Civilian Inmate Labor Program.

Civilian Labor? What? ITS A CONSPIRACY!! The title is about as far as people get into this document before declaring it's something evil. I don't think many of them have actually read it. If you do, I'm not sure how you can rationally see a conspiracy here..but then again CT's forgot the word rational long ago. Alex Jones and others claim that Army Regulation 210-35 do a few things, none of which really make any sense. I'll provide a link for the full document at the bottom of this post.

First Claim: The program allows the government to grab civilians off the street and throw them into force labor camps. False...incredibly false.

First thing you need to understand with this is that by "civilian" they don't mean regular people off the street, they mean the prisoners in the program as opposed to the soldiers on the army bases the program is involved with. This document has no involvement what so ever of persons not in prison. Here's what happens.

From the document itself, the emphasis is mine.

1–1. Purpose
This regulation provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison
camps on Army installations. Sources of civilian inmate labor are limited to on– and off–post Federal corrections
facilities, State and/or local corrections facilities operating from on–post prison camps pursuant to leases under Section
2667, Title 10, United States Code (10 USC 2667), and off–post State corrections facilities participating in the
demonstration project authorized under Section 1065, Public Law (PL) 103–337. Otherwise, State and/or local inmate
labor from off–post corrections facilities is currently excluded from this program.

A lot of CT's jump on "off-post Federal corrections". I take this to mean where prisoners are residing, on the base or off.

All that's going on here is that certain prisoners who have been convicted of NON VIOLENT crimes, are selected for consideration, and if approved, are transported to Army bases that participate in the CILP. The bases lease out land to public or private prison and the PO's set up prison housing on the base. From there they basically become handymen. They are trained and perform tasks such as custodial tasks, building demolition, debris removal, mowing, landscaping, painting, carpentry, trash pickup, transporting debris to and from recycling centers, and other similar activities. Since it's illegal for the inmates to preform these tasks for free compensation is in the form of housing for them. Excerpt from the official document:

a. Civilian inmate labor programs benefit both the Army and corrections systems by—
(1) Providing a source of labor at no direct labor cost to Army installations to accomplish tasks that would not be
possible otherwise due to the manning and funding constraints under which the Army operates.
(2) Providing meaningful work for inmates and, in some cases, additional space to alleviate overcrowding in nearby
corrections facilities.
(3) Making cost–effective use of buildings and land not otherwise being used.

I dunno about you but, that sounds pretty good to me. It'd get me out of my cell, give me something to do, give me exercise, time outside and time away from the yard, which can be and is a very dangerous place. The soldiers on base have very little contact and no control over the inmates except in the case of a persons life being in danger. All of those things are delegated to prison officials.

Second Claim: The CILP violates the Posse Comitatus Act.
Again...so off the mark. It's actually the opposite.

Posse Comitatus was enacted

with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Navy, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.

Right in the program it states that Army personnel will have no direct involvement with the program (except in the case of a life in immediate danger, or detaining quote "They may detain and restrain walkaways,
escapees, and persons who commit a felony or breach of peace in their presence.").

Third claim: This is slave labor!!
That's an extreme view of this. If you wanna look at it that way, fine, but, it dosen't matter because of one thing.

The 13th amendment.

But wait, the 13th amendment prohibits slave labor!! Yes, it does, except as punishment for a crime.

13th Amendment
Amendment XIII
Section 1.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Emphasis mine. Anyone housed in a federal facility serving a term has been duly convicted of a crime, weather or not they truly are guilty or not. This brings me to my final point.

Some people claim this document shows how our government can do whatever they want, how they can toss you in jail weather you did anything wrong or not and then use programs like this to force you into labor. They then usually follow with some story of how they were convicted of crime they didn't commit or some other story, as seen in this thread about the program on prisonplanet. Ironically the thread is an Alex Jones follower saying the same things I am, showing that at least some Jones fans have a bit of brains.

The thing is, this has nothing to do with it. The fairness of our legal system is an entirely separate issue. If you're in jail, it's not because of the Civilian Inmate Labor Program.

Now, obviously I can't go over every word of the document or every claim about this, but I think I've made a good case against any kind of conspiracy going on here. Of course there are people who still have things to say about it, and to those people, I welcome your comments as long as your argument is directly related to this and not how it's just another thing for The Man to gain control over us.

Link to The Civilian Inmate Labor Program

J.S