Free or cheap labor, what business wouldn’t want that? Labor costs are generally a business’ largest expenditure and eat into profit margins. But how do you get cheap labor when the labor force needs to earn enough to survive and raise a family? Slavery is option, but one that is illegal and was abolished 150 years ago. Indentured servitude? No, can’t use that, also illegal. You can try to pay below market wages, but doing that will probably result in less than stellar employees and the eventual end of your business. Here is an option, what if this labor was provided by prison inmates who had no choice but to work for mere pennies compared to the regular work force? Sounds like good idea right? Cheap labor for you and prison inmates get a chance to earn a buck, learn a skill, and contribute to society. However, using inmate labor presents several ethical dilemmas. Do we have the right force inmates to work if they don’t want too? Is it fair to only pay them a few dollars a day when the same work would earn a free man $10 an hour? Is it a fair business practice when one company can use inmate labor when another company conducting the same business cannot? What is the effect on the regular work force and the economy in general? These are all questions that must asked and answered. According to a Huffington Post article, prison labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world. Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM lease factories in prisons or prisoners to work on the outside. All told, nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day. (Fraser, 2012) This illustrates the profitability of inmate labor, but doesn’t address the right or wrong of it or its effect on other business who cannot take advantage of it. The book story of a small business relying on government contracts being forced to compete with a prison industry, then losing the contracts and being forced to lay-off 100 workers with families, is an excellent example of the effects on the work force and the economy in general. Because of inmate labor in this case, jobs were lost. No job means no money. No money means missed mortgages and no spending on consumer goods. No spending means other companies make less money. Other companies making less means the more lay-offs or pay reductions. You can see how this becomes a vicious cycle. My recommendation is simple, don’t use inmate labor for-profit. It’s wrong. Prison is not a source of cheap labor, it is a place for incarceration and rehabilitation. Reinstitute “chain-gangs.” Breaking rocks, cutting grass, and digging ditches is honest work and has a deterrent effect. Teach job skills, but do not give them jobs. At the same time, we should not be forcing prisoners to pay for their incarceration. If society wants to lack away someone, it is our responsibility to pay for it. That, however, is a topic for another paper.