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Comment by rhino369 | Hacker News Reader

>Forced labor is legal in the US in one case. Where’s the outrage?

That's like saying locking people in camps is legal in the US. Technical not a lie, but a bit misleading.

Forced labor as a proportionate punishment for a crime you were found guilty of by a fair trial is not a problem in my book. We can talk about safety conditions, perverse incentives, whether the trials were fair or the punishments were just, etc. But the fact that we make a murder work 8 hours a day isn't per se some human rights abuse, in my opinion.

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> Forced labor as a proportionate punishment for a crime you were found guilty of by a fair trial is not a problem in my book.

97% of federal and 94% of state convictions are not convicted through a trial. They are convicted through plea deals. Plea deals function as the shadow justice system of the U.S. where prosecutors have overwhelming coercive advantages to shape the crime and punishment. They play judge and executioner.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/prisons-are-packed-bec...

Noone has to make a plea deal… not sure what you are on about

> Noone has to make a plea deal

Yes, that’s right, most accused do not “make a plea deal”. The prosecution offers the deal to avoid a labor intensive trial.

Also, prosecution is allowed to deceive (lie) to trick the accused to accept plea deals. There is no evidence burden once the accused pleas guilty. For example, the prosecutor can legally claim they have a mountain of evidence, and once the accused pleas, there’s no requirement for the “evidence” to be provided. https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

Yea, they can refuse the offer. For an accused that cannot afford bail, they may have 2 options: take the plea deal and start serving the sentence right away, or refuse the deal and be incarcerated for an undetermined amount of time awaiting trial.

Either case, many accused faces incarceration whether they accept the deal or not.

> >Forced labor is legal in the US in one case. Where’s the outrage?

> That's like saying locking people in camps is legal in the US. Technical not a lie, but a bit misleading.

Actually labour as a punishment is called labour camps, it is generally frowned upon in the civilized world.

> Forced labor as a proportionate punishment for a crime you were found guilty of by a fair trial is not a problem in my book.

But the punishment is x years in prison not x years of forced labour.

The US certainly isn't the only civilized country to use penal labor. Regardless, I still wouldn't have a problem with it (done correctly).

The average person is forced to work in one way or the other. Not sure why committing a crime is a get out of work (and into jail) card.

Err... because it incentivises arresting and jailing vulnerable people in order to provide cheap labor. (done correctly) is doing a lot of work.

Which other 'civilized' country?

>But the fact that we make a murder work 8 hours a day isn't per se some human rights abuse, in my opinion.

Eh, they don't do this with the actually dangerous criminals. Too much of a risk. Slavery usually used for nonviolent crims, think drug possession charges. Much easier captive population.

> Forced labor as a proportionate punishment for a crime you were found guilty of by a fair trial is not a problem in my book

Let’s see all of the things wrong packed in that statement:

1. Most people in jail aren’t “found guilty” of a crime by a trial at all. Most are pressured by both the DAs and the state funded Public defender to accept a plea deal. 95% take a plea deal.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/11/04/the-truth-abou...

2. Trials are rarely “fair”. All of the statistics show that minorities get harsher sentences for the same arrest.

https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/racial-d...

3. The state has unlimited resources. They rarely give enough funding to the public defenders office

https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/if-you-care-ab...

The US, in addition to forced labor in prisons, has also had forced camps in our recent past.

We have moved people to concentration camps (excuse me, "internment camps") just because of their ethnicity within the past 80 years...

So yeah, we do have slave labor and we have locked people into camps.

It's not being used as a proportionate punishment. Many incarcerated people were never even proven to have committed a crime, and in some cases never even faced trial. There's also no small number of people who were imprisoned for a crime someone else committed thanks to misbehavior on the part of prosecutors, police, or dishonest "witnesses". Sometimes those people even get executed.

The murderer working 8 hours a day in a prison is an outlier. A huge percentage of the prison population are normal people like you or me put in a bad environment being abused inhumanely because people have decided that they deserve it for some reason.

And the prisoners can refuse to work, what are they going to do, throw them in prison prison?

Yes, refusal to work leads to more punishments that border on human rights violations.

> they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation, or the inability to pay for basic life necessities like bath soap.

Solitary confinement is already a human rights violation. It isn't close to the line, it's well over it.

Yes, the American system is extremely good at turning short sentences into long ones for petty things. That’s very profitable for the prison industry.

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