If there’s such a thing as rolling in one’s grave, the seismographs around Santa Ana, California’s Fairhaven Memorial Park must be going nuts. A Tesla motor couldn’t possibly top Raymond C. Hoiles’ revolutions per minute — at least if readership of the Orange County Register, the newspaper he bought in 1935 and gifted one of America’s most libertarian-leaning editorial bents, extends into the afterlife.
“There’s nothing wrong with requiring prisoners to work,” the Register’s editorial board wrote on Sept. 24, endorsing a “no” vote on Proposition 6.
Proposition 6, per California’s official voter guide, “Amends the California Constitution to remove current provision that allows jails and prisons to impose involuntary servitude to punish crime (i.e., forcing incarcerated persons to work).”
“(W)hat the proponents of Prop. 6 are calling involuntary servitude,” the board writes, “is really far more a matter of this: Not allowing prisoners who have been convicted of felonies that were injurious to real people, (to) say, in effect, that they can’t be bothered to hold down a job while they are behind bars for their crimes.”