Do you think prisons should be self sufficent?

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I was thinking about this the other day, I saw a work crew on the side of the road, then looked at the taxes that are comming out of my fiance's paycheck. then I read about someone at Stanford University doing a study and found that to house an inmate for life in California it costs about 1.6 million dollars. I think if we can come up with some of the things we do today, why can't we come up with a plan to make prisons not only pay for themselves, but also give back to the community? Here's my plan, now it may have some flaws because it is a rough draft, but I think we can make a senisible solution. They can grow their own food, and tend to animals for their food. Why not? People used to do this all the time. Instead of paying one work crew to fix roads and do matinance like that why doesn't the city have some of the "better" inmates work on these road crews (under supervision of course) Pay a quarter of the wages they pay city workers to the prison itself. Then you have more road crews, more stuff getting done, and the prisoners are getting work experience. The ones that you can't let out in the open at all, have them make funiture and stuff like that at a lower cost to people and sell it. The money could go to fund the prison to pay for things like their cable TV, the TV's in their cells and things like that. Now I know my plan isn't perfect, but it would be a step in the right direction I think. Why should prisoners be rewarded with 3 meals a day, cable tv, air conditioning and stuff like that? There are a lot of tax payers that don't have these simple things. Granted they are in prison but come on. They way they live is kinda living at home with mom. They don't pay bills, and everything is given to them. Most of them don't do anything but terrorize other inmates. Sorry about the rant here, I just think the entire system needs an overhaul.