Law: Doing Business Behind Bars

Many prisoners serve time productively and profitably too

Dan Morgan is a convicted kidnaper with little hope of leaving the maximum security prison at Stillwater, Minn., until the mid-'90s. During the early years of his sentence, he whiled away the days shuffling papers in an office and worrying about the financial plight of his disabled wife. Nowadays Morgan (not his real name) serves his time much more productively. Thanks to a 40-hour-a-week job as a computer programmer with a company set up inside prison walls, he has been able to buy a $50,000 house for his wife, and he sends home...