God, what a horrible thought! But do any of our prisons even have room?

They would just make more prisons like they have been doing ( private sector - of course ). The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world at 738 persons in prison or jail per 100,000 (as of 2005). A report released Feb. 28, 2008 indicates that more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison. The United States has close to 5% of the world's population and nearly 24% of the world's prison population.

Yikes. I knew that prisoners worked as part of their rehabilitation, but I had no idea that it was set up like this. I am surprised that with the tenor of conversation lately no one has suggested re-instituting debtor's prison, or maybe indenture!

Here's a few companies currently using ultra cheap (ie. slave) prison labor: Boeing, Compaq, Honeywell, Dell, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Nintendo, Starbucks, Eddie Bauer, Victoria's secret - just for starters. Companies are becoming addicted to cheap prison labor and use it for mfg., packaging, shipping/distribution, sales, service, accounting. They have fired employees and replaced them with this ultra cheap prison labor substitute. They would gladly contract more out if only it was available.

There's no room for debtors in CA prisons, especially those with significant medical problems. Medical care in CA prisons is so bad that it has been declared unconstitutional. Some say that if inmates have a constitutional right to medical care while in prison, either the rest of us must have one too or inmates are a special class of people with more rights than the rest of us.

In CA, we allow employers to run credit checks on applicants, and some 43% of employers take advantage of that right, even in this kind of economic climate, and even if credit checks don't have anything to do with the ability or trustworthiness.

Nice kettle of fish, yes? On the heels of the financial market crash and its attendant job losses and the factoring in the sheer number of people forced into bankruptcy by outrageous medical bills, the damage may be permanent.

Wages paid to inmates are well below federal minimum wage requirements and provide a generous subsidy to employers who use inmates as basically "slave labor." This is true at the local, state and federal level. 55% of federal inmates are paid only twelve cents (12¢) per hour.

I am going to start calling you the Oracle of OS. Here's a part of an article from Huffpo today:

"Kenneth Hoagland, of Nashville, Tenn., was put in jail for getting a cold, reports Janell Ross of the Tennessean. Hoagland, previously bankrupted by a week-long stay in a hospital for his diabetes, was on a health insurance waiting period for a new job when what started as a cold landed him in a hospital for two days with a $1,200 tab. He could not pay, was afraid to miss work to show up in court, and was arrested on what's known as a "body attachment."

"They fingerprinted me, took my picture and asked some questions about my medical history," he said. "When the guy who tested (my blood sugar) asked me why I was there and I told him ... he said, 'I didn't know we did that in this country.' I told him, 'Until now, I didn't either.' "

"The Tennessean reports that "Hoagland, 36, is one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans -- insured and uninsured -- facing collection suits, wage garnishments and, more rarely, trips to jail because of medical debt." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/28/mom-goes-blind-so-her-dau_n_301947.html