Canada's prison farms may be on the chopping block

I don’t really know how other prisons ran their farms but our neighborhood Pen had a Beef Cattle farm, run by private enterprise. They were loosing to much money so they shut it down.

That says a lot about the state of small farming operations, when they couldn’t make a go of it with free labour.

Considering how much it costs to house, feed and provide security for these inmates, I don't know if you can consider the labour "free".

The farm operator wasn't paying the R & B, and they were all trustee's working outside the fence so no guards either, = free labour.

Prison labor is rather expensive when you take into account that most Western countries require a higher standard of welfare for convicted felons than they do for regular workers or even soldiers.