NEW YORK, NY November 05, 2009 —New York voters approved Proposition 2 this week, by a large margin.

The measure allows the state legislature to draft a law letting prisoners do work for non-profits. Some prisoner advocates say the proposition will force inmates to work for meager wages. Others say it will help rehabilitate them.

Glen Martin is a prisoner advocate for The Fortune Society, a non-profit group in Long Island City. He spent six years in prison for robbery, and says he remembers inmates hoping for work assignments, because they could get fresh air and build skills. But Martin says they should get higher wages.

MARTIN: You know, people in prison would like to get paid some sort of prevailing wages so they can have resources accumulated for when they're released. Most people are returned to very poor communities that lack resources to help them.

REPORTER: Right now, state prisoners are paid less than a dollar an hour, for work done outside prisons.