It’s that time of year again. Online retailers spam your inbox with holiday deals and gift ideas. You click, and click, and click, and soon find yourself bleary-eyed and weary. The Marshall Project is here for you. We’ve compiled a gift guide unlike any out there: specifically, gifts for people in your life who care about criminal justice. Most of the items were produced in programs providing prisoners with work experience, job skills, and, sometimes, the opportunity to earn a little money.
“A little” being the operative word. Many of these job programs pay less than $1 per hour and don’t come with any of the workplace protections of a free-world job. When it emerged that Whole Foods was selling cheese produced in part on Colorado prison goat farm, for example, the outrage was swift, and the grocery giant quickly changed course.
For most of these programs, the primary focus is not on profit or wages, but on rehabilitation. “You have more and more programs that are thinking, ‘we don’t just employ offenders to build desks. We actually build desks to employ and rehabilitate offenders,’” says Gina Honeycutt of the National Correctional Industries Association. Besides, Honeycutt says, “Working beats sitting in a cell.”
[For more of this story, written by Beth Schwartzapel, go to https://www.themarshallproject...ift-guide#.uqiT730jT]
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