National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

I'm not sure the solution is to ensure that the minority that get caught are unable to ever go back to being productive, effectively being forced into finding alternative means to pay their rent/bills/etc.

And no, I don't think anyone should be sentenced to be a slave or a firemen. Any such sentence probably would violate the 8th amendment.

[0] Insightful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17813698

The modern prison labor system varies from this in degree, but not really in kind. Inmates are still compelled to work in the US.

Criminal justice reform has lobbyists against it, and also has a culture that is obsessed with punishment and bloodlust.

I think prisoner wages or the duties of prisoners can be addressed in some capacity, without maintaining a massive slave labor force. The circumstances around wording of the 13th Amendment, and subsequent case law may allow for redress against this outcome.

From the majority opinion in Bailey v. Alabama in 1910

> "The plain intention [of the amendment] 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. While the Amendment was self-executing, so far as its terms were applicable to any existing condition, Congress was authorized to secure its complete enforcement by appropriate legislation."

So I see what the amendment says - prisoners can be slaves - but honestly, it may be as simple as that having never been challenged. Its probably why they are paid 85 cents in some cases, and only a handful of traditionally southern states paying them nothing.

In conclusion: there may not be public support for prisoner slavery, there may not be Congressional or state legislature support for prisoner slavery, and even if it got to the Supreme Court they might just lean on old case law instead of the plain text of the amendment.

In fact, the government will punish the parents if they try to not take care of their child or punish them too severely for not doing their chores

One is a child. They do not have the freedoms which we, as a society, have given them yet due to their age, lack of maturity and lack of means.

You can't premise an argument regarding the current general case for prisoners on what's now either a historical, or an edge case for children.

Any argument about upkeep doesn't hold water as well, because these prisons aren't using the money for upkeep, they are making a profit

1. The right to say "no" without repercussions beyond "not getting paid".

2. Significant statutory protections regarding exploitative treatment.

EDIT: There's also a large body of statute defining what is and isn't okay in the family farm situation.

It’s not like a billionaire (quibble about billionaires being in jail) can load up a commissary card and buy time off.

On the contrary, the billionaire would have to work the same hours as the guy who robbed the booze store and get 1 day off for every one worked.

I’m much more troubled by having private companies buying cheap prison labor to make goods or do customer service.

It’s interesting to note as well that I think I share the same underlying thesis that prisons are fucked, with terrible incentives and I am in favor of revamping the entire system — however this one program does not bother me the same way it does others.

If I was to guess, I’d imagine I have much more progressive views about prison reform than most opposed to this program. This is fascinating to me.

For example, I’ve been speaking with VCs about doing a “prison startup” with the right incentives - including things like cooperative ownership by the prisoners themselves.

In my view crime is a context not a characterstic of an individual.

As others have said, though, it definitely is unjust that they face discrimination when attempting to do the same work as civilians.

The most likely reason we're offering to knock off prison time is because we really stinking need firefighters. It's not a punishment, we're exchanging prison time for a service that we want very much. If there wasn't a forest fire, we wouldn't be offering it.

If punishment was actually the purpose of these programs, we would be a lot more creative and a lot more specific in how we reduced prison sentences: "Okay, here's a bottle of sterilized urine. Drink it, and we'll knock a day off." But in practice, you don't see stuff like that. Forced labor is nearly always phrased by its proponents as something that's good for the prisoner's character, and as an effective way to repay a social debt. Look over the comments on this very article and you'll find more than a few people saying that getting to work outside is a privilege for prisoners and they should be happy just with that as a reward.

The rephrasing of work as a direct punishment (especially when it's tied to money) manages to somehow makes the entire situation feel even worse to me. At least when it was transactional you could talk about it as being something that's good for both parties. I don't think that argument holds up, it's at least a reasonable starting point.

But it seems obvious to me that the state shouldn't have a financial incentive to punish people. If punishment is our goal, the way we're going about it is super corrupt.

Trying to rationalize irrational behavior is an uphill battle. So instead of rationalizing the prison system we should aim to minimize it - and over time (likely generations) phase it out completely.

Why not?

But if you dont like a moral argument, make it an economic one. Each prisoner in california costs like 100k a year: if you paid them reasonable salaries, and they reduce re-incarceration rates you will be saving orders of magnitude more money.

The issue is that if you fuck up and go to jail, your life is effectively over.

Possibly unfortunately (though it's not that simple, as prosecutors, being human, still err), the legislature disagrees with you. With personal experience in a proceeding of a charge like this, I assure you child rapists are usually let out of jail before murderers.

That's not the point though, it's that no distinction is being drawn here. We already put a considerable effort into predicting recidivism, but people in this thread seem to assume that the majority, or all prisoners warrant an expensive supported release, despite the obvious likelihood that a certain number are virtually guaranteed to want to reoffend, and would use any resources they're given to do so.

As much as anyone, I am against the excessive policies which force fine people into a lifetime of criminality. However that problem can not be solved with release policy, it has to be solved in criminal law.

New Yorkers, don't seem to bring issues like their ridiculous knife laws (which frequently target innocent people who use folding knives at work; knives which are sold openly in major cities) to the ballot; many states chock full of people who complain about excess imprisonment don't vote on issues surrounding the policies and law which make soft recreational drugs an underground criminal enterprise, and produce unexpected black markets in services like hair styling.

Ironically, the people who complain about the prison population most vocally, are frequently the same people who say "there ought to be a law!" whenever the slightest issue arises in public life.

From here on is only speculation and I'll do a deeper dive when I'm not on a phone. I'd like to see the rest of the statistics broken down by offense. Additionally I suspect that drug offenses would lead to repeated incarceration and perhaps eventually worse offenses.

Most violent offenses are committed in the context of existing relationships though, so there are certainly non-policy and certainly non-drug-policy ways to address crime in the United States.

> From BJS [Bureau of Justice Statistics], [...] an incarceration rate of about 725 people per 100,000 population.

> Suppose every federal drug offender were released today. That would cut the incarceration rate to about 693 inmates per 100,000 population. Suppose further that every drug offender in a state prison were also released. That would get the rate down to 625

(It should go without saying that these are all simplistic lenses on a very complex, multifaceted problem, and in reality many parts of the justice system need reform.)

[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

-found it.

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...

46% drug offenses, 6.8% immigration and we’re already past the 50% mark. That as they say, is a majority.

Edit: Looking at all populations state, federal, local yields: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html

Note: But the offense data oversimplifies how people interact with the criminal justice system. A person in prison for multiple offenses is reported only for the most serious offense so, for example, there are people in prison for “violent” offenses who might have also been convicted of a drug offense. Further, almost all convictions are the result of plea bargains, where people plead guilty to a lesser offense, perhaps of a different category or one that they may not have actually committed.

Most of these policies were enacted during the 1960's-1990's crime wave as a response to it, and not as some sort of special-interest conspiracy. It turns out that unintended consequences are a lot more common than sinister special interest conspiracies.

That would be nice, but our current justice system is not even remotely close to being anything like this. That will take generations of change. You're trying to say we should be at step Z when we haven't even gotten to A yet.

If you think you were justified in your crime and can never be convinced otherwise, you don’t belong in jail for the rest of your life. You belong in jail for as long as you deserve and not a second longer.

1. "Rehabilitation" -- the actual implementation, not the abstract idea -- is insidious. How can anyone ever know for sure whether someone is truly rehabilitated? Especially given that prisons don't typically attract that best and brightest of the medical profession.

If you've ever talked to someone who spent time in prison, you'll realize that "rehabilitation" in US prisons mostly means "parrot what they tell you to say and don't be stupid enough to seriously engage. Just. Repeat. Your. Lines."

E.g., claiming you have no spiritual belief can result in denied parole [1]. Too often, "rehabilitation" is just short-hand for "brainwashing". In those cases, bodily punishment without the pretense of "rehabilitation" is actually a far kinder and just system.

Far from truly fixing the underlying problem, modern rehabilitation often amounts to an exercise in honing one's inner psychopath: lie without remorse or guilt, and lie well enough that you don't get caught, or be denied parole on the basis of your lack of religious faith.

2. What do we do with people who cannot be rehabilitated, but whose crimes do not justify a lifetime prison sentence?

3. what do we do about criminals who are very unlikely to re-offend but are not rehabilitated? I.e., what is the purpose of rehabilitation? A common answer is "limiting future damage to society". But this justification fails to explain why we should jail a bank robber who managed to hide $1 billion on a remote island and who we honestly believe will be happy living off of that $1 billion on some remote island in peace for the rest of his life.

4. What about people who commit heinous crimes but are easy to rehabilitate (e.g., due to a treatable mental illness)? How do we deal with vindictive families of victims who might want to take justice into their own hands?

Prison sentences serve many purposes: rehabilitation, protection of society, punishment, and a disincentive for criminal activity.

Rehabilitation is certainly the most in-line with enlightenment values (but can become draconian in the case where the crime is relatively small but rehabilitation proves impossible, or in the case where rehabilitation means "learn how to lie about your inner self").

And I will certainly agree that the US prison system does not come even remotely close to striking a good balance between these multiple purposes. But the other roles are also important, and "rehabilitation" isn't always all it's cracked up to be.

[1] http://www.kcur.org/post/court-says-atheist-inmate-s-religio...

And for a lot of people when someone does something pretty awful or scummy, we kind of want them to be punished severely for their crimes and are outraged when they're not, because we've been conditioned to feel that way.

We want some people to be punished and spend years or decades in prison. Maybe not you specifically, or maybe there isn't always agreement about who, but for a lot of people that's the deep seeded idea of justice.

It's a tough row to hoe to change that at every level. People need to agree with more sensible ideas and vote that way. But it's clear that a lot of folks prefer the most draconian approaches because that's what makes them feel better.

But if you don't "volunteer" for work, you spend a week in solitary (aka: Torture).

Certain companies (like private prisons and contractors who make money off of prisons) make profit out of people being in prisoned, so it is in their self interest to keep people, even people who are not dangerous to anyone in prison because it affects their bottom line. They then lobby politicians and the like to keep their place, get more funding, as well as lobby for legislation like mandatory minimums so they get a fresh supply of humans to exploit.

So, it never was for the general public's interest, it's in the private interest of these corporations.

(I've heard of them being able to send email to whitelisted addresses from locked down kiosks, but that's not the internet as we know it.)

> In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will.

Seems like what they were saying fits well with this.

Please note this is not my redefinition of slavery as I was largely using the definition many other posts here assume, but only pointing out that it isn't limited just to hard labor on the enslaver's behalf.

If you think this definition of slavery is wrong, then this would apply to numerous other posts here and the core take away would be that prisoners aren't slaves. At which point we can just pick a different word or create a new word and continue to the point.

So, if you have an issue with the word slave, then I'll define a new word to capture what people in other posts are complaining about, praves (yes, just combining prisoners and slaves into as single word). Now, I repeat my point using praves instead of slaves.

It'd be pretty hard to extract from the 13th amendment a constitutional right to put prisoners to unpaid work.

Furthermore, it's a myth that only for-profit prisons that profit from it - state-owned prisons also profit off the system to the same extent.

The trend at the moment is that they aren't interfering with past rulings and that's not about to change with the new addition.