In Germany, Using Prison Labor To Undercut Cheap Chinese Manpower

Only in America?

http://www.worldcrunch.com/business-finance/in-germany-using-prison-labor-to-undercut-cheap-chinese-manpower/c2s9496

RAVENSBURG - Otto Oberländer calls out a friendly "Hello!" as he enters the production hall where a dozen men work at a long table putting garden sprinklers together. The men, who all wear blue boiler suits, give a friendly acknowledgement of the boss’s greeting and then get back to work. The fact that the door to the hall is locked doesn’t strike, one way or the other. It’s only when Oberländer refers to his “rogues” instead of workers that we remember this isn’t any old medium-sized enterprise: it’s the JVA Ravensburg prison just outside the city of Ravensburg in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.

Inmates don’t just build sprinklers: among other things, they make furniture, switching circuits - “we make everything except lukewarm ice cubes,” says Oberländer, and that includes a recent a shipment of dildos fabricated out of high-grade steel.

Ninety-five percent of the 415 prisoners in the Ravensburg facility leave their cells for 7.4 hours a day to work. The remaining 5 percent are either not fit to work or off sick. While some of the inmates work for the prison itself, in the kitchen or cleaning, 45 percent of them work for the lucrative business of producing goods ordered by clients. This prison manufacture is considered a model of its kind in Germany.

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But one thing he doesn’t worry about is losing business if there is another economic crisis. On the contrary: demographic developments, and the tendency of judges to incarcerate fewer offenders and have them wear ankle monitors instead, has him worrying that the numbers of prisoners will shrink
to the point “that we won’t be able to keep up with orders.”