I mean, should there be an equal power balance in prisons...?
I think a better question is "should inmates be protected from the risk of abuse created by extreme power imbalance? And if so, where do we draw the line as a society?".
My answer to the first question is yes, they should be protected.
My answer to the second question is: respecting the universal declaration of Human Rights and the US constitution would be a great start.
Dare I say it actually sounds like a rehabilitation program.
Of course it’s very easy to criticize on a forum behind a screen. So tell us how you have personally helped a prisoner combat the extreme power imbalance you observe beyond criticizing existing programs.
Yes, it's very easy to criticize behind a screen. In some cases, people who do it too much even develop an extreme sense of entitlement, and start acting like the world owes them a response to even the most ridiculous demands. Although I have noticed that it's mostly white men who develop this issue - excessive entitlement is a common side effect of excessive privilege.
This isn't a "white fragility, white people can't handle hearing about privilege" deal, it's a you deal, where you specifically are using race-based stereotypes to dismiss and dehumanize your fellow human beings.
I think you’re confused about what racism is, and how it works.
If I were to have blindly said the program is more than you have ever done for the encarcerated, without knowing your experience, fine, but I didn’t do that.
I personally have served as legal counsel to untold numbers of detained immigrants and criminal defendants. I coordinated the legal representation of all the Haitian minors in the 2008 Hallandale Beach Haitian boat crisis. I have made complaints against guards in the Chrome Detention Center for referring to my client as a bitch in front of me specifically referencing my clients physical appearance as a result of a hormone imbalance that gave my male client breasts. I have filed motions for fraud upon the court against the chief broward county prosecutor against the interests of my own career. I know a thing or two about the system and the ugliness of the system, and tried engaging you and your generic response about declaration of human rights and the constitution to support your criticism of this program. And your response is to lash out against white males because their excessive privilege and suggesting my demand is ridiculous, that’s very interesting.
On the other hand I haven’t mentioned my credentials...I mentioned some small bit of my first hand experience in relation to the topic of encarceration and power imbalance.
My wisdom, if any, suggested to better understand your point of view I’d ask about your experience...I never knew trying to understand someone by asking about their experience was a bizarre entitlement and privilege of the white man. It’s funny though my encarcerated clients have always been more than happy to share their experiences with me, their experiences that lead to encarcerated, their experience being encarcerated...and they were always happy to ask about mine.
Also, I am concerned by the lack of death benefits for the families of those that die. It's a pretty clear statement that their lives are nearly worthless.
Indirectly telling someone their life is of very low value, then putting barriers in the way of them returning to work and society after they have served their debt to society does not sound like rehabilitation to me.
Lack of death benefits/life insurance speaks to a much broader issue facing most non-incarcerated individuals, including, many with high risk jobs. However, if they have the resources the family could take out life insurance policies, and even if waivers are signed if the program was negligent in training or providing faulty equipment to the participants then the family/heirs have access to courts and lawyers take wrongful death cases on contingency. For example, look at Walmart, using sophisticated computer systems they take out life insurance policies on their employees (including minimum wage workers on food stamps/SNAP) and cash in when the employees die and give the families nothing.
Whether they participate in this program or not, it is true there are barriers in place to a living wage for people transitioning out of incarceration. Again I’d say the reality is there are many barriers for people who have no criminal record to getting a job. The question might be does this program hurt them from getting a job...well obviously if you die yes, but otherwise, it can only help. Personally I don’t think it’s society or the system, it’s individuals in the companies making decisions with the reality of the number of people competing for the same job...despite low unemployment numbers I believe all potential employees are low value.
I agree that it looks like a rehabilitation program. It just seems like a bad one, because:
1) you shouldn’t have to risk your life to see your family or get time knocked off your sentence. It’s simply not normal that prisoners have to make this choice in a situation where their agency and access to alternatives are so limited; but this program contributes to normalizing it.
2) as others have pointed out, prisoners receive “training” for a trade that they won’t be allowed to practice after they serve their sentence. This tells me that rehabilitation wasn’t the primary motivation, or if it was, it was poorly thought out.
Overall this feels like a very slippery slope... even if this particular program is the best possible implementation of the idea, with proper training, and rules in place to avoid treating prisoners as relatively more expendable, putting them in more danger than other firemen, etc. My question is: what if it weren’t a perfect implementation, and abuse did occur? Are there any incentives and checks to prevent such abuse? Or would we all collectively shrug and say “seems like rehabilitation, nothing to see here”.
Given the general state of the carceral system in the US, I think the burden should be on the people responsible for this program to acknowledge these risks, and go out of their way to reassure the concerns of citizens like myself. It definitely is not reasonable to dismiss my criticism unless I prove a track record of helping prisoners first-hand as you have done. My opinion on the issue is just as legitimate as yours, and I wish you hadn’t dismissed it in the way you did (I also wish I hadn’t overreacted to it, we could have had a more constructive debate).
"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."
Which literally allows for slavery if convicted.
source: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=us%20constitution%2013...
1) Ending prison labor, or giving equal pay to prisoners, would negate the incentive outright.
2) Privatization of corrections facilities further complicates the matter, raising the incentives for unethical behavior.
So, there is a clear cut ethical path here. It just has a smaller profit margin. Nothing new.