the real possibility that more than 1,000 Hoosiers have been falsely convicted over the past 3+ years. No wonder our damn prisons are so overcrowded today. If I were defending a person accused of using marijuana and the lab used to perform the tests on hair or blood samples had a failure rate of 10%, I would believe my client deserved the benefit of the doubt. That kind of erroneous or "manipulated" rate has no place in any judicial setting where a person's freedom or livelihood is at stake. We must be better than that. No wonder so many defendants serving life or sentenced to death in the U.S. have been cleared by DNA and released after serving as much as 25 years in prison for something they didn't do.
Prosecutors are going to try and justify the "manipulations" of these drug tests, of that we can be sure. I say this because in most cases where DNA has resulted in a finding that an innocent person is sitting in prison, prosecutors continue to argue that even if the DNA says they're innocent, they have more evidence saying they did do it...or argue strongly against allowing the defendant to have access to evidence for DNA testing. Some courts side with these state officials and deny requests and motions by men and women asking for DNA testing to prove their innocence.
A conviction and especially a prison sentence should be based upon clear-cut and factual forensic evidence. That is how our system is set-up and supposed to work, but like the PIE program and the use of inmate labor, everything is manipulated anymore to benefit either the state or the corporations involved in criminal justice issues. Once convicted a stigma attaches to those sent to jail or prison - that's a undeniable fact - and follows them throughout their lives. No sentence in the U.S. now is finite, all are infinite as the punishment goes on for years on end.
Many of you know I recently wrote about prisoners having no voice and the whispers we hear from behind those high and secure fences don't reach the ear of the public. one of the reasons is the denial by authorities to court litigation, by finding the inmate claims as frivolous under many state laws. Here's another factor: denying records used by the state and the prisons about the inmate, to the inmate under FOIA requests.
Two weeks ago an article came to my attention from Arkansas. The headline reads: " Bill to close prison records to inmates advances. " Citing security concerns, and claiming that inmates could gain access to building plans and blueprints to use to escape, the legislature intends to block inmate access to any public records through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). It appears that in Arkansas they even want to silence the occasional whisper that manages to come from inside their prisons.
I just got an email from the AFL-CIO stating they stand in support of their workers.