Some reform on this front would be good but I think it will be many decades before the US is ready to confront these things, if it doesn't fall apart beforehand due to the ever increasing divide, both geographically and ideologically.
I always find the retributionist theory unconfortable. I'd rather understand incarceration as a protection for potential new victims and a warning to others. Also it should be a way to "fix" the inmates, but unfortunately that's often wishful thinking.
I personally think that if a person has been convicted for battery or something worse more than once, the protection of others needs to be prioritized.
But it's also worth considering that the prisons in US (or pretty much anywhere) are probably not the best rehabilitating environments, so there seems to be room for improvement...
In games where there is common good, one way to avoid tragedy of commons is by punishment.
Retribution is in the neighbourhood of religion. Nobody but gods can really know what happened and what was the exact intention.
At the time eye for an eye appeared (Hammurabi) it was a way to limit vengeance, that used to snowball very quickly.
Keeping their cell and spaces they use voluntarily clean: not forced labor, just housekeeping. Keeping common spaces clean: forced labor, the operating of the prison itself is at the expense of the state.
If prisoners are allowed to do any of that work they should be compensated at market rates to make sure there is no unfair competition.
Obviously you couldn't apply a similar definition of "forced labor" to non-prisoners. So you and I are in agreement that you need some special case handling of prisoners in constitutional prohibitions against slavery, as the US and German constitutions recognize. My point simply is that the Constitution is fine as written and these sorts of distinctions should be made in statutory law where stuff like the meaning of "normal housekeeping routine" can be litigated and refined in ordinary rather than constitutional litigation.
Their output should be priced at near or market rates. (There should be no incentive to using prison labor as a way to get cheap labor) The individual's earnings should be reflective of the local market. They're not able to purchase the same goods as the outside world, nor are the prices reflective of the outside world. (I'm not an expert on that but I have a hard time beliving cigs are $10 a pop in prision)
The consequences of prisoners contributing to unfair competition is one of the major plot lines in Shawshank Redemption.
I call it BS. Why should ordinary people work and pay for criminals?
By forcing criminals to work for free society is paying in another way: that work would have been done by someone on the outside, but you can't compete with slave labor.
So this is bad both for the inmates and for society from an economic point of view, and then we're side-stepping the moral issue.
What you're talking about is really a disproportion between amount of work they make (and value they produce) and the total amount of pay they receive for delivering that value.
Their freedom to negotiate has been taken away, therefore they do not have any choices.
> What you're talking about is really a disproportion between amount of work they make (and value they produce) and the total amount of pay they receive for delivering that value.
That depends on the situation but is ultimately un-important.
"Basic rules of economics" have no place inside prison walls.
It actually is very important because this is exactly what distinguishes between labour slavery and ordinary paid work.
Economic rules is not something that one can decide whether it applies or not. It's like telling that mathematical axioms don't apply in prison - sure, you can make people believe that 2 + 2 = 5 but this is nothing more than just rejecting the reality.
That leaves 'forced labor' as the only other option if you feel that letting people starve to death is a viable alternative (as you did in your earlier comment).
The rest of your comment is not applicable.
isn't it how this works in principle for folks that are not imprisoned? (And no, I don't think this a viable alternative, although - nice job what you did here - well played).
No, it isn't that's when you go on welfare.
> (And no, I don't think this a viable alternative, although - nice job what you did here - well played).
I didn't 'play', you basically made a bunch of statements that are un-supportable.
"Ordinary paid work" that pays less than a dollar an hour. And if you don't go you are put in solitary, instead of just being fired. That means you don't see any other people. Ever. If they really don't like you they can put you on the loaf, too. Look that up. And that "opportunity" for "ordinary paid work" only exists in prison: you also aren't handling jail, where the Thirteenth doesn't apply because the inmate has not yet been convicted. So now everybody in jail starves under your final solution, before they can be convicted by their peers, all in the name of economic purity.
I have to say, as a former inmate, watching ostensibly well-off people who've never seen the inside of a drunk tank talk about "reality" like this just bugs me. It's just such a lack of perspective, which is fine, but there's also a lack of awareness that it's there and it's dehumanizing to see people speak about inmates like this. You're arguing basic economics and applying it to the incarcerated human condition as if inmates are a line item of cattle in Excel. (Ask me what comes out of the hole when someone gets repeatedly stabbed with a sharpened toothbrush and what color it is. Hint: not red. That's reality.)
Remember Economics studies human behavior and humans have long used slavery for example.
Do you believe the work prisoners do pay for their incarceration costs?
Are you jealous that people whose freedom and agency are taken away are fed and housed by the state?
the society pays money to the government and in return have prisons. Society benefits from said prisons.
If you're going to tackle unfairness in society, you should be aiming for the massive imbalance of wealth. Anything else is premature optimization
Yeah, because feeding and housing drug dealers for the money taken forcibly from an average Joe who works 12h a day to provide to his family is totally fair.
> the society pays money to the government and in return have prisons. Society benefits from said prisons.
This is very naive way of looking at it.
> you should be aiming for the massive imbalance of wealth
Wow, it didn't take much time before someone had to drag this into discussion about penitentiary system.
Why? The concept of prison is literally society funding a project to keep undesirable crime out of said society. That's fundamentally and exactly what it is. Calling that naive is like saying water being able to drown you is a naive position to hold.
I suggest visiting a lawless nation to observe what paying for prison does.
> Yeah, because feeding and housing drug dealers for the money taken forcibly from an average Joe who works 12h a day to provide to his family is totally fair.
You seem to not grasp (a) how many "drug dealers" (ooo scary, want to get a beer and find out what a former one is like?) are, themselves, average joes working twelves to provide money for their family, (b) that arguing about fairness is laughable when you're taking the positions that you are (fair for who?), and (c) how many "average joes" comprise the population of, especially minimum security, corrections for crimes you'd roll your eyes at. I was in with a guy who waived his trial timeframe completion rights -- different states call this by different names, and NEVER waive it -- and was in the middle of year three of being held, pretrial, for passing a single $600 bad check. Yes, really. His name was Isaiah and he was a black electrician. Nobody gave a shit, and I'm going to assume you don't either based on how you're arguing this.
(Blah blah, bleeding heart, I know.)
That you've indicted a whole group of real people because they've ended up in corrections is the lack of perspective I was warning you about elsewhere. They are humans. Just like you. People make mistakes. You should avoid speaking about them like they're cattle and are inferior to you or "average joes." Until you truly understand that, you're way on the wrong side of this. I promise.
> They are humans
I've never said that they aren't.
But hey, if expecting someone to work in exchange for food and housing is "dehumanizing" and "laughable" then I've got nothing else to add here.
Do you believe the work prisoners do pay for their incarceration costs?
But a bit of research showed that prisons were not exactly bastions of human rights in the good old days.
Netflix produced a great documentary about all of this - 13th - and it's well worth the watch.
Simply because private prisons hold a small portion of the people incarcerated at a state or federal level.
My point was that the use of prison labor is not limited to private prisons.
" Amendment XIII Section 1.
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. Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. "