Brazilian inmates can reduce their sentence by providing human-powered electricity [View all]

[Fire Walk With Me]

http://grist.org/list/brazilian-inmates-can-reduce-their-sentence-by-providing-human-powered-electricity/

Brazil is pioneering a new sort of jailhouse workout, in which inmates ride bikes instead of pumping iron. That’s not because they’d prefer fast inmates to strong ones (either one seems problematic if there’s an incident). It’s because the bikes, unlike weightlifting or prison-yard basketball, help power a nearby town.

The program has four bikes, sourced from the police department’s lost and found. The incentive, as the Associated Press reports, is that the more time inmates spend generating pedal power, the shorter their stay in prison will be:

By pedaling, the inmates charge a battery that powers 10 street lamps along a riverside promenade. For every three eight-hour days they spend on the bikes, Silva and the program’s other volunteers get one day shaved off their sentences.

Source for the above:

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2012/07/11/inmates-in-brazilian-jail-cycle-to-freedom/

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Can this be real? Does anyone have a Snopes for this? Because I remember an episode of LEXX where this was used as an eternal torture. And can you say "The Matrix"?