What's wrong with prison labor in US? Those criminals committed acts deemed bad for society.
We could either pay for them to stay in a fancy hotel, or make them pay back debt to society.
This is not comparable to imprisoning people based on ethnicity.
In fact you could argue that prisoners are stealing job from others by working for next to nothing.
And those people in prison working for pennies per day ,as you've alluded, take jobs from free people. If you want to see peak absurdity, California has legions of prisoner firefighters.
But you can be a firefighter with a felony on your record, so while the state of California is fine with paying them peanuts for risking their lives, it won't make them full-fledged firefighters once they're released.
If any other country was doing this, our various propaganda agencies would be crying foul.