Slavery work and for profit prisons may incentivise to send as many people as possible to prison. It seems a bad incentive if you are looking for a fair justice system.
https://innocenceproject.org/13th-amendment-slavery-prison-l... documents that it still happens in places like Louisiana.
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...
I get that Lousiana is different they use Civil Law and descend from France/Spain, not England.
But, no prison gangs! I figured that was just a universal thing.
They have them in France and Spain … why not Louisiana?
Because Louisiana does things different.
> 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
Cause free labor's the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshittin? Then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they givin' drug offenders time in double digits
- Killer Mike, Reagan
A larger issue is the prison industrial complex, not the involuntary servitude within it
Yeah, no.
Such as your opinion.
I don't think slavery would have been abolished without the industrial revolution.
That is most certainly not the usual interpretation of free labor.
The overwhelming majority of slaves in the US were field hands in plantations growing cash crops. How exactly did rudimentary agricultural mechanization around the time of the American Civil War in any way precipitate abolition?
The lyric is alluding to the fact that the country's foundation was built on 100s of years of free labor.
The practice of exporting worthless printed paper in exchange for valuable labor intensive goods is also what that lyric is pointing to.
American slavery, a model that has evolved and now encompasses much of the globe.
Keeping a large % of the world and "undesirable" domestic population poor, at gun point if necessary, is in America's national economic interest.
You're right, it's not profitable for the government (although it probably is profitable for some private prisons who also receive money from the government).
"The U.S. spends $81 billion a year on mass incarceration, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and that figure might be an underestimate."[1]
1: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/the-u-s-spends-billions...
Dr. Spencer Reid : Something's bothering you. I can always tell when you're bothered because you whisper lyrics to yourself. Hip-hop specifically. I thought it was odd at first, but then I remembered your dissertation was on the fluidity of metaphor. You seem to have a particular fondness for Nas.
Alex Blake : Wow. How did you know?
Dr. Spencer Reid : Morgan made me listen to him when we started working together. He said anybody that can't quote Illmatic is ignorant. So, do you want to talk about it?
> 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.
California has high labor costs, and incarceration is labor intensive.
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?
She specifically downplays the economics of slave labor in favor of the rural jobs argument (for both analytic and moral reasons)
Correctional workers unions do far more local and federal lobbying than any private prison company. The CCSO fought tooth and nail against pot legalization in CA. There are no private prisons in CA.
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.
Sure... but the alternatives are worse, shifting the financial burden to the innocent public or simply allowing lawlessness. Committing crimes isn't supposed to have a free and easy path back to society.
The innocent public is already paying for it. They're just paying for profits, too...
So because they are footing part of the bill they might as well just foot the whole thing? non sequitur much?
If anything we should be charging prisoners the full cost of their incarceration but in that case even if we paid them minimum wage it wouldn't cover their debt, not by a long shot. At least then people wouldn't falsely equate modern prison systems with slavery, but the imprisoned would be much worse off.
For that matter we should get rid of public police and fire departments. If someone wants that service they can pay for it themselves.
/s
What did I say that at all disagreed with prisons being a public service? No shit.
They are paying for the whole thing! Do you think private prisons raise money for donations to pay for prisoners to subsidize the public out of the good of their heart?
Are you assuming that prisoners deserve to be slaves and that their labor should be free?
Yes some of the convicts are a monsters so they would keep being in prisons but the rest will not have to turn into hardened career criminals with fucked up mind and looking for a revenge.
Absolutely for plenty of them they deserve nothing less. Society shouldn't have to live with killers and rapists, put them in the ground.
"making the world worse for the rest of us" - I believe that the "rest of you" are making the world worse for the rest of us by turning people who could be normal into hardened incorrigibles looking out for a revenge.
I am not for not prosecuting criminals. I am for not overdoing it and and for giving a fair chance for people who had made a mistake but are perfectly capable of leading normal lives. I am not advocating letting serial killer walk free and incognito.
Ruining the financial lives of their families and of their children isn't the path I favor, personally. We want this justice system we can pay for it.
Thinking only about the economic cost is such a stupid simplification of the issue. Having a broken but cheap prison system will have massive societary costs. Much better to spend some taxpayer money to actually have some criminals return healthily to society and start contributing again.
By the way there are plenty of real financial burdens on the innocent public, if you know where to look. Maybe we should stop subsidizing the rich with the "innocent public" money?
Even publicly owned prisons have to contract out and outsource a lot of the services they need. Private companies supply food, maintenance, cleaning, IT, supplies, construction, architecture and so on.
Private companies also benefit from the cheap to free forced labor they get from government-owned prisons, as well.
There are layers to the grift that lines the pockets of private interests in the prison industry, and those layers certainly don't end at whether a prison is privately owned or not.
For profit prisons are simply corrosive to the justice system. Further, even state run prisons are handing out some very lucrative contracts etc.
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" - this is some fucked up evaluation. Proud for not yet being an outright slave owner?
it is also worth noting the downfall of many governments and civilizations has in part or in whole been fueled by mass oppression, incarceration, and slavery. 246 years has been a pretty good run, but its time to reform the 13th amendment to the fullest.
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.
After all, Jesus hung out with prostitutes and appointed his disciple Paul, a murder, as a leader in his church. If Jesus could accept a reformed murderer, who am I to judge.
Ultimately people go to prison for different reasons, and so generalising as "ex felon" can cloud the issue.
If you see prisons as being full of child molesters, murderers and rapists, then that naturally leads to some conclusions.
If you see prisons as overflowing with the results of the "war on drugs" then there are possibly different conclusions. Are these people criminals" or POWs?
Ultimately every case is different and has its own merits. A teenager can be convicted of no more than possesing some weed. Or shooting up a school. Clearly there could be easier moral paths to reintegration for one than the other.
Even "sex crimes" happen on a scale. 2 consenting 17 year olds, having sex in an inappropriate place, or sexting each other nudes, leads to the same "status" as afore-mentioned rapists. (obviously sentence is different but they'll forever be on a sex offence registry.)
So talking in sweeping terms about inmate populations and reforms, can be counter productive. It may be more helpful to discuss narrower groups, and the nature of the crimes that got them there.
And yes there will be some price to pay.
And as I mentioned in a previous post, eliminating background checks backfires anyway, because people simply stereotype more when you take away their ability to look at specifics.
If you care about reintegrating criminals, then be the change you want to see in the world, but don’t try to tell me there’s anything wrong with someone who chooses differently.
By the way, this is one reason eliminating background checks backfires. If people can’t look up your specific offense they assume the worst. Further, the evidence is that eliminating background checks results in a drop in employment for black men. If people can’t check whether a candidate is an offender, then they resort to broader statistics and patterns for their decision making, and the statistics being what they are, this mostly just hurts black men who have never committed a crime.
See, for example: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/705880#d3...
There's a lot of people in prison for good because of something they did (or that happened near them; see LWOP) when they were adolescents. Plenty of people who are entirely different at forty or sixty years old from who they were at twenty, but who won't ever be out on parole because of the nature of their conviction.
Would /you/ want to be judged for anything based on who you were as a twenty year old, or who you are today?
As for my own actions, I've never beat anyone's head in with a hammer or raped a defenseless woman in an alley or abused a child, and yet I think every day about the harms I have inflicted on others over the course of my life. I'm not sure I totally understand what people even mean by "starting over." It's not something I would expect for myself and if I ever do commit any of the aforementioned crimes (God help me) I hope I have the courage to put a bullet in my own throat before I'm ever tempted to ask for a "second chance."
That's just one example of many biases inherent to the current system, and I wouldn't focus on it too much.
One major flaw in our current system is that only the government decides who gets convicted and as the old adage goes, if the king controls criminal punishment, the kings friends get away with murder. Think about the current national conversation on excessive police brutality.
That no one can imagine some one prosecuting a thief pro bono should be a clue
The incentives they actually follow (and there are plenty of them!) are much simpler: municipal politics (not wanting to be seen as "weak on crime") and power dynamics (wanting to come down with the "full force of the law" at every opportunity, as a disincentive to future criminals.) Plus, plenty are just plain cruel.
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.
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.)
>>> Unless you are paying per prosecution, it's not.
You are correct.
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
A prosecutor is paid a salary. They want to keep (or improve) that salary. Until recently, it was presumed that prosecutors would prosecute, to justify their job and perhaps aspire to higher office. It seems that relationship is far more tenuous than expected because the tone is set at the top (Boudin in SF, Bragg in NYC). But the relationship still exists, as you pointed out.
The threat of layoffs is far less significant than the threat of
The uncomfortable truth is that a portion of the union dues for those employed within the criminal justice system will go towards lobbying for harsher sentencing. Eliminating corporate profiteering will not eliminate lobbying for the status quo.
(This was the infamous case of GE buying a turbine business).
If the Judiciary doesn't receive any benefit from it, then they're not likely to pursue imprisonment.
So if they do, maybe indirectly, systematically etc. then it can be an issue.
That said - I have no problem otherwise with prisoners doing work - at minimum to pay off their own upkeep, and the social costs they have incurred. Judges, juries, police etc. are not 'free'.
Imagine if we charged every criminal a fee for their jail time and legal apparatus. And compensation for all victims?
Obviously it's really hard to work out in a pragmatic way, but I wonder if giving the guys a job on the 'cleanup crew'- that they can choose to keep once they leave jail as a means of getting back on their feet ... might be positive.
This already happens more or less. Now after serving some time, you have a big bill to pay off as well.
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.
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.
Does the 13th amendment exist to disincentivize crime? I don't know the history behind the specific language with the exclusion for criminals.
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.
I agree that reducing recidivism is important, likely the product of a broken US juvenile system and weakened education system.
Same with being unable to afford common necessities, or being raped in prison.
These just make the experience for prisoners inhumane and miserable.
The US system also offers capital punishment which is another extreme and final judgement. Possibly, more 'natural' than the bureaucratic system. The country I live in does not use such a punishment system.
Has anyone conducted studies to see if these prison incentives are at work? I would suspect comparing national systems is a pretty common practice in public policy academia. I've definitely seen fairly sensational articles on privatization of US prisons leading to corruption in the justice system.
I'm not sure if hackernews can have these types of discussions without massive downvoting from one side or the other.
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.
https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-pu...