US prison workers produce $11B worth of goods and services for little to no pay

We should try to eliminate as many as possible, regardless of whether it has to be piecemeal

How would people be prosecuted if prosecutors aren't paid money?

I agree generally, but I don't think paying prosecutors is a particularly strong incentive. Prosecutors aren't bonused or compensated based on their conviction rate (as far as I know), and they're generally undercompensated compared to private practice (but not as undercompensated as public defenders).

If only it were a slippery slope. You're describing something more like a sticky slope, where every step down is gummed up by a pile of other things to pay attention to.

I don't think we're at any risk of sliding too rapidly down this one, and I'm not sure why we wouldn't want to even if we could. Getting rid of injustices is a net good no matter how many other injustices there are.

> Even paying prosecutors money is an incentive to prosecute people.

Unless you are paying per prosecution, it's not.

(I suppose the theoretical risk of laying off prosecutors if there is insufficient prosecutorial workload is a weak incentive of this type, though the fact that chief prosecutors are politicians and the political rewards for prosecuting in general, and for prosecuting those society dislikes in particular, are orders of magnitude stronger.)

Just start by making profiting off of prisons illegal. Solutions don't need to be flawless, just better than what we have, which is an embarrassingly low bar to clear.

Prisons are a part of the legislative and lobbying systems that directly influence which laws send people to prison. So, yes, they can send more people to prison.

I'll add that the basis of the wording of the 13th amendment was to sweeten the deal for southern states. They had a lot of black people in prison already (and then some), and did not like the idea of undergoing reconstruction without some source of free labor.

There's actually a great book about this by Shane Bauer, a journalist who went undercover in Louisiana's Winn Correctional Center and wrote a book about his experiences.

It details not only the brutality of the system but also the apathy and corruption of the minimum wage employee guards. So many of the guards themselves run smuggling ops and other deals with the prisoners as they are minimum wage barely screened laborers.

It's a horrific if eye-opening book, an excellent read. I found out about it by another poster on hackernews and highly recommend!

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/38561954-american-pri...

Oh wow I didn’t know that. All of a sudden it makes the lyrics from “Jedi Mind Tricks - Shadow Business” make sense.

> Slavery's not illegal, that's a fucking lie It's illegal, unless it's for conviction of a crime The main objective is to get you in your fucking prime And keep the prison full and not give you a fucking dime

https://genius.com/Jedi-mind-tricks-shadow-business-lyrics

For more information on this and the post-civil-war era in general, I highly recommend reading Black Reconstruction in America by W. E. B. Du Bois.

> How does society recoup losses from crime?

Profiteering does not equal Societal benefit.

Investing in turning these people into autonomous law abiding members of society would be much more beneficial than profits in the prison industry.

Wasting years of your life locked up is already disincentive enough. Exploitive forced/hard/hazardous labor isn’t necessary.

Same with being unable to afford common necessities, or being raped in prison.

These just make the experience for prisoners inhumane and miserable.

The incentive to avoid prison is to avoid prison. Prison is terrible, even a "nice prison" where you don't have to work. The incentive for our society is to avoid a situation where the prison complex is financially incentivized to keep people in prison: setting aside the huge moral problem with this, it drags useful workers out of society and does not recoup the costs of prison.

> It may also incentivize people to avoid going to prison. What is the incentive to avoid prison?

Pretty unlikely, see DOJ research[1]. severity of punishment, including the death penalty, does little to deter crime. It seems unlikely that the threat of forced labor would somehow deter something that the threat of years behind bars or death would not.

> How does society recoup losses from crime?

In civilized societies, we recoup losses from crime by leveraging incarceration of a criminal to apply methods proven to reduce recidivism. trying to recoup losses of a past crime at the expense of preventing a life of future crime isn't a winning strategy imo.

> Does the 13th amendment exist to disincentivize crime? I don't know the history behind the specific language with the exclusion for criminals.

It exists to free the enslaved population. the exception of criminals exists to throw the south a bone during reconstruction.

[1] https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf

Consider the possibility that harsher conditions/sentences do not deter crime.

https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-pu...

Looking at oneself is a good place to start. Does this incentivize you from avoiding prison?

> Imagine if we charged every criminal a fee for their jail time and legal apparatus. And compensation for all victims?

This already happens more or less. Now after serving some time, you have a big bill to pay off as well.

I have an issue with trying to make a profit off of a person who you decided to jail and who did not get to make upkeeping decisions.

If a person is paying for these services shouldn't they be a decision maker? The salaries of the guards, warden, the food, types of lighting/heat are all costs that the inmates should decide what level of funding they want to provide.

Ok so what happens if they say they don’t want to work like that? We keep them in prison without feeding them? Put them in isolated confinement? Some whipping perhaps?

Things can be necessary and worth having without being profitable. Children, for example, are huge money drains, and yet people have them.

A good prison system concentrates in rehabilitating and protecting. That is beneficial to society as a whole. It don’t have a problem on it costing money. I want it to produce better people, not money.

Very few US prisons are private, only 8% of prisoners in the US are in those facilities. Some states have recently ended the practice, so I would expect to see that number trend down in the future.

> prisoners are openly discriminated against in labor and housing, meaning your jail term is a meaningless wager by the prison system. they know there is a more than 2:1 chance you'll come right back, and for nothing more than trying to earn a living in a society thats shunned you.

You might be able to "pay your debt to society," in some abstract sense, but there are things you can do in this world that will render you unwelcome in my home, near my family, or on my payroll. Life is for keeps and the decisions you make cannot all be undone.

It's the people and organizations receiving that $106,000/yr that have the incentive. They have no disincentive to reduce recidivism, and every incentive to lobby for laws that increase incarceration.

The incentive might to another group while the state doesn't have as much power to control prison populations

The state as a whole doesn’t, but the private companies that “employ”/enslave these people in some states do.

California is a massive outlier for sure. Just to be sure, I checked for some statistics, and sure enough:

> Based on FY 2020 data, the average annual COIF for a Federal inmate in a Federal facility in FY 2020 was $39,158 ($120.59 per day). The average annual COIF for a Federal inmate in a Residential Reentry Center for FY 2020 was $35,663 ($97.44 per day).

Apparently, private prisons are paid by the government based on how much it costs to incarcerate, so that would seem to imply that at least anyone who could benefit from the profit of a private prison would have incentives to try to get as many incarcerations as possible.

That said, I only did a cursory search. It seems this gets pretty complex.

That would imply the state of California is being taken for a ride by private prison providers.

Yet the hallmark of government is that to most of its employees the cost to the state is an entirely immaterial concern. Even to the state it can often be a wash if part of it comes from say federal funding, or what you are doing can ensure you are reelected and still have a job next year. Not to mention the plain old corrupt people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Does anyone happen to have a full break down of what goes into producing that number ($106,000 / year) per inmate? "Security" is too big and vague.

I don't doubt the number but it's kind of mind boggling to me. I would have trouble spending 100k a year if living alone, even with a house that has a 2.5k mortgage plus property taxes, utilities, car, yada yada yada that leaves you with a lot of money to burn on pure entertainment. Long story short if you're single and spent an actual 100k / year you could live a life of luxury within reason.

Is "security" really that much for 1 inmate who is in a facility where there's maybe a 10-20 ratio of inmates to guards?

Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore in part makes the argument that the prisons basically form a jobs program, as small farms got kicked shitless in the 70-80s prisons offered jobs that you could justifiably put in the middle of nowhere and were paid for by the government (federal or state).

She specifically downplays the economics of slave labor in favor of the rural jobs argument (for both analytic and moral reasons)

Nevada receives more money for prisons than they do gambling revenue.

I agree, but there's another way to think about this: every prison is for profit.

Private companies are everywhere. There are jails where it's $25 to make a 15-minute phone call (extreme case but widespread problem). Commissary spending being mandatory because people aren't fed enough. Libraries are being replaced with tablets where you pay for e-books (and, until there was controversy around it, even public domain books). In-person visits being scaled-back or in some instances entirely replaced by video calls -- for a price. Just adding money to the account of an incarcerated person costs money.

I don't think this is why we do it. But it does financially ruin the families of these incarcerated people.

It’s not about lobbing, one for profit prison bribed multiple judges with $2.6 million dollars to send more people their way. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html

For profit prisons are simply corrosive to the justice system. Further, even state run prisons are handing out some very lucrative contracts etc.

> The CCSO fought tooth and nail against pot legalization in CA.

Police Benevolent Associations in my state spend millions of dollars every year lobbying the government to repeal marijuana legalization that voters enacted via popular public referendum.

It's been several years since legalization, and PBAs are still throwing millions of dollars at making marijuana illegal again, because according to PBAs, marijuana legalization is preventing police from "doing their jobs". The irony, of course, is that it's the job of police to enforce the laws as they are written, and yet law enforcement is spending millions of dollars each year to complain about the fact that they themselves have to actually follow the law. Police are really angry that they can no longer use the made up excuse of "I smell marijuana" as pretext for probable cause to illegally search and detain the people they interact with.

What makes it even more perverse is the fact that the current legislation prevents police from arresting and charging kids with drug crimes for petty possession or use of marijuana. A single drug-related arrest, charge or conviction will make students ineligible for federal student loans and education assistance, and can ruin a kid's chances of being able to go to college. Cops have been screaming from the rooftops about how unfair it is that they can't "do their jobs" and ruin kids' lives, and their ability to better their lives, for smoking a joint anymore. It's really gross.

At one point, a local PBA leader and chief of police tried to start a moral panic by claiming that unscrupulous drug dealers were hiding behind bleechers at little league games trying to sell elementary school students marijuana, all because police found a pot grinder that someone lost that had a Rick & Morty sticker on it. The police claimed that drug dealers were trying to get elementary school kids hooked on marijuana by selling it in containers with adult cartoon characters on it. Thankfully, even the most staunch supporters of the police called them out on their nonsense. A lot of Rick & Morty fans came out of the woodwork to remind them that it's not a show for kids, too, which was kind of funny.

Cops and their organizations are desperate to spook voters and their representatives into making marijuana illegal again.

>"Only 8% of US prisons are privatized"

"Only" - this is some fucked up evaluation. Proud for not yet being an outright slave owner?

And that, right there, is the argument of the standard sociopathic capitalist.

Just because there is a benefit, does not mean that there is not also a greater harm that more than offsets the benefit on a societal scale.

Privatizing the profits from the benefits while socializing the harms, and justifying any harm based on a profitable benefit, is far too often the business model - take the money while poisoning the well.

This is neither sustainable, nor a good argument for something to exist.

EDIT: insert missing "not also"

There is benefit to firms that hire prison labor, it isn't clear that it results in any benefit to consumers. Well connected firms able to hire prison labor may just keep all the surplus.

Using the same logic, we could just as easily imprison the global south. While logical consistency is satisfying in theory, in practice it's a poor optimization strategy.

Yes, and the only reason we should have import duties is because of labor conditions and pay for foreign workers. If we don't we're not competing on PPP or efficiency, we're competing based on the willingness to abuse.

yes

Yes, that logic would lead to that. Many people are misled to believe that limiting competition produces net benefits for society.

No, because of comparative advantage. How does that work in the context of prisoners doing the same work anyways, though?

Not if this is more about fair labor rights than fair business competition within the US. Domestically we can enforce minimum wage, foreignly we cannot. Import duties won't necessarily impact the wages of foreign laborers...

Economists call this border adjustment. The idea is that when goods are imported from a country with lower taxes (or lower wages or lax environmental protections), they are taxed at whatever rate is necessary to bring their price in line with domestic equivalents. Likewise when goods are exported, whatever tax has been paid is refunded to bring their price down. Every nation in the EU plus China, Canada, and Mexico all do this. The US is actually quite unusual for not doing this.

Yes!

Wait a minute I thought that one was illegal too!

$150k is the average and relatively few people in prison are mentally ill murderers. So something doesn’t seem to add up.

So let me make sure we are clear on your position on this — you think 150k per prisoner sounds like a reasonable number? To me that number seems to be about a magnitude of order wrong. I bet you could do some back of the napkin math, multiply that number by 5, and it would still be way under that number.

To me, when I see 150k, I don’t see a cost — I see a facade.

Is there any data on how much these prisons are making from such labor?

Also, this term "for profit" is thrown around a lot, suggesting there are perverse incentives. That seems true, but I imagine government-run prisons are prone to corruption as well.

If we want such private prisons to improve is it possible to pass legislation for what the minimum standards should be and regulations for ensuring they are met?

Let me guess, middle class upbringing with little to no contact with the living conditions of the poors?

Slavery is a broader term and concept than just referring the civil war era slaves in America

> Criminals have shown their behavior to be counter productive to the laws of our society.

Or were wrongly convicted. Or were convicted of an unjust law. Or any number of other things.

"Broke a law" doesn't justify making someone a slave. Even the "undesirables" are human.

In the USA we have plenty of (IMO) unjust laws meant to put people into the system.

If Democrats really supported bodily autonomy, they would push to make all drugs legal.

Can you point out which poster said this?

The problem is the conflict of interest that it creates.

> Locking people in a cage for years and controlling every detail of their life: okay

Not "okay". Far from okay. Potentially justified on the theory that imprisoning people may be necessary to protect society and deter offenders. (Although many other countries obtain better results with lower/fewer prison sentences and better conditions.)

Forcing people to dig holes, on the other hand? Not necessary. And yes, it is slavery.

The prison part is the slavery, the digging the whole is the labor. As you have pointed out, there's an odd pearl clutching among a lot of people on the matter. I think those who argue of the negative incentives it creates are right, but too many appeals to emotion over the term slavery. The reason the 13th amendment included the crime provision is so that we can continue to imprison people, any work they do or don't do is secondary to the loss of rights.

Ah, you know - phone autocorrect

of course it does. The prison companies would charge more if they didn't have the prison labor.

Other countries also have universal healthcare, free tertiary education and all sorts of things you would expect from a developed country.

I've come to the conclusion that the US is just a rich country with a huge military industrial complex that masquerades as a developed country while doing all the things it denigrates poorer countries for.

So while the USA can definitely afford to be a developed country I wouldn't hold your breath.

> Imprisoning people should be expensive so that it is used judiciously as a punishment.

It shouldn't be used as a punishment at all. It makes sense only in cases where a convicted criminal represents a serious threat to other members of society which can only be mitigated through isolation—in which case the isolation should continue until there is no longer a threat. In all other situations we should be able to come up with more immediate and effective forms of punishment; ideally ones with an element of restitution for the victims.

(Also: If there are no victims seeking restitution then there shouldn't be a conviction in the first place, much less punishment.)

"Slave labor" is not being used as hyperbole in this context. It is the conventional definition. A job that complies with the 13th amendment without exception is not slavery.

People often think that controlling for the percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs that are women, which would reduce the gender pay gap one calculates, is not reasonable, because perhaps "Women are much less likely to be Fortune 500 CEOs" is an actual part of the gender pay gap. You are suggesting controlling for the percentage of slaves that are women. It seems like we ought to control for both slave status and Fortune 500 CEO status or for neither.

I realize that is how one should do a comparison. But many comparisons do not. I am wondering if they include this type of labor. Maybe it wouldn't matter because the prison population is still small compared to the entire labor force. But for some age/race sub-groups it is actually a decent-sized chunk.

> If that’s slavery, then so be it

Be better.

But everything in prison is being done to you against your will. That's kind of the whole point. I don't see why being required to do a moderate amount of work under humane working conditions is so much worse than being required to sit there in a cell at other hours with no ability to leave.

(If the working conditions are not humane, then that's a different story).

They also do usually receive pay, just less than minimum wage. So put a different way - I don't see why the minimum wage within a prison should necessarily be the same as the minimum wage outside of prison.

In this case, auditor certification of the supply chain.

The phrase "you can't prove a negative" is really short-hand for "you can't prove a negative existential claim within an effectively infinite scope", ie. I can't prove that Bigfoot doesn't exist anywhere in the universe simply because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But I can easily prove that Bigfoot does not exist within my coffee mug, or that a particular box I have which contains 5 pennies contains no silver dollars, or that the list of suppliers with whom I directly do business does not include "Missouri Correctional Services LLC" (and I think the spirit of GP's suggestion is boycotting companies that directly do business with prison labour, not people who transitively do business with it at a 25 company remove, or something)

wow that I did not know - what other products are typically made with prison labour?

Sure, but we need someone that both profit from increased incarceration and have the power to actually increase it, to make the theory that prisons are kept full for profit to be credible.

I attempted to show that the government, who clearly can fill up prisons, lose money from it, so they don't have the incentive.

Your mother's prison employer would benefit from more prisoners, but hardly has enough political power to make it happen.

I know prison warden unions always lobby for more prisoners, and they do have some political power, but I can't believe it's typically decisive.

So who else could it be?

My understanding is different: We are all slave to system, so why should I pay for the criminals? Let say there is 2m inmates, that means that if we take that it takes $10000 a year that is 20 bn. So we still pay at least 10bn to keep them alive and well, and probably price is much higher.

So, there is no slavery they just paying for what they eat and spend in terms of clothing, heating, food ...

And by this I am not even calculating in the damage they have done by committing the crime in the first place.

> Who gets to measure the harm?

Courts do by giving different sentences based on sentencing guidelines, the nature of the crime, and the individual circumstances.

In an indirect way, yes. States have Victims Compensation Funds, which help defray the losses incurred by victims [1]. No, the profits from criminals' indenture do not go directly there, but they do defray the cost of holding prisoners.

[1] https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/4416

How many of those 400k are solely in for possession? i.e no priors, no anything, just possession

Free “room and board” is a form of compensation.

RA’s (Resident Advisors) at American universities, students whose job is to handle dormitory issues, are compensated via free “room and board.”

The caveat is that I've never actually spent time in a prison, my understanding of the setup is that the base level experience is that you stay in your cell / rec room, and can go outside to the yard like an hour a day. Beyond that, you can volunteer (or get paid some small amount) to help out in various ways, like working laundry, barber shop, kitchen, library, etc. I don't think any of these pays minimum wage. Adding another thing that prisoners can opt into doesn't seem crazy or exploitive, if it is truly just another choice that they can make.

Not if you're a police officer working under the law.

The GP is trying to say that the whole notion of incarceration is barbaric, and that future generations will look back on it just like we look at, say, stokades.

Imprisoning people is kidnapping and caging them.

The implication is that, regardless of the words you use to describe it, law enforcement capturing individuals and incarcerating them strongly resembles kidnapping. Personally, having had a close friend who was driving my car at the time disappear without any communications for days due to this process, I'm not entirely against this categorization.

Perhaps it's slavery, perhaps it's not. I think you're jumping the gun in calling it a done, unambiguous fact.

I think I'm a sensible person, and I'm willing to entertain the idea that it might be slavery. But if I read this article, I don't find it sufficient in proving its claim. It supposes that this might be slavery, it supports its argument with claims made by prisoners. When I think back about prior information I had about this topic, I also wasn't entirely convinced that this is indeed, unquestionably slavery. In fact, I can see a reasonable world in which this might not be slavery. Perhaps a world in which there are some occasions where a judge would rule that this is slavery, but not systematic actual slavery.

You might think that I'm unreasonable in being skeptic and wanting a stronger proof before accepting this claim. But this is an extraordinary claim, and it would require extraordinary proofs. Just reading an article presenting one side of the story and concluding "it's slavery" doesn't cut it to me. It's intellectually dishonest. It sounds good as a party line, as a slogan, but it's not a cold headed conclusion, in my book.

* * *

And I think that denying this is problematic. Because in denying that it's not clear cut, we jump to conclusions, and we make it a cardinal sin to say anything else than the party line. And this means we can't think this through and examine the situation for what it is. We can't talk about it intellectually like you'd want of an HN discussion. We can only talk about it in flames, screams and battles. And what's the point of that.

Yeah, I await the “At LeAsT wE cAn TaLk AbOuT iT” crowd to say how we are still better than China, because talking ensures some restitution at some point? How many decades have we had these camps?

Freedom of speech is a privilege without teeth.

Well at least they aren't disproportionately ethnic minorities. /s

That doesn't include the 1-3 million Uyghurs detained, I believe.

I think using the minority argument here actually doesn’t fill the point you think it does in this specific context, explicitly because America has historically enslaved and criminalized ethnic minorities. Practices like redlining, which is the intentional withholding of economic benefits from certain geographic populations where minorities are located, as well as historically destroying minority communities through lynch mobs as well as eminent domain to build highways, have directly made minority communities harder to avoid poverty. Additionally, America has a problem with not doling out punishments equally- minorities are put into prison earlier, for longer, for lesser crimes.

Do you think there are any people who profit from US prison labor and comment on hacker news?

Your correction to the GP comment is incorrect. This is an article about slave labor and submitting it under titles that suggest otherwise is misleading.

GP is saying that calling the prisoners "workers" is incorrect, and that it is more accurate to refer to them as "slaves". Honestly, I'd tend to agree. There's even a little exception in the 13th Amendment specifically for this:

"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"

They're slaves.

The GP's point is that calling slaves forced to work in a prison "workers" is a disgusting euphemism.

No, the disgusting euphemism is still live on the original site and was allowed to stay up on HN. The submission correcting the disgusting euphemism was flagged off the front page before this submission that we're on with was submitted.

No, it's not. The Supreme Court settled that argument over a hundred years ago, in Bailey v. Alabama:

> The plain intention 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.

It may help to interpret the wording of the amendment like this:

"Here is a list of two things which shall not exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction: Number one is slavery, number two is involuntary servitude (except as punishment for a duly convicted crime)."

And that's how SCOTUS appears to interpret it, which means that's de facto what it says.

the original title was misleading. It implied they are not slaves.

Not if the judicial system is separate.

I would say the problem here is stupid laws putting people in jail for being in possession of drugs for personal consumption. I think it's a separate concern.

Presumably it would go towards defraying some of the costs of incarceration, which society pays for.

Yes