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Comment by AndyMcConachie | Hacker News Reader

s/employed/enslaved/g

One thing we can do right now is start to use the correct language. Involuntary labor is not employment and we shouldn't call it such. There is even a market where you can buy their products.

https://unicor.gov/index.aspx

You can even outsource work to prison slaves. https://vimeo.com/125010485

There are even private companies that have prison slaves work for them and keep the profits. http://vltp.net/casinos-prison-labor-strange-bedfellows/

Just like slavery did in the American south pre-1865, prison slave labor depresses wages in any industry it operates in.

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  But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
  Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
  Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
  You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
  Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
  That's why they giving drug offenders time in double digits

Killer Mike, Reagan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU

It's disgusting but a reality that the 13th amendment loophole expressly permits slavery of convicts. And so the Civil War was won by the South since Plantations 2.0 continue unimpeded. Some counties' DA's lock up as many people as possible in order for officials to earn kickbacks from private prisons run by the likes of GEO Group.

It should be noted that the US Constitution allows prisoners to be treated as slaves:

> 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.

Just because it is in the constitution doesn't make it right. That is a document designed to be changed, after all.

Women couldn't vote for quite some time. Some people weren't fully human. Only landowners could vote. And so on.

Furthermore, it being in the constitution still doesn't detract from it being slavery.

Also, the Constitution is a minimum bound on rights, not a maximum. We don't need to change the Constitution to make just laws.

We were comfortable calling slavery by what it was back then, and we shouldn't shy away from the term if that's what's still happening. The constitution defining slavery doesn't make it right. But it does imply we shouldn't mince words.

Even if we accept that it being in the Constitution makes it right, it is permitting slavery as a punishment and not as an expedient.

i agree that's one way to read it, but it seems plausible to me that the intent really was just as a winnable end-run around abolition.

Are prisoners forced to work? What happens if they physically refuse? End up having to serve more time?

Well if you "volunteer" to work you can get less time. So yes, if you physically refuse then you serve more time.

"Not giving something"(term reduction in this case) and "taking something away" are very-very different things. You would have to be incredibly entitled to confuse them.

You would have to be incredibly naive to believe this statement stands on its own, without evaluating implementation details and expectations of the parties involved.

The problem is that many "taking something away" cases in prison can be rephrased as "not giving something."

Am I taking away your visitation rights, or am I just not giving them to you? Am I taking away your food, or am I just not giving you food?

Expectation and norms play a role in this. Suppose a judge gives a prisoner a higher sentence under the expectation that they'll work it off. They assume the prisoner will work 7 days a week, so they give a prisoner 6 years instead of 3.

Now suppose another judge gives a prisoner the correct sentence (3 years), but then says, "for every day of your original sentence that you don't work, you will spend one additional day in prison."

You're arguing that there's a fundamental difference between these two scenarios, but what is it? It's certainly not a difference for the prisoners -- they have the exact same incentive structure, and their outcomes and choices are exactly the same. It's not any different for the people benefiting from their labor; the work that they produce will look exactly the same. It doesn't even reveal any compelling differences in the judges' motivations -- both judges might reach their decision for the exact same same reasons.

So where is the difference?

It's interesting to note that the Geneva convention does not allow this treatment in the case of POWs. Wikipedia says German POWs in the US during WWII were required to be paid military wages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the...

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