Hacker News Reader

Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile the Kochs have likely given around seven figures to ALEC[1], which has pushed aggressively for enhancing the laws[2] that Charles Koch is now, apparently, deeply opposed to.

Maybe it's a turn of heart, but I'm rather skeptical.

[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/alec-exposed-koch-connecti...

[2] https://www.thenation.com/article/hidden-history-alec-and-pr...

View on HN

It seems to me that they just found common ground, like Charles Koch and Mike Rowe have. ALEC produces models for a huge number of laws, the vast majority with which the Koch brothers are politically aligned. To me it doesn't seem to be a stretch that the people who founded the Cato Institute and bankrolled the Libertarian Party would agree with a conservative legislative group on a whole bunch of issues, but not on prison sentencing reform.

Will you be voting for Hillary Clinton? If so, does that mean you support mass surveillance and incessantly bombing the Middle East?

Thats a terrible example for your point because the alternative is you improve the odds of electing someone who is even more likely to bomb the middle east, and does not just support mass surveillance, but thinks we arent doing enough of it. The alternative thinks that we should be asking people to answer questions such as thwir religion to be able to enter the country.

Oh, and thinks that besides not bombing enough, the other problem is a lack of using nukes.

Jane Mayer fills in the context about the Kochs’ rebranding: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/new-koch

Great article. Thank you. It says the Kochs are using criminal justice reform to gut corporate executive's criminal liability for environmental violations.

"ALEC has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country’s massive prison population."

Gross.

"That mass incarceration would create a huge captive workforce was anticipated long before the US prison population reached its peak—and at a time when the concept of “rehabilitation” was still considered part of the mission of prisons."

Are we finally admitting that that's no longer (never really was) a thing? Now maybe we can start to take responsibility for bolstering corporations that actively work to incarcerate people for profit?

How is this different than slavery? Oh, if they're paid $0.20/hr they're not slaves?

Edit: as pointed out below, the 13th Amendment says prisoners can be slaves. I hadn't considered it in that context.

The Thirteenth Amendment covers 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."

So...

Are we finally admitting that that's no longer (never really was) a thing?

"Never" would imply that it hadn't ever worked, which...I take your point if that's what you mean, but as for even attempting to implement rehabilitation as a part of incarceration, that drive ended via both the Left and Right in the mid-70s after Robert Martinson[0], a Freedom Rider, published an essay[1] based on his thesis critique of the state of rehabilitation in prison at the time[2]. This was reinterpreted into the "Nothing Works" doctrine by the media and politicians, which resulted in the concepts and uses of prison being turned completely punitive within 10 years.

Oh, if they're paid $0.20/hr they're not slaves?

Nope! It's if you're in prison it's not slavery[3].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Martinson

1. http://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/what-w...

2. https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=1959...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

How is this different than slavery? Oh, if they're paid $0.20/hr they're not slaves?

I think the relevant question is whether the labour is forced. My understanding is that prison workforces are comprised of inmates who request to take part.

And people who (from a legal perspective) chose to break the law. Why is it morally acceptable to hold criminals in prison but not to employ them (at will, from what I understand) for little compensation during that imprisonment? Is there such a big difference between imprisonment with no employment and imprisonment with under-employment?

It's not a bad question. For me, imprisoning somebody should be a last resort and something we strive to avoid at all costs. In that light, does then taking advantage of someone in a (literal) captive situation, with no recourse for being taken advantage of, fit in the same worldview?

While "voluntary", promising time reductions or other sentencing modifications for either participation directly or "good behavior" indirectly changes the meaning of "voluntary." Add the threat of solitary confinement or other unconscionable punishments for bad behavior (and capable of being used in a punitive or retaliatory fashion by guards and administrators) and "voluntary" becomes even less voluntary.

It's easy to dehumanize prisoners as "lawbreakers" or cast them as people who gave up freedom flippantly. For me, taking advantage of prisoners to bolster private corporate profits - no matter their crime - is not a justifiable thing.

Why shouldn't prisoners get full compensation for their labor?

What does full compensation mean? The public market rate? Or the prison market rate because the risks and negative aspects of hiring prisoners mean that the demand for prisoners is low?

That's debatable, but I'm seeing a 20 cent/hour rate being floated about in the comments, which strikes me as way below market, pretty much no matter how you slice it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com