Show COUNTY PRISONERS AND LABOR The question whether prisoners after conviction for misdemeanor and In charge of a sheriff may lawfully be compelled to work recently came before be-fore AttorneyGeneral Brecden in the form o the legality of such requirement require-ment as to work on the Sheriffs private pri-vate premises or for his personal benefit ben-efit Of course the answer was that such work could not lawfully be required re-quired but the AttorneyGeneral In his decision said I annrehend however annrehent that If there was no public work to be done such as comprehended under the statute the Sheriff might permit such prisoners to work on his premises It they so desired for recreatlbn and exercise ex-ercise without being subject to any serious criticism On moral grounds it is far better for the prisoner himself to be engaged in some honest work than to lie In the dark cell of some county prison day after dayTime day-Time idea thus expressed Is correct and while it would not be good ethics I to require prisoners to work for the sheriffs personal advantage though while the prisoners would of course be better off even so employed the thought arises that there ought to be some public work on which these prisoners pris-oners could be employed I Is not good for the prisoners to be Idle yet It is bad ethics to suggest that a per I sonal advantage should be derived from the employment of public prisoners Usual r the prisoners in any one count jail are few Outside of three or foul counties they are not worthwhile worth-while taking Into special consideration Yet in those few counties they arc numerous nu-merous enough to make It worth while and in a sense obligatory to provide for them some employment There Is I much public work to be done in various parts of the State which the counties are not financially able to pay for the doing if they have to employ full priced labor Yet there Is at hand a considerable number of prisoners who would be better off in every way in doIng do-Ing this work than In being cooped up Idle In jail As samples of such work we might cite the Improvement of the county roads the repair of public watercourses wa-tercourses and their permanent fixture fix-ture driving tunnels In the mountains to tap blind water courses and the like There Is in fact an Immensity of such work that would Inure materially to the public benefit and that could be done by those serving time as misdemeanants misde-meanants The county has to feed and clothe them anyway and It might as well get some benefit out of the labor which at the same time would be beneficial ben-eficial to the prisoners I is very likely that there would have to be an overhauling and amending amend-ing of the statutes In order to carry out such a system of employment for the prisoners In the county Jails and especially espe-cially If 1 It was provided as It should be that county prisoners could for such public use and benefit be transferred trans-ferred at need from one county to another an-other The public gets the worst of It under the present arrangement and the prisoners are either used for private benefit or not at all and all the time the public has to support them and got no return Surely there ought to be a change and thoso who expect to be members of the Legislature might well be thinking on the subject with a view to an Improvement which would be advantageous ad-vantageous both to the prisoners and to the public |