[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 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-17 23:00 UTC)