Send em to Texas, we have the only profitable prison system in the US. We make them farm. The word is the inmates prefer chopping cotton and weeding soybeans to hanging around a cell all day. On the negative side, there are scandals. The prison system operates like a huge corporate farm, they own fleets of 18 wheelers, tractors, combines, you name it, lots of money floating around made from free labor.

You can't use county jail prisoners for work unless they have been convicted. Washington County, like most yahoo Texas counties, has all kinds of poor folk serving time in the county jail for smoking pot or not paying traffic tickets, so they can make them work, nice to have a free labor force made up of mostly non-violent misdemeanor folks - but Harris County puts most of these folks back on the streets because it costs them more to house them in their over-crowded jails than it does to use them for potential slave labor.

But you cannot force someone who has not been convicted of a crime to work anyway, anywhere in the US. They are innocent until proven guilty, which doesn't get you out of a jail cell while awaiting trial, but it does prevent the government from using you for labor because of the 13th Amendment to the COTUS. Harris County's main lockup is used mostly for holding people awaiting trial. Those that get convicted of county jail crimes, mostly small time drug dealing and traffic repeat offenders are sent to this place:

http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/unitdirectory/aj.htm

which if you look at the bottom of the page states:

I see em all the time, they are the dudes and dudettes in the little orange vests picking up all the trash on the Tollway.

The Attica Prison Farm closed up earlier this year because of budget cuts. I had thought they were making money but I guess I was wrong. A real shame because it sits empty. It was always a very nice looking operation. Do they receive a farm subsidy check? http://farm.ewg.org/farm/persondetail.php?custnumber=000514388