Originally posted by: DLeRium
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Oh come on, the US has 3 million inmates. Are you telling me you need demolition crews still? Seriously, arm them with a shovel each and they can dig quite a bit.
You can still leave building a temporary coffer dam on both coasts up to skilled construction workers, but the digging? Come on!
Yes I know this isn't China and I know this will never be a legal thing to do, but come on. This is vital efficiency here. How much are we paying per day to keep inmates alive especially those on life sentences? What about those on death row? Let's put our tax dollars to work.
But if you think about this seriously, how long would an actual construction crew take? Oh let's wait for the lowest bid, lay out a schedule, and like all government projects we run into troubles, labor shortages, construction company decides to work as slow as possible because they just rake in the money anyway, cost overruns blah blah blah. I say forget that. Bring in the slaves!
Yea, go and give them picks & shovels, let them set the project back a few decades with the slowest method possible on one of the largest (if not the largest) projects in history.
I think you seriously underestimate the size of this project should it ever occur, you are talking making a river wide enough and deep enough for ships to navigate both ways with locks to account for changes in elevation stretching 2000km/1242m. Look at what it took to build the panama canal.
And yes, there will need to be extensive blasting done as I doubt it's all soft soil.
Perhaps give them a section with easy to work with soil as a "feel good" project that could be done in 1/50th the time by heavy machinery. And you are not going to let inmates use heavy equipment that they could go on a rampage with (I'd hope).
There are better things to put inmates to work at, such as a assembly line of some sort that can be easily setup, watched and controlled. Pick and shovel will not cut it, modern heavy machinery is just so much more effective that it's a waste of time for what you propose. Perhaps even gear the work they do towards skills they can use when they get out of prison so they have a career they can turn to and become productive members of society.
As for the problems with how it's run, not my problem if your government is incompetent at running any large scale projects. What makes you think use of prisoner will work out any better aside from making you feel better rather then doing something useful & cost effective.