The Law: A Criminal Wage

In these inflationary times, most people would consider $3 for a day's work a criminal wage. In Ohio, it is just that: for years, a state law has offered convicted persons the choice of paying their fines or working them off at the rate of $3 a day. Ohio's Supreme Court has just found that law unconstitutional. Because an affluent criminal can choose between jail or payment of a fine, but the indigent offender cannot, the court ruled that the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Judge Robert M. Duncan, who wrote the opinion, also objected on grounds that any wage earner would understand. The workhouse pay rate is far too low to recompense a man—even a convicted one—for his labor, said the judge. He wisely declined to establish a new pay scale for prisoners. "This," he said, "is a legislative question." But some refused to wait. Cincinnati City Manager Richard Krabach issued an executive order setting $10 a day as the rate for those serving time, thereby releasing 98 prisoners who had already worked enough days to pay their fines at the new wage scale.