What would you rather have the prisoners doing besides working? This actually gives them some sort of skillset that can be used when they get out.
But the courts doing the sentencing and the prison owners are typically completely separate entities.
It's not just one "justice system" run by one group of people.
It may be frowned upon; but, it's legal. Even in 1865, prison labor was scene as "acceptable" slavery. It's the exemption in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Or maybe we can acknowledge "slavery" is a loaded term designed to cause reactionary thinking.
If you kill 20 people with a car into a parade, you have no chance at rehabilitation. Punishment is perfectly acceptable - especially when it is hardly brutal, we aren’t even sending the perp to an oil rig.
The sooner we stop playing games about prisons being rehab facilities, the better. I have yet to hear a successful prison rehab story, and the statistics show that doesn’t work. When punishment is the focus - look at the 80s crime wave. It worked.
I think it’s because I know that there is no way, whatsoever, to build a society without prisons, because there will always be crime.
2) What is or isn't de facto slavery is worth discussing but we should certainly move towards removing de jure slavery.
3) I don't know the intention of framers of the constitution in choosing the word slavery, but it is the word they chose. So unless you mean "reactionary" very very literally, using it to describe advocates for a progressive cause interpreting a word well within its historically normative meaning is at best slick rhetorical judo. At worst an indication of bad faith.
2) Isn’t being forced to literally be in a cage for years de jure slavery by itself?
I think there is a difference between keeping people confined against their will and coercing them to labor for your own economic benefit. Neither thing should be permitted, but I'm not trying to solve all problems overnight. We were talking about the laboring thing, let's stick to that.
I see elsewhere that you have complete confidence in your view about this, with no room for doubt or curiosity. If you can't entertain the possibility of being anything but an adversary, then I can't justify spending more time or effort on this subject with you.
2- You are purposefully conflating imprisonment with slavery.
It’s hard to put into words how destructive your line of reasoning is, and the confidence with which you express it frightens me that others might even share it with you.
I would argue that the private prison system is in fact designed to do exactly this, namely to put people in prison and keep them there for profit.
You could argue that my claim that their intent is nefarious is speculation and I’ll grant you that, because I am unfamiliar with any private prison owners or the people who came up with the idea, but by that token you’d have to grant your opinion about the intent behind private prisons is also purely speculative, and I would add more damaging than my speculation.
> The charges outlined in the information[23] described actions between 2000 and 2007 by both judges to assist in the construction and population of private juvenile facilities operated by the two Pennsylvania Child Care companies, acting in an official capacity in favor of the private facilities over the facility operated by Luzerne County.
Your attempt at logic somehow leads you to tell the victims over a 7 year period ~“look, you won, now stop bringing attention to this issue, the system is designed to do something else, who cares that it is capable of being exploited in this manner”.
If everyone had your perspective those prisons would still be doing this, but thankfully in that 7 year period of “the system working as designed” activists speculated that something nefarious was happening and brought attention to how it actually works.
> It shows the opposite.
This is incredibly naive. When has one entity getting caught ever been a legitimate excuse for everyone else similarly situated to be free from scrutiny?
What is “the opposite” in this context anyway? Do you believe private prisons exist to empty themselves and “give cash to kids”? How does a private prison sustain itself with a population of 0?
With imprecise communication there is always the danger of misunderstanding, and that can lead to devastating consequences.
You say I misunderstood your comment, that’s fair, but I have read and reread it many times and am unable to interpret it elsewise.
Please elaborate.
It will be best for both of us.
I will know what you truly meant, and perhaps feel better about your position, and you will be assured that your true intent is clear and fully received by your audience.
Things I didn't say:
- any value judgment about private prisons - no statement about shutting up or stop bringing up the crimes - didn't justify or attempt to justify excluding oversight of government - anything about the business model of private prisons
I think your analogy is flawed.
For it to apply there would have to have been an institution that can only exist in the presence of mass murder similarly as private prisons only exist in the presence of incarceration.
A better analogy would be Civil Asset Forfeiture. A perfectly legal act by police, but also clearly heinous. The fact that these "forfeitures" are written into the police budgets means "the system" is designed to require it, but still stops short of "advancing" the infractions where that procedure is then abused.
For instance, if I get pulled over for a broken tail light, and happen to have $10k in cash on me and the police seize the money, it would be ridiculous to then say that "tail light awareness is designed to advance civil asset forfeiture".
> Things I didn't say:
> - any value judgment about private prisons
I can accept that, but you were objecting to a example provided in a comment that was critical of private prisons. It suggests you are in support of them.
> - no statement about shutting up or stop bringing up the crimes
> - didn't justify or attempt to justify excluding oversight of government
I certainly read your comment's dismissive "It shows the opposite." to be a pithy way of trying to stop the conversation about private prisons and specifically kids for cash.
It also suggests that you think my bringing it up is superfluous anyway, and everything is as it should be, so why then would there be any need for oversight? Conversely, if you support oversight then you must admit there is a flaw in the system capable of being exploited.
If I write a strongly typed function (the system) then it would be unnecessary for me to write another function that checks the types of the inputs before running the previous function (oversight) because the types are already a part of "the system".
> - anything about the business model of private prisons
Okay, but you did say: "It doesn't reinforce the idea that the system is designed to ship people into private prisons. It shows the opposite." By these bullet points you seem to be implying that private prisons are somehow "other than" in regards to "the system". What is your definition of the system?
Because kids for cash was organised by judges and prison owners who I would say are precisely "the system".
This is the point I was making about communication. The exact words you use is only a piece of what you communicate.
And hey, if you feel I put words into your mouth then this is an opportunity for you to set me straight on how you do in fact feel about these things.
What is you value judgement on private prisons?
What is your opinion on the business model of private prisons?
Do you think that exploitation like "kids for cash" implies flaws in "the system"?
MW definition:
"to seize and detain or carry away by unlawful force or fraud and often with a demand for ransom"
So no: Lawful imprisonment is not kidnapping.
Neat
Essentially, with the decriminalization was meant to come a whole host of support network and rehab and other programs (regardless of what you may feel about the viability of the same). Then COVID happened, everything was decriminalized, and all of the other stuff did not, or barely, got off the ground, and is playing catch up now. And the result has been entirely predictable.
> voluntary uptake of drug rehabilitation offers has been terrible as most skeptics suggested
As a paramedic who administers Narcan multiple times a week, I get this. But the rationale is "if someone is using drugs, is even a 2% (arbitrary number) entry into rehab a success? Certainly if compared to 0%".
Let's also be real, it's not the legality of harder drugs that determine whether people do them or not.
I'm entirely in agreement. Dealers and suppliers? Those are, and should (and in PDX are) be illegal still. Portland Police have to shoulder their share of the blame, too, here, not (just) the social constructs - Portland Police were some of the worst in the country when it came to things like BLM, Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys and similar (and behind Seattle were one of the top per capita when it came to "number of officers who attended 1/6") and have been happy to "quiet quit" (worse, really) the last few years.
As for victimless crimes, do they really deserve prison to begin with and wouldn't we do better with alternatives, or perhaps even removing some of those laws entirely?
There are "victimless crimes" that are only victimless because everyone was lucky: a 3rd DUI, firing a gun in a crowded area but not hitting anyone, etc. Then there are crimes that have millions of potential victims: dumping toxic waste in a river, etc. It'd be an entire extra enigma the courts would have to figure out with every case. (I do think a big percentage of the "victimless crimes", like personal drug possession, should not even be crimes at all, but that's beside this point.)
Some even do so when there has been no conviction.
This is an industrial complex and they are the product.
There are exceptions of cause, see Norway.
Correctional Officer unions are among the hardest lobbiers against ANY decriminalization of marijuana, or any general "reform" to our criminal statutes.
That blows my mind. "Keep more things illegal so we have a job".
The question is, what is prison supposed to be? Punishment? Reintegration? Deterrence?
We can discuss the negative incentives of having them do labor and how that might pervert our legal system (companies that benefit lobbying for harsher penalties on victimless crimes), but they are still denied their freedom regardless of which way that discussion goes.
Prisoners should be denied as much freedom as is necessary to protect the rest of society and no more. Forcing people to work against their will does not protect anybody. It is not legitimate to say that if we deny one freedom we might as well deny all of them, they aren't free regardless.
I think many of those prisoners are already denied far more freedoms that necessary to keep them safe, so would that mean they are already worse off? The added labor is even worse, but I don't find that as the tipping point of good to bad yet a lot of the past discussion I've seen on if prison is slavery or not does seem to treat it as the tipping point. Getting past how we are naming things, my disagreement is that forced labor isn't what tips us from having a just prison system to an unjust one, and instead that we are mostly already over that tipping point even without forced labor being included.
Yes.
I agree that forced labor is not a tipping point, I haven't seen it described that way but I wouldn't agree with someone who said that everything we do up to forced labor is fine.
But is such a distinction really helpful to the discussion? If someone owns another person and forces them to work but doesn't force them to obey them, does it technically count as not a slave because it doesn't meet all three requirements of Oxford dictionary's definition. Will it really help if we then start comparing dictionary definitions of "forced" or "owned"? Or even what counts as work. A prisoner required to clean their cells and return their trays after lunch are forms of labor that could be done by janitor... is that work?
I don't think these matter once you have locked someone in a cage, even if it is a slightly gilded. Metaphorically speaking, no actual gold leaf or gold paint in use.
> But is such a distinction really helpful to the discussion?
Yes words have a meaning, changing the meaning of words is often used for dubious ideologies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_–_Lingua_Tertii_Imperii
Something can be bad and not an "holocaust", someone can be abused an not a "slave", someone can be racist and not "literally hitler", this modern perversion of language doesn't do anything besides discrediting the person who uses it.
We already have very specific words for very specific situations, we don't have to reuse loaded terms
Also, I recognize that there are a lot of people in prison in the U.S. who shouldn't be there. I think our the way people end up in prison needs reform, of course. However, once there, the point is to punish people for doing something wrong, IMHO. "Rehabilitation" is not the point of prison.
Neither is a practical or morally justifiable answer, of course. Other than cases where defendants are sentenced to life without parole, most of the people incarcerated in the United States will eventually be released from prison (whether it be through parole or because their sentence has been completed).
A purely punitive prison system does nothing to prepare prisoners for their eventual release back into society. Which, again, will happen for most prisoners. Even setting aside the moral questions with that approach, you merely increase the odds of re-offending. How is that better for society?
Probably because satisfying your want for revenge isn't a good enough reason to have the big expensive system that is prison.
Presumably prison should be solving some wider societal problems.
Retribution is an important component of justice [1]. Its utilitarian purpose is to prevent out-of-the-law reprisal.
You see it on HN, where certain topics attract someone who will be “sickened” or “disgusted” by some thing or other, and reflexively want something horrible to happen to everyone involved. (If you’re honest, you’ve done this too. It’s a childish impulse inherent to being human.)
[1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/reasons-...
Retribution is deserved punishment. Revenge is the infliction of harm or hurt on someone, and to me is "above and beyond" justice retribution, remediation, and rehabilitation.
Funnily enough, studies of families of murder victims where the murdered was sentenced to death show that they tend to disagree with you.
It "satisfies" for some very brief moment, but the loss is still there, and it doesn't make anyone's life better. It doesn't improve anything for anyone.
I'm reminded of American History X. A character is raging against everyone and anyone he has perceived has hurt him, his family, his home, his country. Immigrants, POC, whatever. He has responded with hate crimes, destroying grocery stores, forming groups of likeminded (or white) people.
His efforts end him in jail, and he's still raging.
And then a teacher asks him, says: "There was a moment, when I used to blame everything and everyone for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed White people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn't get no answers 'cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions."
Like what?
"Have any of the things you've done made your life better?"
They give voice to anger, rage, revenge (that's honestly a more honest word, in your case - you don't just want them punished, you want revenge on them). But none of those feelings improves anything.
- The prisoner should be able to freely choose to work or not to work.
- The prisoner should be able to choose whom to work for and be able to quit.
- The prisoner should be making the same wage as someone not in prison. This wage may be garnished by the jail to pay for prison (separate topic), but it should still cost the company the same as a non-prisoner laborer.
The bad things that are avoided are:
- being unethical
- making sure corporations don't lobby to expand prison labor - which could have the side of effect of criminializing things that most people don't consider crimes.
to wit; how often is prison product tested or monitored for tampering or expectorative adulterations ?
I'm very much appreciative of the fact that, though not mentioned, a growing number of fire departments are willing to overlook (certain) criminal history for hiring ex-inmate firefighters.
(To be clear, they are being paid far below minimum wage; it would be illegal if they weren't prisoners)
If this makes prison labor no longer economical, so be it.
If people outside those prison walls are forced to get a job, then the people inside those walls should be no exception.