At a recent Jail Oversight Board meeting, a motion by Allegheny County Councilwoman Bethany Hallam to pay incarcerated workers for their labor failed after receiving five abstentions.
County Controller Corey O’Connor, one of the abstainers, remarked, “County council should pass the budget first, and then we should have the conversation.”
As the auditor of O’Hara Township, I’m sympathetic to the idea that policies should be funded before they are enacted. But as a human being, I don’t think a council vote should be prerequisite to ending government-run slavery.
County taxpayers should not be paying to run a labor camp in Downtown Pittsburgh, especially one where the profits go to the jail’s corporate vendors.
Instead, we should invest this money into the people who are actually doing the work — incarcerated workers. Skeptics may balk at the idea of paying wages to people in jail, but not only are the vast majority merely waiting to be exonerated at trial, the alternative is to continue setting innocent people up to fail upon reentry.
Taxpayers will pay for Allegheny County’s carceral system one way or another. The question is if we want to enable slave labor and corporate profiteering while we do it.
Darwin Leuba
O’Hara