Student Journalists Expose High School’s Use of Prison Labor
themarshallproject.org
themarshallproject.org
Nice job, teacher.
Your teacher was right in deciding that keeping their mouth shut had the best risk:reward. Blame here lies on parents for getting bent out of shape over dumb "my kid isn't old enough for that information" type stuff too often. Sucks but that's the society we live in.
Considering the demographics most of HN is apart of I don't expect this to be well received here but the reality is that teachers are "disposable" to a school district on an individual level and the people who last in wealthy suburbs (ie. "good" schol districts) tend to be the ones that do not create any controversy among the customers.
Edit: I used to work developing software for education. I am very aware of the workplace dynamics that govern how these people do their jobs (gotta understand that in order to actually build products that they can use).
Edit2: Ask any teacher. Rich suburb jobs are coveted because they pay well but the customers are very demanding.
In my mid-sized midwestern city, the notoriously-bad inner city schools pay the best, by far. The pay's not why most teachers prefer to work in the better suburban schools.
Anecdotal data point: The "upscale but not quite Belmont/Lexington/etc" town in MA in which my parents live had a little bit of drama over the number of teachers (some of whom had been teaching there 30+yr) who were drawing salaries on par with software developers in the Boston area. Having been educated in that town years earlier that squares with my expectations. Sure the teachers taught but the overwhelming majority were older and just looking to teach what they needed to to cash checks until retirement.
Also, the suburban schools likely have more opportunities for extra pay, such as by coaching an athletic team or being faculty sponsor for a student club.
I probably wouldn't mind it, but I would certainly want to be asked first.
What did they use for tools then? Pocket knives are rather low on the scale of damage one could do with what's in the average toolbox. A chisel or a hammer would be more of a problem. Or were they concerned with them smuggling the stuff back into the prison?
Here in Texas, prison labor is widely used, widely supported, and widely liked. At my last job, we used prison labor often (move furniture, mow lawns, warehouse work). The only prisoners in Texas allowed to be out working around the public are low-grade, non-violent prisoners who also have less than 6 months to go on their sentence. Texas has many programs designed to help prisoners re-enter the market as useful people: farm, mechanical, electronic, etc.
Paying a debt to society should involve doing something for society, not just sitting a cell for 23 hours a day. Texas prisons demand every able-bodied prisoner work. They raise their own chickens, cows, horses, and garden food. If you refuse to work, you go into segregation. Fair enough.
I would also suggest not simply sharing your opinion and stating it as fact, this site lives on productive discourse. You simply posting your opinion doesnt benefit anyone. What answer would you have expected, except people agreeing or disagreeing with you? Your edit sounds rather similar.
You might want to take a look into the community guidelines.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It destroys intellectual curiosity, which the site exists for.
I will say, however, that this site appears and acts disproportionately left in its operation. And while I am a very far right ultra-traditionalist, I can happily exist around others with differing opinions. Notice, if you will, that I never vote anyone down. People are entitled to opinions. The left seems militantly opposed to any viewpoint that challenges their narrative. Voltaire applies...
> prison labor for the public good is a good thing.
is an opinion.
> Prisoners owe the public
is an opinion
> for their malfeasance,
is an opinion
> breaking the social compact
opinion or debatable fact.
> I am a very far right ultra-traditionalist,
Yes, slavery is traditionalist.
Here are some facts you might find enlightening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_(film)
Just because I'm a traditionalist doesn't in the slightest equal support for slavery. I'm a traditionalist in that I'm a strict constructionist as regards the Constitution, natural marriage (man/woman), pro-military/pro-conscription (or equal civil service), low-tax, small government.
I'm OK with your thoughts, opinions, and ideas. They don't offend me. I'm not a snowflake, soft, or easily offended. I thrive in challenging environments, but I loathe how others cannot accept my opinion when I accept theirs. I work with all manner of people, and I disagree with most of them, but I never get bent out of shape over the fact that some of them voice things that I find disheartening or abjectly stupid. I just smile and let them go about their merry way.
"The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person."
It had nothing to do with the Democratic party or the Republican party.
If your linking of slavery with the Democratic party is somehow connected to Lincoln being a Republican, so of course the Republicans freed the slaves, then I'd suggest reading about the presidencies of FDR, LBJ, a bit regarding Nicon's "Southern Strategy", and Clinton. The geographic south of the U.S. was conservative Democratic prior to them, and shifted to conservative Republican. The parties changed. The people in place (for the most part) didn't.
Your belief that gays should not allowed to marry illustrates that you believe some people are Less Than bases on things out of their control (their sexuality, in this case).
To hold this opinion is not a problem. To defend it, or espouse it, however, you have no choice but to step forward and say "gays are not as much People as me." That's an attack on someone's humanity, and totally unacceptable, totally untenable.
People being upset with you for attacking someone's very worth as a human isn't them being snowflakes, it's them fully rejecting a prejudiced person, and showing them the door.
When fact always gets trotted out (along with "Abe Lincoln was Republican"), the fact that the Republicans/Democrats were essentially opposite parties compared to now is always omitted.
I find this repugnant at best. A society that uses prisoners as a slave labor force is a society that always has a need for prisoners. Keeping prisoners should be fundamentally unprofitable for society, so that there is always a clear incentive to reduce recidivism rates and to decriminalize acts that don't actually hurt people.
i wonder whether the Texas penalty code says "... punishable by N years in prison" or "... punishable by N years of slave labor" and whether the latter would pass the muster of constitutionality.
> 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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
What's the return on giving a job that would have gone to outside workers to an inmate instead?
Using prisoners for profit means there is profit in imprisoning more people.
Aren't those prison jobs open only to volunteers among the prison population?
Is it ok to pay below minimum wage, if the prisoners are gaining useful skills? No. It's not ok.
1. We have no system of accountability measuring worth of useful skills against amount under minimum wage the prisoner is getting paid. Is upholstery worth 3$ less an hour, or 4$? Are they actually learning upholstery? How do we know? Is upholstery actually a valuable skill? How do we know?
2. We have not allowed other people to be paid less than minimum wage, why prisoners? "Useful skills" is not a valid excuse (except for interns sometimes, which I also disagree with). I don't agree that it should be considered part of the punishment as the jury and judge had no say in the amount under minimum wage the prisoner would be paid. There's no transparency or accountability.
3. It doesn't make economic sense. Why pay someone minimum wage to upholster, when you can buy the work on the cheap from the prisons? The prisons have thus evaded our imposed market controls and have an unfair advantage.
4. Prisoners are humans and (generally) US citizens. It is not cool to devalue them by paying them less.
Offset tax-burden incurred by their incarceration.
Private companies profiteering on prison labor is a different story.
> It is not cool to devalue them by paying them less.
They're prisoners. Society has already devalued them.
I don't agree that this is a valid justification. I pay taxes that go to funding the department of education despite never "participating" in any direct department of education activity. We don't make parents "offset" that cost when they send kids to public school (no, we make the teachers do that by forcing them to use their own money to buy chalk), why should we make a prisoner suddenly be more responsible for a tax burden carried by all of society? This is creating a "separate tax class," in my mind, which defeats the purpose entirely. We all pay in, we all benefit, we all use what we can/need/want of the system (minus the glaring deficiencies).
> They're prisoners. Society has already devalued them.
We agree. I think that it's bad to devalue them.
There are a number of separate tax classes as well as fees. Income tax, property tax, sales tax, registration fees, etc. We implement these for policy reasons. I'm guessing that the previous poster believes it's good policy to have the incarcerated pay for themselves where you do not. I think the idea of "separate tax classes" being bad on its own is pretty thoroughly disagreed with in most countries.
Perhaps it would appear less egregious if we paid them a fair wage and then immediately made them pay most of it back?
> We agree. I think that it's bad to devalue them.
I never stated my opinion on that devaluation, and I don't believe we do agree.
Does a jail in California require a greater rent than one in Alabama? What if the minimum wage doesn't match, do we make the prisoner go into debt to continue uh, their "lease?" Do they get better conditions if they pay more? Can they just not work and leverage their pre-incarceration assets to pay? Now that they're renters, do they get renter's protection under law? Via what mechanism - who enforces? What if there's cockroaches, they're paying, do they get to Lodge a complaint? Who decides the rent? What's to stop a prison setting a rent price that requires 18 hours hard labor to match?
Why do you think it's acceptable to devalue a human? What measures do you apply to that devaluing algorithm? In your mind, who is the most "valuable," and least "valuable" human?
They find themselves without spare income and a constructive usage of their time.
I do believe some prison systems, I want to say Angola has something along these lines, use work-history as a test for certain privileges and or use punitive measures. These are probably not quite productive, particularly the punitive, but at the same time I think finding a way to incentive work is a good thing.
To be honest, I can't quite understand why something as benign a wage garnishment (tax?) against convicted criminals income is a controversial subject. Is the current system optimal? No, prisoners could probably use a bit of an increase in earnings such that they could establish a reasonable "nest egg" for their return to the real world.
I'm sorry that I don't see this as a moralistic boolean as you appear to, but levying penalties on a criminal is not wrong. Doing so in an overly punitive manner that doesn't serve society's best interest is another matter.
The penalties levied on the criminal are encapsulated in the prison sentence itself. Anything beyond that has been added at the whim of the state, not by the legal actions of a judge or jury.
You're right, it's not by the legal actions of the judge and jury. It's by the legal actions of the legislature and enforced by the executive branch.
Prisoners should be a tax burden. That way, there's no incentive to conveniently round up more prisoners every time the local town needs more free labor.
http://theconversation.com/exploiting-black-labor-after-the-...
> The living conditions of leased convicts are documented in dozens of detailed, firsthand reports spanning decades and covering many states. In 1883, Blackmon writes, Alabama prison inspector Reginald Dawson described leased convicts in one mine being held on trivial charges, in “desperate,” “miserable” conditions, poorly fed, clothed, and “unnecessarily chained and shackled.” He described the “appalling number of deaths” and “appalling numbers of maimed and disabled men” held by various forced-labor entrepreneurs spanning the entire state.
> In 1883,
I'm not saying the modern penal system isn't without need for reform, but using an example from the 18th Century isn't helping your argument here.
They're not the only ones at fault. Society failed them as well, and must carry that burden as well. It would have been more efficient to do so by funding excellent education programs but instead we decided to do so by creating a bloated justice system. So it goes.
What cost to society did the man jailed with 3g of marijuana incur? The one that robbed a Walmart of a flat screen? Enough to justify all the things I illustrated above? Nope, because the jury and judge and legislators set down and handed down the sentence and have no visibility into a further form of punishment arbitrarily set by the prison in the form of lesser wages.
How about this: via what framework shall a prisoner's working hours and pay be set? Let's say the man jailed for a DWI, and the woman jailed for selling marijuana. Shall the DWI be paid 1$, or 2$ per hour, and the dealer 3$ because the "cost to society" was less? How did you calculate that? Oh also, can the prisoners be forced to work? How shall we fit that into sentencing?
Good intentions, bad outcomes.
And prisoners should be able to accumulate money because it makes their reintegration into society easier. What's unfair to the taxpayer is a system designed to punish and not rehabilitate because that makes repeat offenders out of prisoners.
Right now we punish prisoners and give them nothing once we kick them out of prison. It should come as no surprise that they return to selling drugs or crime to survive.
Actually, as being able to leave prison with a small nest egg would almost certainly reduce recidivism, it would probably be more fair to the taxpayer than the current system.
> You also don't want to incentive's going to prison as some sort of decent alternative lifestyle on the taxpayers dime.
Living in a cell while earning minimum wage isn't a "decent lifestyle", it's merely slightly less awful than prisons in the US currently are.
Or it would give people bankrolls to go out and jumpstart their dealing, buy a weapon for their next string of robberies, get spent at a bar/strip club the first week out, get spent on sex workers after a few years of abstinence, used to immediately buy drugs for personal use after forced sobriety.
Or just strengthen the gangs inside prisons "hey bubba, we know you've got to have a few thousand dollars in that account, you'd better give it to us or you might not live very long. Congrats you've got a new girlfriend her name is Jane Smith, add her to your visitor list then transfer the funds to her on the outside"
Are there any reasons against using prison labor? It gives inmates something to do and the ability to learn a new skill.
Some prisons are much more expensive: https://psmag.com/social-justice/are-prison-commissaries-fai...
If there is no profit motive in any shape or form then voluntary prison labor would be OK with my conscience.
Then it's not voluntary.
https://www.innocenceproject.org/
Or those imprisoned for life for stupid shit?
https://www.aclu.org/report/living-death-life-without-parole...
"estimate is that 1 percent of the US prison population, approximately 20,000 people, are falsely convicted."
https://www.innocenceproject.org/how-many-innocent-people-ar...
While it is unfortunate, they make up 1% of the prison population.
But seriously, I see that 1% and it solidifies why prison populations should not be subject to forced labor for profit. That is not a low number.
Precisely. Prisons are allowed to create inhumane conditions to help boost their supply of willing volunteers.
I would rather have them working, following rules to keep their work privileges, than sitting around being bitter about being incarcerated or learning new methods of committing crime from others incarcerated with them.
The unfortunate truly innocent people in prison aside, if you break the law you deserve to serve a sentence proportional to the severity of the crime.
As long as you aren't using them to break rocks, do dangerous jobs that normally pay very well, etc then I'm completely fine with it. Stuff like manufacturing, basic construction, food prep, even order fulfillment I have no issue with whatasoever and if I were incarcerated I'd actually prefer to be doing something 40 hours a week instead of sitting around reading the same handful of books wondering what's going on with my friends, wondering if there's any new cool tech, wondering if I'll be able to cut it when I get out, wondering if the new guy is going to try and kill himself etc.
Last year it came out California was using prisoners at 1$ an hour to fight wildfires, but it was completely voluntary and they did NOT have a shortage of volunteers. I believe there was a thread on here (possibly reddit though) where a commentor mentioned how a family member had done this sort of work and was happy to be out doing it. While those individuals were denied the ability to get firefighting licenses when released I imagine mentioning in your job interviews "look, yes I messed up and went to prison, I did my time, while there though I volunteered to fight wildfires. I risked my own life to do backbreaking work to try and limit the spread of the fires, I could have easily sat back at the prison watching tv of playing cards but..." is going to also help you considerably, as will most prison work programs to various degrees.
Like if I were an amoral shitbird with lots of money and familiarity with law enforcement, I'd probably start opening a chain of for-profit prisons while also lobbying for "tough on crime" laws and politicians. Then I'd use my for prisoners to produce goods which I could then sell back to someone for a profit.
But I'm sure no amoral shitbirds like that exist and the 80s/90s saw this happen purely by coincidence.
Want to keep people out of prison? Teach people that they're valued and that their work has value.
I'd call the amounts they get paid to work are more than generous since they do not have to repay the cost of their incarceration.
---
And not directed specifically at you, but those in general in this thread griping about how little they get paid and how expensive stuff is in prison commissaries... commissaries aren't there to provide basic needs in most cases, they are there to provide rewards/amenities like canned foods and vending machine type foods, radios, televisions, mp3 players, soda, ice cream etc depending on the facility. There are numerous prisons in the united states that have cable/satellite tv in-cell or in common areas (the company Correctional Cable TV alone serves more than 140 facilities across 21 states).
Getting paid ANYTHING for the labor is a reward. Never mind that in many prisons being allowed to get a job is again, a reward, that you can get for following the rules and not causing problems.
How much of those 30k/year inmates are we wasting tax dollars incarcerating because we refuse to acknowledge that marijuana is not worthy of a schedule 1 certification? How many because we failed to provide an equal opportunity education system?
The prisoners are already being "punished" by having their freedom taken away. I don't see why they should have to pay for the mechanisms that remove their freedom at the same time. They're still citizens. They have paid and will continue to pay taxes. They still participate in the system despite being a prisoner of it.
We don't make people pay per usage of the existence of the FDA. Why make them pay for their own prison?
Prisoners do not have any control over how much their incarceration costs, therefore have no obligation to pay any of it back. The idea is that the loss of liberty alone is atonement, no judge ever sentenced an inmate to 'n days of incarceration + repayment of expenses incurred by the state in a negotiation process in which the defendant played no part'.
I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve with your comments, whatever your goal is you are likely not helping it.
It's hard for someone to control the costs of something that they've already committed, but I don't think there's any way around that. If it turns out that destroying a painting costs more or less depending on who does the restoration, that's not in the vandal's control.
For what it's worth, I think he made a valid point along with a fact that contributed to the discussion.
Right now that's not what the system is for, and it's outright slave labor.
edit: About the history of prison labor as a replacement for slavery, "Slavery by another Name" by Douglas A. Blackmon is a great book on the topic.
> Here’s how it worked. Black men – and sometimes women and children – were arrested and convicted for crimes enumerated in the Black Codes, state laws criminalizing petty offenses and aimed at keeping freed people tied to their former owners’ plantations and farms. The most sinister crime was vagrancy – the “crime” of being unemployed – which brought a large fine that few blacks could afford to pay.
> Black convicts were leased to private companies, typically industries profiteering from the region’s untapped natural resources. As many as 200,000 black Americans were forced into back-breaking labor in coal mines, turpentine factories and lumber camps. They lived in squalid conditions, chained, starved, beaten, flogged and sexually violated. They died by the thousands from injury, disease and torture.
It incentivizes making more prisoners.
Preferably not in the remote vicinity. Also you need to separate the inmates from the released people to prevent smuggling.
Set a cap on the inside or outside whatever you think will reduce recidivism. Call exprisoners back if there’s a new project where you need more people.
This comes up in the article. The school board had the choice between prison labor and a group hiring former prisoners. They chose prison labor. Why? It was cheaper.
Pay the prisoners minimum wage but withhold 75% of it until they are released. Allow the 25% to be added to commissary and legally abolish chargebacks to prisoners.
There’s a lot of inmates that claim it’s easier to get drugs on the inside than the outside. Whatever you want is available for a price.
Why not? What's the downside? Who determines how much they "need"?
At the end of the day, work is work and should be rewarded fairly regardless of the context. Otherwise, yea, it's slave labor.
There are lots of reasons that I find compelling-- I'm generally in favor of the abolition of prisons. I'm also aware that there are plenty of people who think I am a wingnut because I think that.
But even if you think prisons are a "good" thing, here is a reason that you could find compelling for preventing prison labor from interacting with the larger market:
it lowers the pay for other non-prison workers by throwing unpaid labor into the labor pool.
If you have a chair factory and the local prison starts using very low paid labor to produce chairs, how could you compete with that?
Surely you're creative enough to think of at least 3 or 4 other modes where we sequester people "from society due to past behavior"... there are a lot of other modalities than, say throwing people in an oubliette or conscripting them into an army. Some are actually ethical (in my opinion, which is far from the only legitiamte one), unlike prison in the US (also,, I do understand that this is my opinion as well).
Seems pretty clear. What about this did you not understand?
But over 2 million Americans? At a cost of over $74bn?
Government-enforced slavery isn't better than privately-enforced slavery.
Is this system in fact slavery?
> Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. 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.
At some point you just have to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and say "this is slavery, that is not".
This is more or less the "we'll pay you in exposure!" cliché.
Think of all the perverse incentives that come along with the ability to access prison labor -- an ever present need for a robust population (a.k.a locking minorities up), lax regulation in terms of various labor laws and general exploitation of labor without the need to pay market costs (wages, healthcare, etc.).
I realize it stings to get downvoted but it happens to everyone—and the site rules require you to have self-discipline about it and not lash back.
What exactly is your point? That this (prison labor in this community being used for this purpose) is common knowledge? Or that these kids didn't go far enough?
Journos shined light on something, the community took issue with it and things changed because of it. Sounds like the 4th estate is still alive and well on this one my dude.