Hacker News Reader

Comment by LambdaComplex | Hacker News Reader

> Them being firefighters in California wildfires comes to mind too

Those are the ones that aren't allowed to work as firefighters once they're out of prison due to their criminal records, right?

View on HN

Correct. It's not rehabilitation or job training, it's legal slave labor to do one of the most dangerous jobs we have, as explicitly allowed for by the 13th Amendment of the Constitution.

The United States still has legal slavery, just with extra steps.

> just with extra steps

I thought the whole thing here was that for inmates, there weren't any extra steps?

I'll confess to not knowing much about this though (I'm not American)

The extra steps are the ones between them being a free person and an inmate.

Like making loitering a crime and then using police and prosecutor discretion to selectively enforce said crime only against poor minorities.

And like magic! You can re-enslave the people who were 'freed'.

Except no one is forcing them, they choose to do it because it gives them purpose.

Yes, I've heard that these positions are highly sought after and gives the _volunteers_ a sense of purpose, but it gives some people living comfortably outside of prison icky feelings about consent. I have no doubt prisoners would have some choice words for people in this comment section who would choose to take the option away from them.

I highly doubt they "volunteer" for a sense of purpose. It's almost certainly paid labor (albeit very cheap compared to even minimum wage), but probably relatively well-paid for a prison job and offering opportunities to obtain outside food and contraband.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...

I didn’t know that part. That’s pretty dumb. But in general I would like the idea if they could get that work after.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com