What Is Happening to American Jobs?

Fifteen minutes prior to reading “Prisons and Honest Work” (editorial, July 24) I watched a segment on TV indicating that this nation has lost a full 15% of its manufacturing jobs in the last three years. “Furniture Makers Feel Hammered by Imports” (Business, July 19) was about L.A.’s furniture manufacturers losing out, along with their workers, to Chinese imports and Chinese workers.

Will our prison system’s job program be the only option for honest work if the current trend for manufacturing jobs is not reversed? What kind of society provides meaningful job opportunities to its citizens only when they are in prison? What kind of society can’t provide the same job opportunities to those leaving our prison system as to those in our prison system? Is prison labor our answer to competing with Chinese imports?

Tom O’Connor

Playa del Rey

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Instead of giving jobs to convicts who have committed criminal acts, let’s give them to honest men who are looking for work. If they had free room and board they could compete on a level playing field. By the way, if two-thirds return to prison within three years of release, what’s working? Train the convicts, but give free men the jobs.

Duane Finley

Banning