Jim Inhofe: “I can assure him that prisoners can work. I can also assure him that the language, in my opinion--I have been on this…”

“I can assure him that prisoners can work. I can also assure him that the language, in my opinion--I have been on this committee now since 1994, and I have heard this debate every year since 1994--in the bill is good language. We need to be able to have quality work done on the work we are talking about in conjunction with this prison labor debate. Let me assure the Senator from Alabama that we can go ahead and keep the language that is in our bill and still have a lot for the prisoners to do. I know a lot about this. I was mayor of Tulsa for three, four terms. During that time, we had a prostitution ring that hit Oklahoma and hit my city of Tulsa. It was a very serious problem. Of course, we would throw them in jail. They would get out about 10 minutes later, when their attorneys would come up. What I did was, instead of putting them in jail and incarcerating them, I put them in work details. We had them out there--it worked out really well--cleaning up our parks.”