State and local governments across the U.S. are going broke. In 2011, budget deficits in state houses across the country will necessitate increased revenue and/or spending cuts. As Republicans have made significant gains in governorships and state houses, conventional wisdom expects that they will focus on “spending” cuts rather than on raising taxes. New governors like Chris Christie in New Jersey, John Kasich in Ohio, and Rick Scott in Florida are all promising to cut their public employees and cut various public services.

Therefore it is not surprising to me to read the following article about a proposal to increase the use prisoners to respond to natural disasters.

The Missouri National Guard plans to start training some of the state’s prison inmates to help it during natural disasters and other emergencies.

Missouri Guard Maj. Tammy Spicer said that under the proposal, the inmates would become a more formalized part of the Guard’s disaster response. She said it would give the Guard a larger and better trained pool of workers to respond to emergencies.

The training would focus on skills such as filling and stacking sandbags and removing debris.

“We’re trying to do something better for Missourians,” Spicer said.

Inmates have been used in the past to help local officials during floods and other emergencies. Over the past several years, they have worked to shore up levies and fill sandbags along flooding rivers from near St. Louis to northwestern Missouri.

Then there is also news that female prisoners in New York States will be running a DMV call center:

Female prisoners at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County are staffing a Department of Motor Vehicles call center. The facility employs 39 inmates, including 31 full-time and part-time customer service agents, six team leaders and two trainers.

The program has been going on for years at the Bayview Women’s Prison in Manhattan, but that has been converted to a re-entry facility for short-timers being released into the community and Bedford Hills has a larger inmate population with longer sentences.

The men’s Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island also operates a DMV call center. Between the two, one million calls are expected yearly with a savings to taxpayers of $3.5 million annually.

In addition to saving money, it will provide job skills for participating inmates, said prisons spokesman Erik Kriss.

“They do earn a small stipend for doing this work and that helps them to afford items in the commissary and so forth and it gives them motivation,” he said. “Everyone needs motivation, whether you are outside prison or inside prison.”

The inmates who participate do not have access to DMV computers and are not able to access any customer data. Inmates convicted of a telephone related crime or credit card or computer fraud are not eligible to work at the center. Calls are monitored at random.

I expect that many other states will be starting similar programs if they haven’t already done so in the next few years. I expect that this is only the beginning of using prisoners to meet the needs of the public sector during our upcoming era of austerity.