All the free market lovers never mention how this is literally against the free market.
I think all prisoners who voluntarily choose to work should be paid a market wage for their labor. I also think some of that wage should be used as compensation to the victims of their crimes.
> Nearly every weekday morning for much of last year, Mr. Forseth would board a van at the minimum-security prison outside Madison, Wis., and ride to Stoughton Trailers, where he and more than a dozen other inmates earned $14 an hour wiring taillights and building sidewalls for the company’s line of semitrailers.
> After he was released, Mr. Forseth kept right on working at Stoughton. But instead of riding in the prison van, he drives to work in the 2015 Ford Fusion he bought with the money he saved while incarcerated.
> Meghen Yeadon, a recruiter for Stoughton, found part of the solution: a Wisconsin Department of Corrections work-release program for minimum-security inmates.
> Work-release programs have often been criticized for exploiting inmates by forcing them to work grueling jobs for pay that is often well below minimum wage. But the Wisconsin program is voluntary, and inmates are paid market wages. State officials say the program gives inmates a chance to build up some savings, learn vocational skills and prepare for life after prison.
Secret Police records, generally result in a system where people just "disappear". So while there are good intentions to sealing police records, the result of those good intentions would likely result in extreme abuse of power
I think the better course of action would be a path to have convictions expunged, and once expunged allowing for civil defamation against any entity or person that reports the individual was convicted once the record was expunged.
The time it takes to expunge a record should be determined by the courts with a max time set in statute
The Labor in this context is directly derived from government criminal codes, thus not disconnecting it from anything resembling a free market
I think true free marketers are about fair competition, and few would argue that legislation is necessary.
Allowing one company to benefit by illegal behaviour distorts the market and thus goes against the principles of free markets.
Exactly. Without legislation, the market is for sale.
> Allowing one company to benefit by illegal behaviour distorts the market and thus goes against the principles of free markets.
You've noticed the tautology at the heart of the ideology.
Fair competition is the ideal state for a market to be in, but a free market is about unrestricted competition and that can easily turn into monopolies or cabals.
Fair market value is a reference to what the market will bear, not what is or is not fair.