They may be earning that much but I believe the prison keeps a chunk of it for meals, housing, clothes, security, etc for the inmates. There is no way a prison is going to allow an inmate to run around prison grounds with $300 in their pocket every week. That's just asking for trouble. Maybe we can do some googling on this to see what the inmates are making per hour, how much the prison is keeping, and how much the inmate is allowed to keep. I wouldn't be surprised if the inmate owes restitution or fines that they take that out of their wages as well every week so that is getting paid while the inmate is in prison.
