[1] To clarify: there should be an element of punishment (in the form of forgone rights), but there's obviously more to it.
Locking a murderer in a jail cell is moral, I also see no issue requiring them to work.
Where I do see a massive issue is when incarceration is used by private corporations to enrich themselves rather than enriching the public or individuals whose harm is what caused the incarceration in the first place.
I don't in principle oppose private prisons, though I am wary of them in practice. I think there could exist a model where private prisons would be rewarded based on recitivism, but unfortunately such a system would be hard to create for a variety of practical considerations.
It takes away a job that someone who is not a criminal could be doing.
No matter how harsh is the punishment there appears to always be crime. What seems to work is rehabilitation as well as inevitability of capture.
So even if it sounds unjust to try to help offenders (even murderers) If we want them to not offend and not murder _more_ we need norway style prisons rather than US ones.
Regardless of what’s effective and what is just though, having prison companies benefit from forced labor is just all ways of crazy regarding incentives and screws the market soo much, normal people now need to compete against slaves, the state / companies now have incentives to there to be _more_ prisoners which would lead to actually _more_ crime in and off itself.
And to top it off, you have big entities that can lobby (bribe) the government to change laws to the detriment of society at large. It just sooo messed up.
And its not some crazy tinfoil hat thing - we can see that “experiment” play out before our eyes - the US penal system is so proven to be so ineffective its silly.
Something like that.
The prisoners wouldn’t mind working for more pay, but most of them do like it considering the options.
Another part is just accounting - if the federal government paid its employees tax free (no fed income tax) it would work out the same (salaries would drop) but the accounting would be different and people would complain.
> you can certainly incentivize it without resorting to torture.
How?
And perhaps you cannot pay them in cash, but why not invest the money for the duration of their incarceration, or pay a stipend to some dependent on the outside, like a wife/child? A $10k/year rate of savings is above what many people achieve outside, and a massive boost to get one's life in order once they get out.
Children are motivated by love, respect and authority. Convicts are less likely to respond to those.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12122-016-9229-0
https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/19/2/391/3066...
Like many things, there's substantial evidence on both sides of the argument. The devil is usually in the details, and this is a case where success or failure seems to be greatly affected by the quality of the programs themselves and the people who administer them.
I would take issue with the usage of the words "the point". There can in fact be multiple ends or goals of incarceration. Whether you think retributive justice or rehabilitation should be primary or secondary would be up for debate, but I primarily mean to say that you don't necessarily have to pick one or the other in the grand scheme of things (I'd say you'd also have a sliding scale of which is more important).
That way they have enough money for a deposit to rent a place to live and can cover their expenses for some time until they find a job.
If you force them to work, and don't give them money, then they have no way to start a normal life after prison, will depend on money from the government in the best case, and get back to crime in the worst case.
We need to treat prisoners well. Not just because it's the morally right thing to do, but also because it's the best thing we can do if we want a society with low crime rates, where you can walk through the city at night without being scared that an ex-convict mugs you because they don't have any other options.
Punishment
Deterrence
Rehabilitation
Protecting the general public
You can debate the relative merits of each, but rehabilitation is not the only possible goal. If you lock up a repeat violent offender for X years without rehabilitation, the other factors are still relevant.