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> The answer to the first question, it turned out, may have been the Colorado prison system, where incarcerated people working for the state’s correctional indu

> The answer to the first question, it turned out, may have been the Colorado prison system, where incarcerated people working for the state’s correctional industries earn an average of $4.50 per day I served a 1-year sentence in Federal prison and my _monthly_ salary was $0.59 - that's for the entire 30 day period. My job was to take cakes that were made daily and wrap them in plastic. In the area of the prison I was designated this meant my group of 4 people wrapped about 500 cakes per day. Some of the other people assigned to the group were elderly or disabled, so that meant that 2 of us usually wrapped all of the cakes. Before you attempt to give me any sympathy it's worth noting that I eventually did not have to do this job. I became friends with inmate clerk that coordinated all the ins-and-outs of the kitchen and he eventually said he had a way to avoid the cakes needing to be wrapped to begin with and that my job wasn't even really worth existing. Strangely enough, through paperwork, this actually caused me to begin making $5.20/mo for a job that I no longer had to do. For my last month there my wage was increased to $30/mo for my fake labor and the reason given was "because it would piss of person X". TL;DR - Prison job systems are arbitrary and stupid ways that most inmates use to entertain themselves. None of it matters.

hellbannedguy 5y ago
This sounds exactly what I heard from a guy who did a 6 year stint at San Quentin on a clerical error in the 90's. He said the job training was subpar. You basically do your time, and were dropped off at the San Rafael bus station with $200. (It's now $400.). Many guys went right back because of Probation infractions, like being in the presence of another felon. There are a lot of felons, especially when homeless. All it takes is pissing off the wrong cop. He told me he was falsely incarcerated. I didn't know what to believe, or say. I was young, and still kinda believed in the system. I do remember telling him there are nonprofit attorneys whom might take your case. He said, "I just don't care anymore.". I didn't quite understand, probably because of my young age. It turns out he was kept in jail over a clerical error. It didn't matter because he died homeless over a pnumonia.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

This sounds exactly what I heard from a guy who did a 6 year stint at San Quentin on a clerical error in the 90's. He said the job training was subpar. You basically do your time, and were dropped off at the San Rafael bus station with $200. (It's now $400.). Many guys went right back because of Probation infractions, like being in the presence of another felon. There are a lot of felons, especially when homeless. All it takes is pissing off the wrong cop. He told me he was falsely incarcerated. I didn't know what to believe, or say. I was young, and still kinda believed in the system. I do remember telling him there are nonprofit attorneys whom might take your case. He said, "I just don't care anymore.". I didn't quite understand, probably because of my young age. It turns out he was kept in jail over a clerical error. It didn't matter because he died homeless over a pnumonia.