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Comment by const_cast | Hacker News Reader

The problem here is you’re really asking for abuse with this mentality.

Prisoners should cost money, lots and lots of money. Otherwise we might just decide to imprison you and extract your labor. And that is exactly why we used to see 20 years for possession.

What, did you think we were just burning money for kicks?

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That's what I tried to refute in my previous comment. So in case I miss something, explain to me how is it economical for someone to enslave you, if it costs him $50k/year and he will almost certainly extract less value from your work (from data i found $20-$25k/year jobs are common for prisoners). That's the exact opposite of free labor. It is very expensive labor. I would agree if the cost was like $10k and you would extract considerably more from the job done. But it is not the case. Maybe in countries where they don't spend much on prisons what you say works. I don't think it does in US or in any other developed country

Government is not a business, nor is it 0-sum. Well-functioning societies with low rates of recidivism invest much more in their prisoners. We should be investing money into prisoners, so that they can re-integrate into society and become successful tax-paying citizens, just like the premise of the blog post we are commenting on. As the co-founder said, the Department of Corrections in Maine takes a cut of the inmate's salary.

NPR did a great article on the prison system in Norway: https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/31/410532066/.... They are quoted as spending $90,000 per prisoner with a recidivism rate at half the US rate.

Cheap labor is still valuable, I don't know what to tell you. 20k salary net is very cheap. I don't know why you think it's expensive, because it's not. What you're maybe missing is the job needs to be done regardless - it's not like if we stop using prisoners for labor that need for labor just - poof - disappears.

Do you mean that the benefit of cheap labor goes to private companies, but the cost stays with the taxpayers? If so, I see the logic. If we are talking about imprisoning someone, because we get cheaper labor for example inside the prison, than that doesn't make sense. Of course I count that the job needs to be done.

Scenario A (person not imprisoned):

- Prison cost: $0

- Labor cost: $25k (hire someone)

- Total cost: $25k

Scenario B (person imprisoned):

- Prison cost: $50k

- Labor cost: $0 (prisoner does it)

- Total cost: $50k

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