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The following story is taken from testimony of Pat Nolan before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. House of Representatives, August 5, 1998:

Idleness is destructive. In prison I had the chance to see firsthand that my mother was right when she warned, "Idle hands are the devils playground." There is nowhere that the devil has a freer hand than in prison. However, to my surprise, the idleness I saw in prison occurred on the prison worksites. I was at two prisons, and both were labor camps. Everyone has an assigned job. The jobs entailed about half an hour of actual work. The rest of each day was spent "looking busy." We were not allowed to bring any books to our worksite, nor any paper on which to write. 

To say the least, the correctional officers assigned to oversee us were not specifically trained in job skill development or building self-esteem. They did not view it as their responsibility to give inmates useful skills, but merely to act as custodians.
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