Nov 3, 2011
Editorial: As prisoners pick apples, problem goes untouched

We’ll pass on the temptation to equate hard labor with farm labor. But we will note that having prisoners pick apples — while creatively congealing worker supply and demand — points to a situation that is seriously askew.

Tuesday’s Yakima Herald-Republic detailed how 105 state inmates from a minimum-security work camp in Forks migrated east to a Grant County orchard for a two-week stint picking apples because of a farm-worker shortage.

Security is not an outsized concern. About 400 offenders are housed at the Olympic Corrections Center, deep in the forests of the Olympic Peninsula. The inmates go through screening, and no sex offenders are allowed in the work-camp program. Primarily they do seasonal work in trail maintenance, firefighting and habitat restoration, and normally by late October they have retreated indoors for the cold-weather season. Yakima Herald