[HN Gopher] US prison workers produce $11B worth of goods and se...
___________________________________________________________________
US prison workers produce $11B worth of goods and services for
little to no pay
Author : O__________O
Score : 228 points
Date : 2022-06-17 20:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thehill.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thehill.com)
| archhn wrote:
| Slavery is legal as a punishment in the home of the free.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| There's a lot of components to what's being bundled here
| together, and not much space afforded emotionally to allow for a
| philosophical discussion about the individual merits of an
| approach versus another, given each component taken by itself. If
| any discussion invariably reduces to "you're pro slavery and this
| is slavery" alike to how another one would boil down to "by the
| slippery slope principle: well you're basically Hitler"... well,
| there's no discussion happening, what we've got is angry people
| throwing statements past each other.
| moate wrote:
| This is not reductive. This is slavery.
|
| When you call Hitler Hitler, you're not being dramatic, you're
| just pointing out facts. Sometimes there's nuance, sometimes
| there's "the state preserving slavery".
| aceon48 wrote:
| Not sure if I see the problem here. Prison time generally means
| you've been a net negative to society. This reverses some of that
| karma
| holyknight wrote:
| Great
| markovbot wrote:
| Do we have a list of companies who's products are made from
| American slave labor?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| They used slave labor to manufacture hand sanitizer in New
| York.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/09/new-york-is-making-hand-...
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm not aware of a list, but for most states you can Google
| "$state correctional enterprises" and the first result will be
| the "public" corporation that's using prison slave labor.
|
| For example, here are Maryland's[1] and New York's[2]. These
| corporations may be reselling their slave labor to other
| companies, so it's difficult to get a complete picture.
|
| Edit: One of the more evil aspects of NY's "corcraft" is that
| we send prisoners into toxic worksites to clean up asbestos and
| other hazmat[3].
|
| [1]: https://www.mce.md.gov/
|
| [2]: https://corcraft.ny.gov/
|
| [3]: https://corcraft.ny.gov/abatement-services
| Vladimof wrote:
| You are going to have to define slave labor... is someone
| working 12h days for minimum wage considered a slave? I would
| say yes.
| kube-system wrote:
| "Slave labor" is not being used as hyperbole in this context.
| It is the conventional definition. A job that complies with
| the 13th amendment without exception is not slavery.
| frankharv wrote:
| [deleted]
| markovbot wrote:
| Typical incoherent right wing rant. What are you even trying
| to say? Slavery is good?
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| OK, but what is total loss in amount of TAX dollars for keeping
| inmates in prisons?
| klabb3 wrote:
| A lot, both directly and indirectly. The US has the highest
| incarceration rate in the world, by far, including developing
| countries. Having slave labor makes it worse, arguably much
| worse, because there's now private interests who are
| incentivized to maintain that incarceration rate.
| matt321 wrote:
| This is just capitalism minus a few steps.
| AegirLeet wrote:
| Wage slavery minus the wage.
| twiddling wrote:
| https://eji.org/news/history-racial-injustice-prison-labor/
|
| The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, made slavery and
| involuntary servitude unconstitutional in the United States
| "except as punishment for crime."
| telaelit wrote:
| It's insane that we allow this modern day slavery to continue.
| archhn wrote:
| This thread offers us an opportunity to understand why it does.
| Look at how many comments ordain the practice out of a callous
| disregard for those who incur the unfortunate label of
| "criminal." A criminal can be anything from a man who kills a
| child to a homeless man who was caught sleeping in the wrong
| place too many times, but this nuance doesn't seem to factor
| into the thinking of supporters of modern day slavery.
|
| I've also noticed that people carry with them a suppressed
| anger that comes from being forced to follow the law and
| perform all the duties of a functional citizen. Anyone who
| breaks the law is not enduring the burdens of citizenship as
| they are, and so the "criminal" becomes a virtuous outlet for
| their suppressed rage. The criminal thus becomes a kind of
| scapegoat.
| rcrestomods wrote:
| On a related noted, a friend Dr. Brett Derbes in History is
| currently compiling his graduate work into a book about prison
| labor, methods, and output in the Antebellum South and during the
| Civil War. Some of the things he shared with me in the process
| have been hard to stomach.
|
| Would it be legally possible in the US circa 2022 and beyond to
| run a "silent prison" where no talking was allowed among inmates
| sun up to sun down & when working? That was actually part of a
| movement in prison management.
|
| I just shake my head and hope for more efforts to rehabilitation
| and social acceptance such as the FL citizen result indicating a
| majority would like to restore voting rights to Felons in this
| modern world. Times can change!
| froh wrote:
| The loss of voting rights is another outreageous detail,
| breaking fundamental human rights.
|
| Just for comparison: In my home country (Germany) you can only
| use the right to vote for crimes against democracy (incitement
| to insurrecton, attempted insurrection, high treason, voting
| fraud, ...). This additional punishment has to be added by the
| judge, and it for at most 5 years.
|
| This affects, in a country with 80Mio inhabitants, about 1.4
| individuals per year.
|
| For comparison, in the USA, the flagship of western democracy,
| the democratic human right to vote is taken from Millions (!)
| of citizens. Most of them black, who'd thunk...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement#Germany
|
| https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/deutsches-strafrecht-wah...
| someluccc wrote:
| A prisoner costs the same in funding ($150k/year) as 10 school
| children ($15k/year). The two million inmates in america cost the
| same as educating 20 million kids -or increasing funding foe x
| number of kids who need it most-. Further questions: is the work
| mandatory? Or is it optional for those looking to shorten their
| sentence?
| anonymoushn wrote:
| The work is optional. You can choose to be tortured instead.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Wait a minute I thought that one was illegal too!
| markovbot wrote:
| here i'll read the article for you
|
| > The ACLU also found that more than 76 percent of incarcerated
| workers surveyed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics say that
| "they are required to work or face additional punishments such
| as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce
| their sentence, and loss of family visitation."
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Further questions: is the work mandatory?
|
| This is addressed in the (short) article.
| kolbe wrote:
| I'll pay you $150k to watch over 10 children for 7 hours a day
| or one violent and mentally ill murderer 24/7. What do choose?
| i_am_toaster wrote:
| So let me make sure we are clear on your position on this --
| you think 150k per prisoner sounds like a reasonable number?
| To me that number seems to be about a magnitude of order
| wrong. I bet you could do some back of the napkin math,
| multiply that number by 5, and it would still be way under
| that number.
|
| To me, when I see 150k, I don't see a cost -- I see a facade.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| $150k is the average and relatively few people in prison are
| mentally ill murderers. So something doesn't seem to add up.
| kolbe wrote:
| So you choose one prisoner for 168 hours a week instead of
| 10 children for 35 hours?
|
| Homicide is not insignificant for state prisons (around
| 15%). Violent crime is over 50%. And mental illness is a
| huge problem in prisons. Would you care to take the chance
| of who you get in this?
|
| https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/56686e0e160000290094c0
| d...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| So yet another example of the state subsidizing corporations -
| pay 150k/year for an inmate, and force them to work for a
| company who gets to keep the profits.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| You've presented an extremely great rationale for why we should
| eliminate additional incentives to incarcerate people.
|
| you know, incentives like allowing the prison to profit off of
| slave labor.
| annexrichmond wrote:
| Is there any data on how much these prisons are making from
| such labor?
|
| Also, this term "for profit" is thrown around a lot,
| suggesting there are perverse incentives. That seems true,
| but I imagine government-run prisons are prone to corruption
| as well.
|
| If we want such private prisons to improve is it possible to
| pass legislation for what the minimum standards should be and
| regulations for ensuring they are met?
| crackercrews wrote:
| Honest question: is the wage data from imprisoned workers
| included in gender pay gap calculations? I could see arguments
| for and against. Seems like either way you'd have to make this
| explicit since the vast majority of prisoners are men and the pay
| is so very low.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| These are not "workers" in any common sense, and they are not
| receiving a "wage" per se. They are slaves, compelled to work
| under the 13th ammendment, and receive a stipend when they do
| so. The state could compel them to work even without this money
| (it's just more efficient to have a somewhat willing slave than
| one who is fighting you every step of the way).
|
| By contrast, a worker has a choice of who to work for, can
| negotiate their salary, and can choose not to work.
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| When analysing data you try to compare like to like. Similar
| positions at similar career levels & experience in similar
| economic sectors.
|
| If you want to explorer gender pay gaps while including prison
| inmates then the proper way to do that would be male inmate pay
| for similar jobs compared to female inmate pay.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| People often think that controlling for the percentage of
| Fortune 500 CEOs that are women, which would reduce the
| gender pay gap one calculates, is not reasonable, because
| perhaps "Women are much less likely to be Fortune 500 CEOs"
| is an actual part of the gender pay gap. You are suggesting
| controlling for the percentage of slaves that are women. It
| seems like we ought to control for both slave status and
| Fortune 500 CEO status or for neither.
| dataflow wrote:
| I thought the gender pay gap was supposed to be about "when
| M and F take on the same job titles, on average M gets paid
| $X more than F"... was it not? Otherwise it sounds more
| like a "gender title gap" or "gender job disparity" or
| something like that, than a "gender pay gap".
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > gender pay gap was supposed to be about "when M and F
| take on the same job titles, on average M gets paid $X
| more than F"... was it not?
|
| It was not.
|
| The "gender pay gap" is comparing the average female pay
| to the average male pay, not comparing like for like.
|
| One of the main contributors to the purported pay gap is
| career choice -- which is also captured in the BLS
| statistic that men are 92% of workplace deaths. Talking
| about a "pay gap" without discussing the "death gap" has
| always been dishonest.
| kube-system wrote:
| The widely cited 78 or 79 cents on the dollar figure does
| not take job choice into account. Adjusted for job title,
| it is 95 cents.
| crackercrews wrote:
| I realize that is how one should do a comparison. But many
| comparisons do not. I am wondering if they include this type
| of labor. Maybe it wouldn't matter because the prison
| population is still small compared to the entire labor force.
| But for some age/race sub-groups it is actually a decent-
| sized chunk.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| I saw that in another thread here on the frontpage Amazon were
| running out of people to hire. Maybe this is the solution.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Don't give Bezos any ideas. I'm sure he'd welcome the idea.
| Musk might even suggest sending prisoners to Mars to build the
| first colonies.
| giantg2 wrote:
| _If_ the prisons use the revenues for the prison and not for
| profit, then I don 't really see a problem with it. The working
| and living conditions should be addressed too, but those are a
| wider spread issue.
|
| And a reminder for everyone that 2-10% of the incarcerated are
| wrongly convicted. This is where we should be starting in my
| opinion.
| jeffreyames wrote:
| Does anyone know of this is the case? Are the earnings from
| prison labor taxed?
| failrate wrote:
| Prison labor is slave labor.
| googlryas wrote:
| Locking people in a cage for years and controlling every detail
| of their life: okay
|
| telling them to dig a hole: slavery
| [deleted]
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Can you point out which poster said this?
| googlryas wrote:
| That's what I'm reading when I hear that forced labor by
| prisoners is slavery.
|
| If that is slavery, then what is locking them in a box and
| not letting them leave? Would that be kidnapping?
| Abduction?
|
| Why is locking someone in a box an acceptable punishment,
| but making them do work while locked in the box
| unacceptable?
| anonymoushn wrote:
| It does not seem fair, when someone tells you one thing,
| to imagine that they believe some other thing they have
| not mentioned and then ask them why they believe those
| two things together.
| googlryas wrote:
| I'm not telling someone they believe those things. I'm
| saying that I don't see how you can believe one without
| believing the other, since they both require the same
| leap of logic.
|
| And I don't think people believe that locking prisoners
| up is actually kidnapping and abduction - I am actually
| more of the mind that people don't _really_ think it is
| slavery, but are just saying that as a rhetorical point.
|
| Just like many conservatives don't _really_ think
| abortion is murder, which is why they don 't want to
| punish aborters the same way they want murderers to be
| punished.
| samatman wrote:
| At least in the US we have this statement in the
| Constitution:
|
| > _Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
| punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
| duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or
| any place subject to their jurisdiction._
|
| There is no such supporting language for calling
| imprisonment "kidnapping", whereas compelling labor from
| prisoners is explicitly identified here as your choice of
| "slavery" or "involuntary servitude".
| anonymoushn wrote:
| It seems much more likely that the people who insist on
| calling forced labor compelled using the threat of
| torture "slavery" (which, to be clear, is not really an
| opinion about whether or not we ought to do it) are
| opposed to the vast majority of the imprisonments in the
| USA than that they are fine with them.
| googlryas wrote:
| It would really be more about the _concept_ of putting
| someone in a box, rather than the implementation of it,
| which surely is flawed.
|
| I hear: "Slavery is _never_ acceptable "
|
| But then I also hear: "Sometimes locking someone in a box
| forever is acceptable"
|
| I can't square those two viewpoints.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| It looks like you are once again the only user in the
| whole comment section posting the things you claim to be
| hearing.
|
| I will agree narrowly though: US prisons should not use
| torture to compel labor by prisoners.
| googlryas wrote:
| Right. No one is saying that putting people in a box is
| kidnapping/abduction because it is baldly ridiculous .
| However, it is the same exact logic as calling prison
| labor slavery.
|
| If someone can tell me how prison labor is slavery, but
| putting them in a box is not kidnapping/abducting, I
| would be most edified.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > making them do work while locked in the box
| unacceptable
|
| It's more the "incarcerated workers in the U.S. earn an
| average of just between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour"
| that's unacceptable, I think, rather than just the
| concept of prisoners working.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| The problem is the conflict of interest that it creates.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| > Locking people in a cage for years and controlling every
| detail of their life: okay
|
| Not "okay". Far from okay. Potentially justified on the
| theory that imprisoning people may be necessary to protect
| society and deter offenders. (Although many other countries
| obtain better results with lower/fewer prison sentences and
| better conditions.)
|
| Forcing people to dig holes, on the other hand? Not
| necessary. And yes, it is slavery.
| blobbers wrote:
| The slaves freed through the civil war committed no crime. They
| were taken or born slaves.
|
| Criminals have shown their behavior to be counter productive to
| the laws of our society.
| archhn wrote:
| Let me guess, middle class upbringing with little to no
| contact with the living conditions of the poors?
| blobbers wrote:
| My country doesn't have quite the level of wealth disparity
| as the united states.
| conductr wrote:
| Slavery is a broader term and concept than just referring the
| civil war era slaves in America
| Volundr wrote:
| > Criminals have shown their behavior to be counter
| productive to the laws of our society.
|
| Or were wrongly convicted. Or were convicted of an unjust
| law. Or any number of other things.
|
| "Broke a law" doesn't justify making someone a slave. Even
| the "undesirables" are human.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Well, weren't they warned that crime doesn't pay?
|
| /s
| hunglee2 wrote:
| we need to boycott companies which cannot prove that they don't
| use forced labour
| mywittyname wrote:
| Kind of hard to do when state governments use slave labor to
| produce things we are essentially compelled to buy, like
| license plates.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| wow that I did not know - what other products are typically
| made with prison labour?
| twiddling wrote:
| https://www.thrillist.com/gear/products-made-by-prisoners-
| cl...
|
| I also remember a documentary when TWA ( way back ) used
| prisoners for call centers.
| krapp wrote:
| Do you work in tech in any capacity? Then you work for a
| company that uses, or at least benefits from, forced labor on
| many levels, all the way down to child slaves being forced to
| mine rare earth minerals by militant juntas. If you don't, you
| probably purchase and use technology, feeding one of the many
| economic sectors that depend on forced or coerced labor.
| Clothing? Slavery. Agriculture? Slavery. Manufacturing?
| Slavery.
|
| When people say there is no ethical consumption under
| capitalism, this is what they mean. No one's hands are clean
| here. It's a problem something as simple as boycotting won't
| fix, because you would have to boycott everything - the entire
| system runs on blood and violence, top to bottom.
| azinman2 wrote:
| How do you prove a negative?
| Karunamon wrote:
| In this case, auditor certification of the supply chain.
| msbarnett wrote:
| The phrase "you can't prove a negative" is really short-hand
| for "you can't prove a negative existential claim within an
| effectively infinite scope", ie. I can't prove that Bigfoot
| doesn't exist anywhere in the universe simply because absence
| of evidence is not evidence of absence.
|
| But I can easily prove that Bigfoot does not exist within my
| coffee mug, or that a particular box I have which contains 5
| pennies contains no silver dollars, or that the list of
| suppliers with whom I directly do business does not include
| "Missouri Correctional Services LLC" (and I think the spirit
| of GP's suggestion is boycotting companies that directly do
| business with prison labour, not people who transitively do
| business with it at a 25 company remove, or something)
| ejb999 wrote:
| like apple?
| aaron695 wrote:
| g42gregory wrote:
| Presumably, most of the incarcerated people are there for a
| reason. What is collective economic damage that they caused? Is
| it more than $11B? What should we do instead? Pay them the
| minimum/reasonable wage while they are incarcerated, and then
| charge them a full rate for the economic and societal damage that
| they caused, so that they and their families would be in
| financial debt for the rest of their natural lives?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Society should bear the costs to imprison people. That's a
| fundamental pillar of a functioning and fair government. To
| make prisoners a profit center is to encourage a society to
| imprison more people and for unjust reasons.
|
| The fact that the USA has the largest prison population per
| capita in the world, and by a fairly large factor, is solid
| evidence that slave labor for prisoners is bad.
|
| Our legal system has facilities for extracting reparations from
| criminals. Let's use that instead of continuing slavery.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| There are 400,000 people in prison for drug offenses. People
| found guilty of possession are not accused of causing any
| economic damage. People found guilty of possession with intent
| to distribute are accused of being productive members of
| society. In either case, the state causes economic damage to
| them and their communities by imprisoning them.
|
| This article is about what the government produces using their
| slave labor though.
| rajin444 wrote:
| How many of those 400k are solely in for possession? i.e no
| priors, no anything, just possession
| int_19h wrote:
| Why should priors enter the picture at all?
| woodruffw wrote:
| For a start, we shouldn't use them as slaves. Two wrongs don't
| make a right.
|
| _If_ we determine, as a society, that convicted criminals
| should "pay" for their crimes, that should be a civil matter
| determined by civil processes, not the fancies (and profit
| motive) of a prison corporation.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Presumably, most of the incarcerated people are there for a
| reason.
|
| About a decade ago, The Economist ran an article highlighting
| how the folks owning the prisons lobbied for harsher laws and
| such, as they made so much money off the "free" prison labor.
|
| The details are a bit fuzzy given it's been so long since I
| read it, but one example that stuck with me was US citizen who
| had been in prison for several years, due to transporting
| normal fish, crabs or similar in a plastic container, which
| apparently was against the law in the Caribbean country he was
| visiting (IIRC to protect endangered species from illegal
| export).
|
| He was prosecuted and imprisoned back in the US, due to some
| law that was initially intended to be used against drug cartel
| folks.
|
| Of course, not saying that this applies to all of the prison
| population.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Why is this relevant? Are the proceeds of their labor given to
| the people they harmed? Who gets to measure the harm?
|
| There is, however, a very clear conflict of interest caused by
| allowing the justice system to benefit financially from the
| people they imprison.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| In an indirect way, yes. States have Victims Compensation
| Funds, which help defray the losses incurred by victims [1].
| No, the profits from criminals' indenture do not go directly
| there, but they do defray the cost of holding prisoners.
|
| [1] https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/4416
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| It's all about the conflict of interest created by having
| prisons earning money by having prisoners.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > Who gets to measure the harm?
|
| Courts do by giving different sentences based on sentencing
| guidelines, the nature of the crime, and the individual
| circumstances.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > What should we do instead? Pay them the minimum/reasonable
| wage while they are incarcerated, and then charge them a full
| rate for the economic and societal damage that they caused, so
| that they and their families would be in financial debt for the
| rest of their natural lives?
|
| There are plenty of alternatives, and it doesn't take much
| cogitation to come up with much more reasonable ones than the
| one you propose.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I dunno, it doesn't seem to take that much proof to convince
| juries beyond a reasonable doubt (see John Oliver's Last Week
| Tonight [1] [2] [3] [4])
|
| I forget the URL, but somebody last year posted a link that let
| you search court cases and I did a search for "confidence
| interval" (CI). One of the top searches was written by a judge
| and wrote about how if the forensics industry doesn't care
| about CI for their results then they don't think it should
| matter for their cases. Which I basically interpret as, the
| judge doesn't care if forensics don't bother to check if their
| methods work.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kye2oX-b39E [3]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYYdCzTpps [4]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y
| [deleted]
| klodolph wrote:
| Is charging prisoners a "full rate for the economic and
| societal damage they caused" somehow connected to the issue at
| hand? Sounds like a false dilemma here.
|
| Because the prison doesn't have to pay fair wages, it takes
| work from others that would earn better wages--this unfairly
| concentrates wealth in the hands of prison owners at the
| expense of free workers who are competing in the same market.
| croes wrote:
| The use of these slave workers destroys jobs for others.
|
| Why paying someone if you can get slaves who do the work for
| free.
|
| That damages the economy on multiple levels, not to mention
| that a demand for slave workers leads to unnecessary
| imprisonment and cases like this
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
| toss1 wrote:
| Sentences often require both jail/prison time _AND_ paying
| restitution. The legitimate funds could indeed go towards
| restitution.
|
| That does not validate slavery.
| otikik wrote:
| Of all the things that are wrong in the US, this one is the worst
| one for me.
|
| You didn't end slavery, you just moved it to special buildings
| [deleted]
| spicyramen_ wrote:
| Madmallard wrote:
| Modern day slavery
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| And YET people who profit from that have huge opinions on China
| and Xinjiang. Both is bad. And both needs same treatment.
|
| And we will see again how I get downvoted, because it DOES NOT
| get the same treatment here.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Do you think there are any people who profit from US prison
| labor and comment on hacker news?
| hourago wrote:
| > They have also asked that lawmakers amend the Constitution to
| abolish the 13th Amendment exclusion that allows slavery and
| involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
|
| Slavery work and for profit prisons may incentivise to send as
| many people as possible to prison. It seems a bad incentive if
| you are looking for a fair justice system.
| elil17 wrote:
| On the for profit prison side of things, it's really blatant.
| Like, flat out bribery blatant:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
| missedthecue wrote:
| The impact of for profit prisons is hilariously overstated.
| Only 8% of US prisons are privatized, and it's only in a few
| select states. The UK, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand all
| have higher rates of prison privatization.
|
| Correctional workers unions do far more local and federal
| lobbying than any private prison company. The CCSO fought tooth
| and nail against pot legalization in CA. There are no private
| prisons in CA.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not about lobbing, one for profit prison bribed multiple
| judges with $2.6 million dollars to send more people their
| way. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html
|
| For profit prisons are simply corrosive to the justice
| system. Further, even state run prisons are handing out some
| very lucrative contracts etc.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Nevada receives more money for prisons than they do gambling
| revenue.
| elicash wrote:
| I agree, but there's another way to think about this: every
| prison is for profit.
|
| Private companies are everywhere. There are jails where it's
| $25 to make a 15-minute phone call (extreme case but
| widespread problem). Commissary spending being mandatory
| because people aren't fed enough. Libraries are being
| replaced with tablets where you pay for e-books (and, until
| there was controversy around it, even public domain books).
| In-person visits being scaled-back or in some instances
| entirely replaced by video calls -- for a price. Just adding
| money to the account of an incarcerated person costs money.
|
| I don't think this is why we do it. But it does financially
| ruin the families of these incarcerated people.
| jollybean wrote:
| Only if the incentive structure is connected.
|
| If the Judiciary doesn't receive any benefit from it, then
| they're not likely to pursue imprisonment.
|
| So if they do, maybe indirectly, systematically etc. then it
| can be an issue.
|
| That said - I have no problem otherwise with prisoners doing
| work - at minimum to pay off their own upkeep, and the social
| costs they have incurred. Judges, juries, police etc. are not
| 'free'.
|
| Imagine if we charged every criminal a fee for their jail time
| and legal apparatus. And compensation for all victims?
|
| Obviously it's really hard to work out in a pragmatic way, but
| I wonder if giving the guys a job on the 'cleanup crew'- that
| they can choose to _keep_ once they leave jail as a means of
| getting back on their feet ... might be positive.
| linuxftw wrote:
| > Imagine if we charged every criminal a fee for their jail
| time and legal apparatus. And compensation for all victims?
|
| This already happens more or less. Now after serving some
| time, you have a big bill to pay off as well.
| corrral wrote:
| See also: you are going to have to pay for this incredibly
| expensive addiction treatment center (probably run by
| someone politically connected) or else you are going
| straight to prison for a long time. And by "you", when it
| comes to paying, we really mean "your family", since you
| probably don't have any money.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I have an issue with trying to make a profit off of a person
| who you decided to jail and who did not get to make upkeeping
| decisions.
|
| If a person is paying for these services shouldn't they be a
| decision maker? The salaries of the guards, warden, the food,
| types of lighting/heat are all costs that the inmates should
| decide what level of funding they want to provide.
| otikik wrote:
| Ok so what happens if they say they don't want to work like
| that? We keep them in prison without feeding them? Put them
| in isolated confinement? Some whipping perhaps?
|
| Things can be necessary and worth having without being
| profitable. Children, for example, are huge money drains, and
| yet people have them.
|
| A good prison system concentrates in rehabilitating and
| protecting. That is beneficial to society as a whole. It
| don't have a problem on it costing money. I want it to
| produce better people, not money.
| golergka wrote:
| This is also literally one of the main reasons for Stalins
| purges. Once the communist state realized that Gulag was pretty
| effective at using slave labour, there was pressure to increase
| the amount of available inmates.
| jarek83 wrote:
| Since US prisons are private-held then the incentive is already
| present. I'd say that the incentive would be bigger if you
| would just 'normally' work and get paid when you commit a
| crime.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Very few US prisons are private, only 8% of prisoners in the
| US are in those facilities. Some states have recently ended
| the practice, so I would expect to see that number trend down
| in the future.
| klabb3 wrote:
| You don't need private prisons per se in order for the
| perverse incentive to exist - even thrive and persist. The
| beneficiaries of prison labor are private interests,
| whereas the cost of incarceration is paid by the public. It
| could cost 100k per inmate a year in public money and
| produce 30k of goods. It's still (virtually) free labor as
| far as the beneficiaries and their lobbyists are concerned.
| eloff wrote:
| As long as prisons are separate from the judicial system, I
| don't see the connection. They can't actually send more people
| to prison.
| ptudan wrote:
| Prisons are a part of the legislative and lobbying systems
| that directly influence which laws send people to prison. So,
| yes, they can send more people to prison.
| eloff wrote:
| I think the problem here is in letting prisons have a say
| in laws that send people to prison.
| Jaxkr wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
| nimbius wrote:
| the united states, in its 246 year history, has _never_
| operated without slavery. as other posters correctly note, we
| just move the goalposts and add a potemkin wage in what can
| only be described as a bad comedy, a facimile of a real market
| that barely withstands a long gaze. prisoners are openly
| discriminated against in labor and housing, meaning your jail
| term is a meaningless wager by the prison system. they know
| there is a more than 2:1 chance you 'll come right back, and
| for nothing more than trying to earn a living in a society
| thats shunned you.
|
| it is also worth noting the downfall of many governments and
| civilizations has in part or in whole been fueled by mass
| oppression, incarceration, and slavery. 246 years has been a
| pretty good run, but its time to reform the 13th amendment to
| the fullest.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _prisoners are openly discriminated against in labor and
| housing, meaning your jail term is a meaningless wager by the
| prison system. they know there is a more than 2:1 chance you
| 'll come right back, and for nothing more than trying to earn
| a living in a society thats shunned you._
|
| You might be able to "pay your debt to society," in some
| abstract sense, but there are things you can do in this world
| that will render you unwelcome in my home, near my family, or
| on my payroll. Life is for keeps and the decisions you make
| cannot all be undone.
| btilly wrote:
| This is not a hypothetical problem. Former slave-owning states
| passed Black Codes that made it easy to convict blacks of
| things..where they wound up in prisons where they were leased
| out as workers. Since it mostly happened to blacks, nobody
| cared much if there was much fairness in the process. And given
| the economic incentives, it was done fairly liberally.
|
| https://innocenceproject.org/13th-amendment-slavery-prison-l...
| documents that it still happens in places like Louisiana.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| The statement that "prison labor replaced slave labor" would
| make sense if the labor and its economic impact was indeed
| the same. The commerce of cotton isn't essential to any if
| the states involved, and the labourers aren't working on an
| economically essential work. As such I don't buy that this is
| all a scheme to just keep a population into slavery-by-
| another-name. I don't support slave labor, but I also don't
| think that this argument is a solid one.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I'll add that the basis of the wording of the 13th amendment
| was to sweeten the deal for southern states. They had a lot
| of black people in prison already (and then some), and did
| not like the idea of undergoing reconstruction without _some_
| source of free labor.
| randycupertino wrote:
| There's actually a great book about this by Shane Bauer, a
| journalist who went undercover in Louisiana's Winn
| Correctional Center and wrote a book about his experiences.
|
| It details not only the brutality of the system but also the
| apathy and corruption of the minimum wage employee guards. So
| many of the guards themselves run smuggling ops and other
| deals with the prisoners as they are minimum wage barely
| screened laborers.
|
| It's a horrific if eye-opening book, an excellent read. I
| found out about it by another poster on hackernews and highly
| recommend!
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/38561954-american-
| pri...
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Oh wow I didn't know that. All of a sudden it makes the
| lyrics from "Jedi Mind Tricks - Shadow Business" make sense.
|
| > Slavery's not illegal, that's a fucking lie It's illegal,
| unless it's for conviction of a crime The main objective is
| to get you in your fucking prime And keep the prison full and
| not give you a fucking dime
|
| https://genius.com/Jedi-mind-tricks-shadow-business-lyrics
| lelandfe wrote:
| But thanks to Reaganomics, prison turned to profits
|
| Cause free labor's the cornerstone of US economics
|
| Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
|
| You think I am bullshittin? Then read the 13th Amendment
|
| Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
|
| That's why they givin' drug offenders time in double digits
|
| - Killer Mike, Reagan
| nickff wrote:
| There are many incentives that bias the 'justice system' in
| various ways that are unfavorable to prospective defendants,
| but it's a very slippery slope. The prison guards' unions have
| a very strong lobby for one. Another problem is that the way
| that misdemeanors and felonies work; it's often more convenient
| for DAs to have people incarcerated for over a year (rather
| than less than a year). Even paying prosecutors money is an
| incentive to prosecute people. These are just a few examples
| that quickly came to mind; I'm not sure that it is possible to
| eliminate these biases without getting rid of the whole system.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Even paying prosecutors money is an incentive to prosecute
| people.
|
| Unless you are paying per prosecution, it's not.
|
| (I suppose the theoretical risk of laying off prosecutors if
| there is insufficient prosecutorial workload is a weak
| incentive of this type, though the fact that chief
| prosecutors are politicians and the _political_ rewards for
| prosecuting in general, and for prosecuting those society
| dislikes in particular, are orders of magnitude stronger.)
| standardUser wrote:
| Just start by making profiting off of prisons illegal.
| Solutions don't need to be flawless, just better than what we
| have, which is an embarrassingly low bar to clear.
| coryrc wrote:
| So the prison guards should work for free? Because the vast
| majority of prisons are public and the public employee
| unions lobby for harsher sentences:
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-prison-
| guards_n_38...
| dleslie wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted.
|
| The uncomfortable truth is that a portion of the union
| dues for those employed within the criminal justice
| system will go towards lobbying for harsher sentencing.
| Eliminating corporate profiteering will not eliminate
| lobbying for the status quo.
| elmomle wrote:
| How would people be prosecuted if prosecutors aren't paid
| money?
| nickff wrote:
| Many countries allow private prosecution of criminal
| offenses (though this is infrequently used in most of those
| countries for a number of reasons). If you eliminate public
| prosecutors/district attorneys, people could privately
| prosecute pro-se or with the assistance of private counsel.
|
| That's just one example of many biases inherent to the
| current system, and I wouldn't focus on it too much.
| ejb999 wrote:
| so people rich enough could prosecute just about anyone
| they want, and people who are poor could likely never get
| any justice if they are a victim - and you think that is
| an improvement over the current system?
| missedthecue wrote:
| In such systems, the person bringing the charges must pay
| damages if the charges don't stick. Remember, the bar for
| criminal conviction is _much_ higher than in civil court,
| and anyone can bring a civil case in our current legal
| system.
|
| One major flaw in our current system is that only the
| government decides who gets convicted and as the old
| adage goes, if the king controls criminal punishment, the
| kings friends get away with murder. Think about the
| current national conversation on excessive police
| brutality.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| The Romans had already tried this.. not a great idea.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Consider how the market for law enforcement might differ if
| prosecution was contractual rather than salaried.
| nickff wrote:
| Large numbers of prosecutions are carried out by
| contracted lawyers in many countries.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Well Vitalant gives me enough loyalty points for a t-shirt
| once a year, but I give blood because I think it's a civic
| duty.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I agree generally, but I don't think paying prosecutors is a
| particularly strong incentive. Prosecutors aren't bonused or
| compensated based on their conviction rate (as far as I
| know), and they're generally undercompensated compared to
| private practice (but not as undercompensated as public
| defenders).
| giantg2 wrote:
| They don't get a bonus, but it can help them move up or get
| a better private job.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Yes, anybody who is good at their job is likely to be
| able to get a better (paying) one. But that _itself_
| doesn 't incentivize DAs to aggressively pursue cases.
|
| The incentives they _actually_ follow (and there are
| plenty of them!) are much simpler: municipal politics
| (not wanting to be seen as "weak on crime") and power
| dynamics (wanting to come down with the "full force of
| the law" at every opportunity, as a disincentive to
| future criminals.) Plus, plenty are just plain cruel.
| egao1980 wrote:
| stormbrew wrote:
| If only it were a slippery slope. You're describing something
| more like a sticky slope, where every step down is gummed up
| by a pile of other things to pay attention to.
|
| I don't think we're at any risk of sliding too rapidly down
| this one, and I'm not sure why we wouldn't want to even if we
| could. Getting rid of injustices is a net good no matter how
| many other injustices there are.
| wtvanhest wrote:
| We should try to eliminate as many as possible, regardless of
| whether it has to be piecemeal
| blobbers wrote:
| It may also incentivize people to avoid going to prison. What
| is the incentive to avoid prison? How does society recoup
| losses from crime?
|
| Does the 13th amendment exist to disincentivize crime? I don't
| know the history behind the specific language with the
| exclusion for criminals.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| > How does society recoup losses from crime?
|
| Profiteering does not equal Societal benefit.
|
| Investing in turning these people into _autonomous_ law
| abiding members of society would be much more beneficial than
| profits in the prison industry.
| blobbers wrote:
| The 11B of goods are subject to taxes.
|
| I agree that reducing recidivism is important, likely the
| product of a broken US juvenile system and weakened
| education system.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Looking at oneself is a good place to start. Does this
| incentivize you from avoiding prison?
| Vadoff wrote:
| Wasting years of your life locked up is already disincentive
| enough. Exploitive forced/hard/hazardous labor isn't
| necessary.
|
| Same with being unable to afford common necessities, or being
| raped in prison.
|
| These just make the experience for prisoners inhumane and
| miserable.
| blobbers wrote:
| It's an interesting discussion. I've chosen to exist within
| the confines of societies laws. Prison is itself a
| different world, and I don't claim to know very much about
| it or the mindset behind the different types of criminals
| that exist inside the prison system. In layman's terms, I
| hear about violent offenders, and non-violent.
|
| The US system also offers capital punishment which is
| another extreme and final judgement. Possibly, more
| 'natural' than the bureaucratic system. The country I live
| in does not use such a punishment system.
|
| Has anyone conducted studies to see if these prison
| incentives are at work? I would suspect comparing national
| systems is a pretty common practice in public policy
| academia. I've definitely seen fairly sensational articles
| on privatization of US prisons leading to corruption in the
| justice system.
|
| I'm not sure if hackernews can have these types of
| discussions without massive downvoting from one side or the
| other.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The incentive to avoid prison is to avoid prison. Prison is
| terrible, even a "nice prison" where you don't have to work.
| The incentive for our society is to avoid a situation where
| the prison complex is financially incentivized to keep people
| in prison: setting aside the huge moral problem with this, it
| drags useful workers out of society and does not recoup the
| costs of prison.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > It may also incentivize people to avoid going to prison.
| What is the incentive to avoid prison?
|
| Pretty unlikely, see DOJ research[1]. severity of punishment,
| including the death penalty, does little to deter crime. It
| seems unlikely that the threat of forced labor would somehow
| deter something that the threat of years behind bars or death
| would not.
|
| > How does society recoup losses from crime?
|
| In civilized societies, we recoup losses from crime by
| leveraging incarceration of a criminal to apply methods
| proven to reduce recidivism. trying to recoup losses of a
| past crime at the expense of preventing a life of future
| crime isn't a winning strategy imo.
|
| > Does the 13th amendment exist to disincentivize crime? I
| don't know the history behind the specific language with the
| exclusion for criminals.
|
| It exists to free the enslaved population. the exception of
| criminals exists to throw the south a bone during
| reconstruction.
|
| [1] https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf
| suture wrote:
| Consider the possibility that harsher conditions/sentences do
| not deter crime.
|
| https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-
| pu...
| olalonde wrote:
| It costs an average of about $106,000 per year to incarcerate
| an inmate in prison in California. Working prisoners almost
| certainly do not produce $106,000 worth of value per year as
| they typically perform low-skill work. So the state certainly
| does not have a financial incentive to incarcerate more
| inmates.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's the people and organizations receiving that $106,000/yr
| that have the incentive. They have no disincentive to reduce
| recidivism, and every incentive to lobby for laws that
| increase incarceration.
| themitigating wrote:
| The incentive might to another group while the state doesn't
| have as much power to control prison populations
| elil17 wrote:
| The state as a whole doesn't, but the private companies that
| "employ"/enslave these people in some states do.
| jchw wrote:
| California is a massive outlier _for sure_. Just to be sure,
| I checked for some statistics, and sure enough:
|
| > Based on FY 2020 data, the average annual COIF for a
| Federal inmate in a Federal facility in FY 2020 was $39,158
| ($120.59 per day). The average annual COIF for a Federal
| inmate in a Residential Reentry Center for FY 2020 was
| $35,663 ($97.44 per day).
|
| Apparently, private prisons are paid by the government based
| on how much it costs to incarcerate, so that would seem to
| imply that at least anyone who could benefit from the profit
| of a private prison would have incentives to try to get as
| many incarcerations as possible.
|
| That said, I only did a cursory search. It seems this gets
| pretty complex.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| That would imply the state of California is being taken for a
| ride by private prison providers.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| California has no private prisons.
|
| California has high labor costs, and incarceration is labor
| intensive.
| jokoon wrote:
| I've learned about this when they jailed a french energy CEO
| for fraud and he talked about this.
|
| (This was the infamous case of GE buying a turbine business).
| ultra_nick wrote:
| How do we stop it?
| cpursley wrote:
| America: The Farewell Tour (book) talked about this. There's also
| the issue of prisoners getting nickel and dimmed on basic
| supplies, phone calls, etc where many leave in debt.
| Avshalom wrote:
| "nickel and dime-ed" is the expression but of course it
| undersells things by several orders of magnitude.
| hereme888 wrote:
| They're paying the penalty of crime. At least they're being given
| something productive to do, and easing the burden on taxpayers.
|
| Just read about an Illinois father who drowned his three young
| children to keep his wife from taking them. You think it's slave
| labor for this man to work below minimum wage while being given a
| roof, bed, bathroom, and food, at the expense of our taxes?
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's nothing. I just read about an angel who never did
| anything wrong and volunteered every Sunday reading for blind
| children, but was put in prison because he didn't have an alibi
| for a crime that was later shown to have been committed by
| someone else. Do you really think that he should have been
| enslaved in order to pay for the cage that imprisoned him?
|
| edit: and about that guy who you mention. Do you really think
| that there's anything wrong with carving the names of his
| victims in his back, rubbing the wounds with salt and having
| him sexually abused by dogs? Wouldn't feel bad about that,
| right? Why draw a line anywhere if you're not going to draw a
| line at slavery?
| WesternWind wrote:
| I think the definition of slavery doesn't change when people do
| awful things. I don't think it's great for the economy either.
|
| I think people need to think more about their theory of
| justice, and about psychology and sociology, and I hope nobody
| is deciding their ideas about what a justice system should be
| based on an anecdote like that.
|
| The idea of justice as retributive punishment, a penalty you
| pay, is older than the bible.
|
| Have folks heard of Beccaria, Howard Zehr, and John Rawls?
| Here's a short blog post about Beccaria, whom Voltaire said
| everyone should read. https://www.exurbe.com/on-crimes-and-
| punishments-and-beccari...
|
| And Beccaria was writing centuries ago, Howard Zehr and John
| Rawls are both influential 20th century thinkers who had
| important ideas on what a more just society should look like.
| ssalka wrote:
| If you're forced to work against your will, yeah, that's slave
| labor. Blame, culpability, guilt, etc is besides the point.
| Prison labor in practice is the enslavement of criminals.
|
| edit: people deemed criminals by the state (includes false
| positives)
| cactus2093 wrote:
| But everything in prison is being done to you against your
| will. That's kind of the whole point. I don't see why being
| required to do a moderate amount of work under humane working
| conditions is so much worse than being required to sit there
| in a cell at other hours with no ability to leave.
|
| (If the working conditions are not humane, then that's a
| different story).
|
| They also do usually receive pay, just less than minimum
| wage. So put a different way - I don't see why the minimum
| wage within a prison should necessarily be the same as the
| minimum wage outside of prison.
| klyrs wrote:
| If the prisoner is attractive to a guard, they might as
| well be forced to have sex against their will. That's kind
| of the whole point....? Sorry, what's the whole point?
| Incarceration does not imply exploitation. Exploitation is
| an abuse of power over incarcerated people.
|
| If you want to reduce recidivism, better to pay for their
| work so they see value in an honest day's work. What we've
| got now only teaches prisoners that we've got them over a
| barrel.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| According to the first Google hit on the issue1, the US prison
| system cost $88.5B in 2016.
|
| So these $11B do not come close to making it profitable to lock
| more people up.
|
| 1 https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/the-economic-co...
| sosodev wrote:
| The cost of imprisoning people is subsidized by the government.
| Who profits off of their labor though?
|
| When my mother was in prison she worked for a private company
| for well below our states minimum wage. So her employer
| profited off of her nearly free labor.
| dirtyid wrote:
| >average of just between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour across
| the country
|
| For reference, even Uyghur coerced labour propaganda allegations
| cite salary above 40th percentile of PRC national income -
| typically subtantially higher that 600M living on 1000rmb a
| month. Equivalent of 40-70K USD, almost like solid poverty
| alleviation wages designed to minimize recidivism and not to
| perpetuate forever prison industrial complex that cost
| state/taxpayers more to intern people than they are worth as
| minimally paid labourers.
| markovbot wrote:
| Also see: the first time this article was submitted with a slight
| title correction to avoid the disgusting euphemism for slavery
| used by the original site[0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31782727
| [deleted]
| robocat wrote:
| Don't editorialize the title. Use the comments to make your
| point. Submit using the original title is the rule to avoid
| people creating flamebait etcetera: "Otherwise please use the
| original title, unless [the original title] is misleading or
| linkbait; don't editorialize."
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| markovbot wrote:
| the original title was misleading. It implied they are not
| slaves.
| WalterGR wrote:
| > used by the original site
|
| *Used by the original submission. (I think that's what you
| meant... The article has a title closer to what you used.)
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Your correction to the GP comment is incorrect. This is an
| article about slave labor and submitting it under titles that
| suggest otherwise is misleading.
| smcl wrote:
| GP is saying that calling the prisoners "workers" is
| incorrect, and that it is more accurate to refer to them as
| "slaves". Honestly, I'd tend to agree. There's even a little
| exception in the 13th Amendment specifically for this:
|
| "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
| punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
| convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
| subject to their jurisdiction"
|
| They're slaves.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The GP's point is that calling slaves forced to work in a
| prison "workers" is a disgusting euphemism.
| WalterGR wrote:
| Ah, thanks. I got it backwards.
| markovbot wrote:
| No, the disgusting euphemism is still live on the original
| site and was allowed to stay up on HN. The submission
| correcting the disgusting euphemism was flagged off the front
| page before this submission that we're on with was submitted.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| and for the people arguing over terminology... slavery is
| explicitly allowed in the constitution:
| [n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude, as a punishment
| for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted
| karaterobot wrote:
| No, it's not. The Supreme Court settled that argument over a
| hundred years ago, in Bailey v. Alabama:
|
| > The plain intention was to abolish slavery of whatever name
| and form and all its badges and incidents; to render
| impossible any state of bondage; to make labor free, by
| prohibiting that control by which the personal service of one
| man is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit, which is
| the essence of involuntary servitude.
|
| It may help to interpret the wording of the amendment like
| this:
|
| _" Here is a list of two things which shall not exist within
| the United States, or any place subject to their
| jurisdiction: Number one is slavery, number two is
| involuntary servitude (except as punishment for a duly
| convicted crime)."_
|
| And that's how SCOTUS appears to interpret it, which means
| that's de facto what it says.
| johnday wrote:
| > which means that's de facto what it says.
|
| ITYM that it's _de jure_ what it says. _de facto_ is the
| opposite.
| Havoc wrote:
| Whats the going hourly rate for a slave?
| rootw0rm wrote:
| Few years back I earned around $4 a week...
|
| Just enough to buy soap, shampoo, etc.
| eloff wrote:
| I think that prisoners wronged society and owe society a debt. If
| their sentence includes work that benefits society in some way,
| that should be fair? I haven't thought about it too much, but it
| doesn't seem unreasonable on the surface.
| int_19h wrote:
| In a similar vein, prisoners on death row wronged society and
| owe it a debt. If their death sentence includes postmortem
| organ extraction for transplantation, which would save quite a
| few lives, that should be fair, right? ~
| eloff wrote:
| Yes
| swatcoder wrote:
| As food for thought:
|
| 1. Are you sure your vision of prison's role is universal or
| even prevailing?
|
| 2. Even if so, who's responsible for quantifying the debt?
|
| 3. Who determines the means by which the debt is paid?
|
| 4. Who benefits most directly by the payment?
|
| 5. What systems are in place to prevent corruption by the
| agents identified in 2-4?
|
| The debate is a live one because the current answers to those
| questions aren't very convincing to people who worry about
| exploitation.
| efnx wrote:
| Benefiting society is one thing, but padding a corporation's
| profit is another.
| gretch wrote:
| Yeah but it creates an societal incentive to categorize people
| as criminals and send them to prison.
|
| I think there's a lot of things on the fence today where view
| it as not immoral, but for some reason are still crimes. For
| example, non violent marijuana cases. Incentives like free
| prison labor sometimes adds to that in an unhealthy way
| eloff wrote:
| Not if the judicial system is separate.
|
| I would say the problem here is stupid laws putting people in
| jail for being in possession of drugs for personal
| consumption. I think it's a separate concern.
| bshepard wrote:
| This wrong is subsidiary on the the prior moral wrong of
| kidnapping and caging humans. This practice will look very bad
| from the perspective of any desirable future. But many futures
| await with even more cages.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > kidnapping and caging humans
|
| What does this refer to? It's illegal to kidnap people, if
| caught you'll get sent to prison for it.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| The implication is that, regardless of the words you use to
| describe it, law enforcement capturing individuals and
| incarcerating them strongly resembles kidnapping. Personally,
| having had a close friend who was driving my car at the time
| disappear without any communications for days due to this
| process, I'm not entirely against this categorization.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not if you're a police officer working under the law.
|
| The GP is trying to say that the whole notion of
| incarceration is barbaric, and that future generations will
| look back on it just like we look at, say, stokades.
| crackercrews wrote:
| What will future generations do with people who kill other
| people?
| TheFreim wrote:
| That's really the issue with calling incarceration wrong
| generally. I'd understand someone opposing it for all
| crimes and proposing alternative punishments depending on
| the situation but it seems that there are going to be
| situations where it's immoral /not/ to lock someone in
| prison.
| int_19h wrote:
| The immoral part is when you lock someone up as a
| _punishment_. If we did this to ensure safety for
| everyone else, we 'd only lock up people who are actually
| likely to commit another crime, and then only for as long
| as that remains true. Notions like "if you do X, the
| minimum sentence is Y", which are kinda fundamental to
| how we run our justice system, are not compatible with
| that.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > The immoral part is when you lock someone up as a
| punishment.
|
| I guess this is where the fundamental disagreement is
| located. I don't see anything immoral about locking
| someone up for committing certain crimes any more than
| its immoral for a parent to confine a child to a room or
| take away something according to the "crime".
| TheFreim wrote:
| > The GP is trying to say that the whole notion of
| incarceration is barbaric, and that future generations will
| look back on it just like we look at, say, stokades.
|
| What is the alternative? If someone kills someone in cold
| blood do you just let them roam free? You could argue that
| certain crimes don't warrant certain levels of punishment
| but incarceration /generally/ seems necessary.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| In principle, for the vast majority of even violent
| offenders, a rehabilitation facility (including mental
| Healthcare and job education) would probably be the most
| humane idea we've come up with (ignoring the risk of this
| becoming a USSR-style re-education camp).
|
| Would this work for someone like Stalin? No, I don't
| think so, so I don't agree entirely with GP.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| >What is the alternative? If someone kills someone in
| cold blood do you just let them roam free? You could
| argue that certain crimes don't warrant certain levels of
| punishment but incarceration /generally/ seems necessary.
|
| There are more crimes and pre/potential crimes than just
| violence and murder. We even treat some innocent people
| as guilty by locking them up. At least we wouldn't have
| innocent people in cages if there were no cages. Perhaps
| restitution or weregeld could be a substitute for theft
| or assault. But I strongly doubt that putting people
| behind bars does much to improve their lives or the ones
| they've affected in the overall vast majority of cases.
| failrate wrote:
| Imprisoning people is kidnapping and caging them.
| TheFreim wrote:
| Is "kidnapping and caging" a mass murderer, to use a
| colorful example, wrong?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I think you don't understand the distinction between
| imprisoning someone who has broken a law and kidnapping a
| person.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Is it okay to kidnap people who kidnap people? Or should we
| just let them keep kidnapping people?
| sokoloff wrote:
| IMO, we've learned over many centuries that some slim fraction
| of the population has demonstrated themselves unable/unfit to
| live freely in society.
|
| What should society do when that conclusion is appropriately
| reached?
| someluccc wrote:
| Prisoners also cost a ridiculous amount of public funds -I've
| seen numbers in the $100k-$150k/year range-. Prison work
| contributes to sentence reduction and contributes to their cost
| of imprisonment.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Prisoners also cost a ridiculous amount of public funds
|
| That's the point. Imprisoning people should be expensive so
| that it is used judiciously as a punishment.
|
| Other countries have done very well at ensuring that former
| prisoners are turned into productive members of society. So the
| USA _can_ accomplish the same.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Other countries also have universal healthcare, free tertiary
| education and all sorts of things you would expect from a
| developed country.
|
| I've come to the conclusion that the US is just a rich
| country with a huge military industrial complex that
| masquerades as a developed country while doing all the things
| it denigrates poorer countries for.
|
| So while the USA can definitely afford to be a developed
| country I wouldn't hold your breath.
| archhn wrote:
| That high cost is bureaucratic bloat which ultimately gets
| funneled into the pockets of the wealthy and powerful who make
| decisions against the wellbeing of the poor, contributing to
| the perrenial cycle of incarceration.
|
| Some people definitely deserve to be forced to pay for what
| they've done. But if a man is born into a decaying and violent
| environment, and he commits crimes, keeping with the norm of
| his peers, why should all the guilt be put upon him? I say
| state corruption, or mismanagement, is guilty for much crime.
|
| It's a complicated system. The label "criminal" tends to be a
| thought-terminating classification that prevents further
| analysis and assessment of what causes criminality.
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| The value they create doesn't reduce the public fund
| contributions.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| of course it does. The prison companies would charge more if
| they didn't have the prison labor.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| I'm not sure if this specific market is really that free,
| more likely they'd continue charging as much as they can
| get away with. Also relatively few prisons are private.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| At public prison it's even more clear that using
| prisoners as slaves saves the state money.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Unicor is a scam. You can hire them to make anything, while the
| prisons pay workers something like $0.10/hr.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Ignoring the effect on prisoners, this drives down wages for low
| skill people on the outside. No labor should be able to be sold
| below minimum wage, otherwise it really isn't one.
| bruceb wrote:
| sumy23 wrote:
| The minimum wage applies to immigrants.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Only if they're working on the books
| bergenty wrote:
| This applies to everyone, even citizens and residents.
| kube-system wrote:
| With the significant difference that they have the
| ability to report their employers crimes without being
| blackmailed for their immigration status.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Many work farm labor, tip work, or gig work.
|
| Edit: why disagree?
| itake wrote:
| If we reduced immigration, businesses would have to compete
| for the smaller low-skill work force.
|
| One of the "levers" in this article [0] is that Amazon
| could increase the wages to capture more of the labor
| market.
|
| [0] - https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-
| memo-wareh...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Not sure I follow. The person you're responding to is saying
| there should not be a situation in which anybody is working
| for less than minimum wage. If that premise were granted, low
| skilled immigrant workers would be making the same minimum
| wage as everyone else, wouldn't they? So while there may be a
| larger pool everyone would be competing for jobs in, the
| wages would still be the same.
| itake wrote:
| According to this[0] article, Amazon is considering raising
| wages for min wage employees to increase the size of their
| labor pool. If there was an abundance of min wage workers,
| then Amazon would not need to raise wages.
|
| https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-
| wareh...
| bergenty wrote:
| Why do you think legal immigrants are being paid less than
| minimum wage?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I don't think he was saying legal immigrants get paid less
| than minimum wage, but less than a citizen. Immigrants are
| in a more precarious situation depending on which visa they
| have (assuming they don't have a green card) which can make
| it more of a challenge to switch jobs which drives down
| their wages.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Using this same logic would support things like import duties
| to offset the lower labor costs that we can't
| domesticallycompete with, right?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Using the same logic, we could just as easily imprison the
| global south. While logical consistency is satisfying in
| theory, in practice it's a poor optimization strategy.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| yes
| missedthecue wrote:
| Yes, that logic would lead to that. Many people are misled to
| believe that limiting competition produces net benefits for
| society.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yes, and the _only_ reason we should have import duties is
| because of labor conditions and pay for foreign workers. If
| we don 't we're not competing on PPP or efficiency, we're
| competing based on the willingness to abuse.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| No, because of comparative advantage. How does that work in
| the context of prisoners doing the same work anyways, though?
| mhb wrote:
| On its own, this is not a good argument since there is a
| benefit to having cheap goods produced by low wage producers.
| [deleted]
| toss1 wrote:
| And that, right there, is the argument of the standard
| sociopathic capitalist.
|
| Just because there is a benefit, does not mean that there is
| not also a greater harm that more than offsets the benefit on
| a societal scale.
|
| Privatizing the profits from the benefits while socializing
| the harms, and justifying any harm based on a profitable
| benefit, is far too often the business model - take the money
| while poisoning the well.
|
| This is neither sustainable, nor a good argument for
| something to exist.
|
| EDIT: insert missing "not also"
| mhb wrote:
| If license plates were harvested for free, there would be
| fewer jobs making license plates. Ceteris paribus, the
| reasoning that we shouldn't use the free license plates
| because they're reducing the number of jobs making them
| doesn't make sense.
|
| This is independent of your separate objections that
| prisoners should not be taken advantage of.
| toss1 wrote:
| >> the reasoning that we shouldn't use the free license
| plates because they're reducing the number of jobs making
| them doesn't make sense.
|
| Yes, once the things are made, simply wasting the things
| on principle is, well, simply wasteful.
|
| That said, if that step of wasting them is required in
| order to stop the practice of (near-)slavery, then the
| waste could be worthwhile.
|
| Either way, slavery is bad both in it's own right and to
| the extent that it harms wider society by degrading the
| value of others' labor.
|
| This could also be solved by requiring all jobs to pay a
| bona-fide living wage, as in, you cannot hire anyone
| unless you are paying them for 40 hours of work an amount
| that is sufficient to support them and dependents for all
| basic needs, i.e., food, housing, health, transport, etc.
| Perhaps an exception for dependents who are entering the
| workforce, who could be paid lower rates for a certain
| time. With this, then slavery wouldn't have so much
| outside harm in addition to its intrinsic harm.
| xtracto wrote:
| I don't know... the capitalist model works well to a
| certain extent. I would agree with the grand parent idea if
| (and only if) it included extremely heavy taxation law.
| It's OK for corporations to compete on extracting the most
| efficient labor, but only if we can "socialize" the gains
| through taxation.
|
| The problem in the current capitalist system is that
| private companies have managed to corrupt that other size
| of the system (taxation) through bribes to the government.
| brightball wrote:
| It's no different than having less expensive foreign labor
| do the work and then importing the goods. The only thing
| the minimum wage does here is ensure that nobody is allowed
| to perform the task at that rate.
|
| Toss out the minimum wage and institute a survival level
| "basic income" instead. If it is truly the desire of a
| society to set a minimum acceptable amount of money that a
| person deserves, let the cost be paid by society itself.
| Then people can have an open, unquestioned choice about
| what rate they are willing to accept to perform a job to
| supplement their income: be it unpaid internships or
| working at a fruit stand.
| joshgroban wrote:
| Sociopathy isn't a recognized diagnosis among
| psychiatrists. It's narcissism these days.
| [deleted]
| willcipriano wrote:
| There is benefit to firms that hire prison labor, it isn't
| clear that it results in any benefit to consumers. Well
| connected firms able to hire prison labor may just keep all
| the surplus.
| theropost wrote:
| Interestingly enough, that's a GDP of $5500 per capita for each
| inmate (estimated 2 million prisoners)
| carabiner wrote:
| The crazy thing is that we still criticize China's concentration
| camps. We have a larger proportion of our population enslaved
| than they do.
| zirror wrote:
| Not only a larger proportion, but a larger number in absolute
| terms.
|
| ~2,000,000 in US vs ~1,700,000 in China.
|
| Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/262961/countries-
| with-th...
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Well at least they aren't disproportionately ethnic
| minorities. /s
| carabiner wrote:
| Yeah, I await the "At LeAsT wE cAn TaLk AbOuT iT" crowd to
| say how we are still better than China, because talking
| ensures some restitution at some point? How many decades have
| we had these camps?
|
| Freedom of speech is a privilege without teeth.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| There are a few things to note here the first is that China
| executes at least 8,000 people per year vs. 25 per year in
| the US. The other is that the 1.7 million number is an
| estimate.
| dionidium wrote:
| What's genuinely crazy is that you would equate the forced
| internment of an ethnic or religious minority with the
| confinement of convicted criminals. I can hardly imagine two
| things less alike.
| walkhour wrote:
| Simply mind blogging that you have managed to find a connection
| between both situations, when in one case an autocratic state
| has decided homogeneity is the end state; and mass detentions,
| forced sterilizations, and genocide is the way.
| idoh wrote:
| A question for the field: If working in a prison factory is
| completely optional, e.g. you can choose to work in the factory
| at $1 per hour, or the barbershop, or the kitchen, then is this
| OK?
|
| If executed well it seems OK, but given what we know about how
| well prisons are run it seems like the temptation for abuse is
| too great to allow.
| markovbot wrote:
| Why do you think it's okay to pay people $1 per hour? The
| federal minimum wage, well known to be a joke, is still $7.25
| nelsondev wrote:
| Free "room and board" is a form of compensation.
|
| RA's (Resident Advisors) at American universities, students
| whose job is to handle dormitory issues, are compensated via
| free "room and board."
| lesuorac wrote:
| False equivalence.
|
| Whatever crime you were committed of did not carry a
| penalty where you had to pay for your housing in prison. So
| your room in board is covered in the case where you work
| and where you don't and can't be deducted from wages. Now,
| the crime you were convicted of may have required you to
| pay some form of victim compensation. This is often
| deducted from any prison wages.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You can quit if you get tired of being an RA. What a
| specious argument.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>Free "room and board" is a form of compensation.
|
| and don't forget healthcare.
| inetsee wrote:
| Would you like to rely on the quality of healthcare you
| would get in prison?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| RA's are not forced by the state to spend all of their time
| in the dormitory.
|
| The state has chosen to imprison these people, it is
| forcing them to live inside the prison. The costs the state
| incurs in maintaining the prison are not "paid room and
| board" for the inmates.
| idoh wrote:
| The caveat is that I've never actually spent time in a
| prison, my understanding of the setup is that the base level
| experience is that you stay in your cell / rec room, and can
| go outside to the yard like an hour a day. Beyond that, you
| can volunteer (or get paid some small amount) to help out in
| various ways, like working laundry, barber shop, kitchen,
| library, etc. I don't think any of these pays minimum wage.
| Adding another thing that prisoners can opt into doesn't seem
| crazy or exploitive, if it is truly just another choice that
| they can make.
| lesuorac wrote:
| It's often not really a choice (i.e. work or received
| additional punishment) and sometimes not paid either. [1]
|
| [1]: 2:01 ~ 2:30 https://youtu.be/AjqaNQ018zU?t=121
| idoh wrote:
| Agreed, and that's kinda what I was saying. Theoretically
| it could work, in practice, not so much.
| iamleppert wrote:
| I'm surprised silicon valley hasn't cashed in on this yet. Just
| think, there could be a thriving startup ecosystem behind bars
| and VC's wouldn't have to pay nearly the costs for SWE's!
| danielodievich wrote:
| I recently read the The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind
| by Jan Lucassen that covered this (and all the other types) of
| labor in great, if also sleep-inducing depth.
|
| If you like something a bit longer than this article about
| "unfree labour", want to know what "corvee labor" is, learn the
| difference between serfdom and slavery, and be depressed about
| how much slavery there still is in the world, this is a great
| book for you.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Story-Work-New-History-Humankind/dp/0...
| for the book, https://www.economist.com/books-and-
| arts/2021/07/22/a-long-v... for the in-depth review.
| kache_ wrote:
| can't do the time don't do the crime my dude
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