http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/us/25inmates.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Enlisting Prison Labor to Close Budget Gaps

JAY, Fla. — Before he went to jail, Danny Ivey had barely seen a backyard garden.

But here he was, two years left on his sentence for grand theft, bent over in a field, snapping wide, green collard leaves from their stems. For the rest of the week, Mr. Ivey and his fellow inmates would be eating the greens he picked, and the State of Florida would be saving most of the $2.29 a day it allots for their meals.

Prison labor — making license plates, picking up litter — is nothing new, and nearly all states have such programs. But these days, officials are expanding the practice to combat cuts in federal financing and dwindling tax revenue, using prisoners to paint vehicles, clean courthouses, sweep campsites and perform many other services done before the recession by private contractors or government employees.

In New Jersey, inmates on roadkill patrol clean deer carcasses from highways. Georgia inmates tend municipal graveyards. In Ohio, they paint their own cells. In California, prison officials hope to expand existing programs, including one in which wet-suit-clad inmates repair leaky public water tanks. There are no figures on how many prisoners have been enrolled in new or expanded programs nationwide, but experts in criminal justice have taken note of the increase.

“There’s special urgency in prisons these days,” said Martin F. Horn, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction. “As state budgets get constricted, the public is looking for ways to offset the cost of imprisonment.”

Although inmate labor is helping budgets in many corners of state government, the savings are the largest in corrections departments themselves, which have cut billions of dollars in recent years and are under constant pressure to reduce the roughly $29,000 a year that it costs to incarcerate the average inmate in the United States.

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, introduced a bill last month to require all low-security prisoners to work 50 hours a week. Creating a national prison labor force has been a goal since he went to Congress in 1995, but it makes even more sense in this economy, he said.

“Think about how much it costs to incarcerate someone,” Mr. Ensign said. “Do we want them just sitting in prison, lifting weights, becoming violent and thinking about the next crime? Or do we want them having a little purpose in life and learning a skill?”

Financial experts agree.

“These are nickel-and-dime attempts to cut budgets, but they add up,” said Alan Essig, an expert on state budgets at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. “You save a dollar here, a dollar there, and you keep your government’s functions.”

Technology has made it easier to coordinate. In Hunterdon County, N.J., nonprofit organizations and government agencies can view prisoners’ work schedules online and reserve them for a specific task on a free day. (Coming tasks include cleaning up after a Fire Department fish fry and maintaining a public park.)

“Using inmate labor has created unusual alliances: liberal humanitarian groups that advocate more education and exercise in prisons find themselves supporting proposals from conservative budget hawks to get inmates jobs, often outdoors, where they can learn new skills. Having a job in prison has been linked in studies to decreased violence, improved morale and lowered recidivism — but most effectively, experts say, when the task is purposeful.

“The days of just breaking rocks with sledgehammers” are over, said Michael P. Jacobson, director of the Vera Institute of Justice, a research group in New York. “At the grossest financial level, it’s just savings. You can cut the government worker, save the salary and still maintain the service, and you’re providing a skill for when they leave.”

There are, of course, concerns about public safety and competition with government or private workers. Professor Horn estimates that only 20 percent of inmates present a low enough security threat to work in public. And in some places, even financially struggling governments are not willing to take the risk of employing prisoners.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/12/young-black-males-bear-brunt-of-economic-crisis-2/

by Billy Wharton / December 16th, 2010

While Manhattan salaries surged this year, up 12% because of Wall Street’s recovery, young black males continue to bear the burden of the economic crisis that ensued in 2008. A new report by the Community Service Society (CSS) indicates that only one in four young black men between the ages of 16 and 24 in New York City is employed. The group tied the shockingly low employment rate to the effects of the economic crisis, which rendered already inferior jobs training and alternative education structures even more ineffective.

The declining possibilities for young Black males is one feature of an overall surge in unemployment among work age Black males. The CSS reports an increase in unemployment from the already inordinately high 9% in 2006 to 17.9% in 2009. Youth workers in general have also suffered during the crisis surging to 24.6% unemployment. In addition, unemployment is not a short-term experience for the Black community. While all those with jobs who became unemployed were out of work for an average of 6 months, Black workers faced an average of 12 months before employment.

The CSS identified education as a key factor in the unemployment rate for young Black males. The figure of one in four employed rises to one in ten for Black males who do not hold a high school diploma. Unemployment figures for the Black males in the 16-24 age group with no high school diploma is hard to determine since 84% of the young men in this group are out of the labor force entirely. The CSS report was only able to identify 8% in this category who were employed from January 2009 until June 2010.

Such discriminatory trends in employment are feeding the prison pipeline. A 2010 MIT study of incarceration and inequality confirms the findings of the CSS report. The incarceration rate for young Black males without high school diplomas has surged since 1980. In 1980, these young men faced a 10% incarceration rate while in 2008 this number had increased to 35%. This speaks to the existence of a conscious social policy at work in the US, which favors incarceration over addressing issues of educational opportunity or job creation.

While these figures increased for all racial groups surveyed, they pale in comparison with white youth without a high school diploma who face an 11% incarceration rate. The report states bluntly that, “by 2008 these men [young Black males] were more likely to be locked up than employed.”

Incarceration, even over a short period, has seriously negative effects on life chances. Wage earnings over a lifetime are reduced by nearly 2/3 for those serving prison time and in an environment of overall high unemployment often leads to long-term joblessness and recidivism.

Unwinding one part of the cycle of unemployment for young Black males, would entail opening new education opportunities. Unfortunately, a November 2009 report, also issued by the CSS, indicated that GED instruction in New York State ranks near the bottom nationwide. The CSS described these programs as, “circuitous, inefficient and extraordinarily dysfunctional.” Even those who exit such programs face the prospects of a “pipeline to failure.”

The group cited the decentralization of the City’s GED programs as a key weakness. There is, they argued, no single City agency that allows all of the alternative programs to be regulated or even explored by a potential GED student. Further, because most programs lack a direct connection with colleges, they offer a degree that will lead to long-term low wage employment with few possibilities for advancement.

Fixing the GED system is a key part of what the CSS report on young Black male unemployment recommends to address this crisis. They believe that a GED program with links to a college education could be successfully combined with a jobs training program to begin to immediately address the crisis in employment.

This should be more than a crisis. It should be a political and social emergency. All levels of government should be proposing immediate emergency measures to address the findings in the CSS report. Frankly, if similar numbers related to young white males, such an emergency would be called directly. What the CSS has documented is the cutting edge of institutional racism in 21st century New York. Yet, there will be no response from Mayor Michael Bloomberg. No splashy press conferences. No innovative initiatives. Just disregard, neglect and the hope that the communities affected by this racism will remain silent.

Clearly, any serious solutions to the class-based racism we see in the report will have to come from outside mainstream politics. Bloomberg and friends are far too busy with their privatizations and budget cutting. These outcomes are produced by the logic of capitalist economics. They should be met by a strong new popular movement that takes up the slogan of “no more one in four.” The situation is simply intolerable.

NY candidate: Prison dorms for welfare recipients

"We'll teach them personal hygeine..." - Carl Paladino, candidate for Republican nomination in New York governor's race.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMerqzo-GmOgn5-ch4wz-J0DJ7nAD9HO45H00

NEW YORK — Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.”

Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists, isn’t saying the state should jail poor people: The program would be voluntary.

But the suggestion that poor families would be better off in remote institutions, rather than among friends and family in their own neighborhoods, struck some anti-poverty activists as insulting.

Paladino is competing for the Republican nomination with former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio. The primary is Sept. 14.

Paladino first described the idea in June at a meeting of The Journal News of White Plains and spoke about it again this week with The Associated Press.

Throughout his campaign, Paladino has criticized New York’s rich menu of social service benefits, which he says encourages illegal immigrants and needy people to live in the state. He has promised a 20 percent reduction in the state budget and a 10 percent income tax cut if elected.

Asked at the meeting how he would achieve those savings, Paladino laid out several plans that included converting underused state prisons into centers that would house welfare recipients. There, they would do work for the state — “military service, in some cases park service, in other cases public works service,” he said — while prison guards would be retrained to work as counselors.

“Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes,” Paladino said.

New York, like other states, receives a federal block grant to provide cash and other forms of welfare to very low-income residents. Federal law already requires welfare recipients to do some form of work to receive benefits.

New York’s welfare rolls have grown slightly during the recession, while food stamp eligibility has almost doubled, according to the state.

Paladino told The Associated Press the dormitory living would be voluntary, not mandatory, and would give welfare recipients an opportunity to take public, state-sponsored jobs far from home.

“These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities,” Paladino he said.

He also defended his hygiene remarks, saying he had trained inner-city troops in the Army and knows their needs.

“You have to teach them basic things — taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things,” he said.

Ketny Jean-Francois, a former welfare recipient and a New York City advocate for low-income people, said Paladino’s idea shocked her.

“Being poor is not a crime,” she said. “People are on welfare for many reasons … Is he saying people are poor because they don’t have any hygiene or any skills?”

A Lazio spokesman didn’t immediately return a message.

Paladino said he based his ideas on the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal program that paid young unemployed men during the Great Depression to plant trees, build roads and develop parks.

Paladino said he would open the program both to long-term welfare recipients and to people who had lost their jobs during the recession. He said that he didn’t know how he would pay for it but that prisons could be consolidated to make room.

South African state workers are striking over a demand for higher wages. (Reuters: Siphiwe Sibeko)

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=22162

As the recession bites many South African workers are questioning the logic of a system that forces the vast majority of the population to live in poverty, while multinational companies make profits and take their wealth out of the country.

In South Africa the idea that workers won’t fight during a recession is being challenged.

And with these strikes workers are looking for answers on how to root out the inequality that capitalism has entrenched.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-20/south-africa-s-police-out-in-full-force-to-monitor-state-workers-strike.html

South African police clashed with state workers who protested outside government buildings on the third day of a wage strike that has shut schools and clinics.

Police used water cannons to disperse protesters at Johannesburg’s Helen Joseph Hospital today, video shown by Cape Town-based e News Channel showed. Officers broke up a group of strikers who blocked roads to a hospital and a courthouse in the town of Chatsworth in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, police said.

The government “has noted with concern the violent acts of intimidation and public violence” associated with the strike,’’ it said in an e-mailed statement today. “Steps will be taken against strikers or sympathizers who intimidate staff or members of the public, or commit acts of hooliganism, destruction of property or violence.”

While state employees are demanding an 8.6 percent pay increase and a housing allowance of 1,000 rand ($136) a month, the government says it can’t afford to raise its offer of a 7 percent increase and a 700 rand allowance. South Africa’s annual inflation rate is currently 4.2 percent.

Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi met with union officials today “to try and persuade them to understand the government offer,” Dumisani Nkwamba, Baloyi’s spokesman, said by telephone from Pretoria. Asked if the wage offer may be increased, he replied, “absolutely not.”

‘Intensifying’

Unions representing about 1.3 million state workers say their members struggle to get by on their current salaries and that the strike will continue until their demands are met.

“The strike will be intensifying all around the country,” Sizwe Pamla, a spokesman for the 250,000-member National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, said today in an interview.

The rand fell for a second day against the dollar, declining as much as 1.1 percent, to 7,3731. The FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index shed 0.6 percent to 26,989.63 for a third consecutive decline.

Government employees last struck in 2007, when schools, hospitals and immigration offices were disrupted for 29 days, the longest-ever walkout by state workers.

South African laws prevent strikes by certain categories of workers who provide essential services, accounting for about a third of state employees. Even so, many nurses have joined the labor action, said Fidel Hadebe, a Health Ministry spokesman.

‘Quite Severe’

“The impact of the strike has been quite severe in a number of facilities,” he said today by telephone from Pretoria. The provinces of “Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Kwazulu- Natal have been worst-affected.”

Police fired rubber bullets yesterday to disperse workers who entered the grounds of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto township, south of Johannesburg, and tried to prevent patients and doctors from entering.

“We abhor the inhuman conduct of denying doctors and patients access to hospitals and teachers and pupils access to their schools,” the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference group said today in a statement issued to the South African Press Association. “Care is being denied to the weakest and most vulnerable.”

Members of the South African Defense Force were deployed to several hospitals to fill in for striking workers, while critically ill patients who were unable to access treatment at state facilities were transferred to private hospitals.

Reports of Deaths

A pregnant woman who was denied access to a state hospital in the eastern city of Durban gave birth in the parking lot of Netcare Ltd.’s St. Augustine hospital in the city, the company said in an e-mailed statement today.

Several newspapers said patients had died because they had not been treated or received medication. The health department was still investigating the reports, Hadebe said.

“As much as we offer our condolences to those families, we don’t want our members to be blackmailed when they have a legitimate right to strike,” Pamla said. “Hospitals by their nature are places that people go to get saved, but it doesn’t always happen that way” and it can’t be proven that strikers caused the deaths, he said.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, representing 70,000 workers, said today that car and fuel retail-industry workers plan to strike from Sept. 1 after employers failed to meet their demands for a pay increase. Numsa members in the tire and rubber industries will begin a walkout on Aug. 30, the union said.

LA judge frees thief who got 25 yrs on 3rd strike

From left, Stanford law school students Gabriel Martinez and Reiko Rogozen listen with Gregory Taylor as he wipes away tears during a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court Monday, Aug. 16, 2010. A judge on Monday ordered the release of Taylor, a man serving a potential life sentence for stealing food from a Los Angeles church. (AP Photo/Anne Cusack, Pool)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5heJ-iitiJR_RYwIjOjOIiybw7Q0QD9HL4OOO0

LOS ANGELES — After 13 years behind bars for trying to break in to a church kitchen to find something to eat, a man who became an example of the harsh sentences allowed by California’s three-strikes law has been ordered released from prison.

A Superior Court judge amended Gregory Taylor’s sentence to eight years already served and the 47-year-old, who was sentenced in 1997 to 25 years to life, will be a free man in a few days.

Tears streamed down Taylor’s face and Judge Peter Espinoza asked a bailiff to get him a tissue.

“I thought I was going to cry too,” said law student Reiko Rogozen, who started working on the case in January as part of Stanford Law School’s Three-Strikes Project, which filed a writ of habeas corpus seeking freedom for Taylor. “He was scared up until the last minute that it wasn’t actually going to happen.”

The district attorney did not oppose the group’s move.

Taylor quietly thanked the court and his lawyers for “giving me another chance … and my family for sticking by me.”

Taylor was arrested in July 1997 while trying to get into the kitchen of St. Joseph’s Church in downtown Los Angeles. He told officers that he was hungry.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Alan McCoy, testified at the original sentencing that Taylor was often given food and allowed to sleep at the church. The priest described him as a peaceful man struggling with homelessness and crack addiction.

Taylor was convicted of third-strike burglary due to two robbery convictions in the 1980s, once for stealing a purse containing $10 and another time for trying to rob a man on the street. He didn’t use a weapon in either case, and no one was injured.

During an appeal, a dissenting state Supreme Court justice said Taylor was a 20th-century version of Jean Valjean, a character imprisoned for stealing bread in Victor Hugo’s novel “Les Miserables.”

Judge Espinoza said the church break-in was not a crime of violence “but drug addiction and homelessness.”

The three-strikes sentencing policies of the 1990s “produced inconsistent and disproportionate results,” he said.

Taylor was taken back into custody and will be released when his paperwork is completed in at least two days.

His mother and siblings applauded during the hearing and beamed in the hallway afterward. His sister, Angela Taylor, remembered the day her brother called with details of his sentence.

“I thought he was lying. Twenty-five to life? That’s crazy,” she said.

Taylor got his GED at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo.

“Even in conversations over the phone, he sounds way more mature,” his sister said.

His 78-year-old mother, Lois Taylor, said her son was hungry for a home-cooked meal, so she’s planning a huge barbecue to celebrate.

He plans to live in Pomona with his younger brother who runs a food pantry where he’ll get a job.

Michael Taylor said he and his brothers are planning a West Coast cruise and if Gregory Taylor gets out before they depart Aug. 23, they’ll take him along.

When running for office in 2000, District Attorney Steve Cooley often used the case as an example of how unfair he believed the three-strikes law was. Cooley said if the third strike wasn’t serious and wasn’t violent, three strikes should not apply.

Cooley said Gregory Taylor’s release is “justice long overdue” because his crime was a minor offense.

But Cooley said the three-strikes law doesn’t need to be repealed as long as prosecutors apply it “proportionally,” taking into account the nature of the offense and the defendant’s previous criminal record.

BP uses prison labor and tax breaks to clean up its mess

“If they say no to a job, they get that time that was taken off their sentence put right back on.”

http://www.newpittsburghcourieronline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2648:bp-uses-prison-labor-and-tax-breaks-to-clean-up-its-mess&catid=40:opinion&Itemid=54

http://www.ilookfly.com/black-celebs-gossip/bp-gets-louisiana-inmates-to-do-their-dirty-work-cleaning-up-oil-spill/

(REAL TIMES MEDIA)—The consequences of the Deep Horizon BP oil spill will likely not be fully known for years and by then most of the men and women who are responsible for this disaster will either be out of office, in new jobs or retired. However, that shouldn’t stop us from paying attention to some of the newest and most disturbing aspects of the spill, which are not only environmental and health-related. Would it shock you to know that BP is using modern slavery to clean up the Gulf, and better yet, the American taxpayer is paying for it? That might make you want to buy your gas somewhere else.

One of the most disturbing impacts of the BP oil spill has been the multi-headed impact it’s had on the local economy. Let’s not forget that metro New Orleans and the Gulf region lost over 200,000 residents in the year after Hurricane Katrina and that loss of customers and employees has left the region struggling to find a new identity. The spill has essentially ended summer tourism and fishing in the region, putting thousands of seasonal employees out of work. In fact, one of the only companies in position to hire anyone is actually BP which has been tasked with the massive multi-billion dollar clean-up that in the region. Every other day you see a new spate of commercials from BP with earnest looking hardhats claiming that they’re working hard to clean up the mess and how nobody could be any sorrier than BP that this all happened. Dozens of websites have sprung up in the last several months advertising paying jobs, in the Gulf region as part of the cleanup. You would think that at least someone is getting work out this disaster, but you’d be shocked as to who’s working most.

A recent article by Abe Louise Young in the Nation magazine points out that BP is engaging in the most despicable of shell games (pun intended) in the coast region. Rather than hiring local citizens for cleanup duty, or just deploying more of their own staff, British Petroleum has been using prison labor to clean up some of the most dangerous and toxic regions of the gulf.

The problem with BP hiring prison labor is multi-layered. First, prisoners don’t have any rights, they can’t complain about inhaling fumes from oil-slicked and dispersant chemicals for 12 hours a day, or report any abuses on the part of their employers due to BP’s notorious “gag order.” Further, if they refuse the work they can lose “time off for good behavior” on their sentencing. Louis­iana, the state that has the highest percentage of their population in prison, is now using that population as slave labor for BP.

But the problem is even worse when you look at the benefits for BP and the impact on the American taxpayer. Hiring prison labor means that BP, the fourth largest corporation in the world can pay as little as 10 cents an hour rather than paying locals real wages. Worse, due to Bush era tax laws companies who hire at-risk employees like prisoners or welfare recipients receive tax breaks up to $2,500 per hire or up to 40 percent of the wages paid. Meanwhile prison laborers who get sick inhaling toxic fumes and waste on the job will go back to prison where our tax payer dollars will have to cover their limited medical care. BP does it again! Destroying a region with irresponsible drilling, cleaning it up by supporting the racist and classism prison industrial complex and then getting tax breaks and health care to cover it all up provided by the U.S. taxpayer. They could not have planned this better if they intended to.

While British Petroleum has pledged $20 billion to a fund to for displaced and economically harmed locals in the region, their use of prison labor and Bush era tax loopholes to cut down their own expenses will continue unabated unless the U.S. public becomes aware and does something about it. Every American citizen should call their local congressperson or senator and ask that they close the tax loophole which allows companies like BP to benefit from prison labor to clean up messes that they have created on their own. BP needs to clean up their own mess and not get tax breaks to do it.

Riot police called in as thousands rush for federal aid

"We gave out over 13,000 applications in under three hours. The number was just astronomical, and it ties exactly to the way the economy is today."

http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=211421&catid=28

EAST POINT, GA — A huge crowd of people trying to meet a deadline to get an application for public housing help flooded a facility in East Point Wednesday.

The crowd began with just a few hundred people gathering around noon Monday at the Tri-Cities Plaza Shopping Center.

By Wednesday morning, it had swelled to tens of thousands.

Many in the crowd could be seen running toward police vehicles. Thousands were gathered around the front of the plaza. Many more were just waiting in long lines.

“We have a lot of homeless families, a lot of families who are unemployed and it creates a desperate situation, which is what our agency was created to assist with,” said Kim Lemish, the executive director of East Point Housing Authority.

Right now East Point’s nearly 200 public housing units are full, more than 400 Section 8 vouchers are being used for help with private housing rent, and the chance of getting immediate housing is slim.

All the people in line Wednesday just wanted to get on the waiting list, which last opened in 2002.

“At that time we took in 2,400 applications. Now based on that number and the way the economy is today, we prepared for 10,000 people,” Lemish said. “Unfortunately three times that number showed up.” She says many of them didn’t even need housing help but came along to support loved ones in line.

“We gave out over 13,000 applications in under three hours,” she said. “The number was just astronomical, and it ties exactly to the way the economy is today.”

“Hopefully in the very near future, we’ll be able to help these families that received applications,” she said. “The next step for the applicants is they’re going to have to return their applications to us. That process is going to be much smoother.”

She’s encouraging people to mail applications in instead of dropping them off in person at the East Point Housing Authority offices at 3056 Normanberry Drive Thursday.

Lemish says plans are in place to keep the process as smooth as possible, but there are no guarantees.

More than 60 people were treated, mostly for heat related illness, while waiting for applications. There were no serious injuries or arrests for criminal behavior.

“[There is] a nationwide network of prison camps churning out products for contractors and federal agencies that might otherwise buy the same goods from private, unionized plants.”

Calif. judges reject suit seeking to raise inmate wages

On land previously occupied by a slave plantation, Louisiana prisoners pick cotton, earning 4 cents an hour. This is Angola prison, big shout out to the Angola 3!!! This isn't a metaphor for slavery, its modern-day slavery!!

http://www.correctionsone.com/ethics/articles/2044829-Calif-judges-reject-suit-seeking-to-raise-inmate-wages/

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — After renowned attorney J. Tony Serra spent nine months in a federal prison camp for not paying his taxes, he calculated how much he was paid for watering the camp gardens – 19 cents an hour – and thought it might violate a U.N. standard that says inmates should get fair wages.

But the lawsuit that followed in 2007, which sought higher pay for all federal prisoners in California, faced even longer odds than many of the cases in Serra’s career, celebrated in the 1989 film “True Believer.” On Friday, a federal appeals court delivered a thumbs-down verdict, saying the government can set prison wages at any level, including zero.

“Prisoners do not have a legal entitlement to payment for their work,” said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a 3-0 ruling.

Federal law, the court said, allows the attorney general to arrange payments to inmates or their dependents “as he may deem proper.” Even the Constitution’s 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, made an exception for convicted criminals, the court noted.

As for the standard adopted by the United Nations at a 1955 conference on the treatment of prisoners, it declared only that nations should establish a system of “equitable remuneration” for prison work, without specifying any particular wage level, said Judge Richard Clifton in Friday’s ruling. What’s more, he said, the standard isn’t a treaty, isn’t binding on the United States and can’t be enforced in court.

Serra’s lawsuit sought at least the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour. When he filed the suit two years ago, he said he wasn’t complaining about personal mistreatment at the federal prison camp in Lompoc Santa Barbara County but about systemic unfairness.

His job watering the gardens for five hours a day, Serra said, was part of a nationwide network of prison camps churning out products for contractors and federal agencies that might otherwise buy the same goods from private, unionized plants.

Serra, 74, has represented scores of controversial clients in a nearly 50-year legal career while living a Spartan life and driving a rundown car. He successfully defended Black Panther leader Huey Newton on murder charges and was part of the defense team that won an acquittal in a 1973 Chinatown murder. James Woods played a lawyer modeled on Serra in “True Believer,” loosely based on the Chinatown case.

Serra pleaded guilty in 2005 to willfully failing to pay $44,000 in federal income taxes in the late 1990s, his third tax conviction. A self-described lifelong tax boycotter who had spent four months at Lompoc in 1974 for a tax protest related to the Vietnam War, he agreed to pay $100,000 in back taxes after his last conviction.

He said he’d try to follow the law in the future, observing that it’s harder to fight the system when you’re locked up in it.

Copyright 2010 San Francisco Chronicle