So what do you do if you're sitting on such a gold mine? Well, I'd probably fuel an endless and hopeless war on drugs, introduce mandatory minimum sentences and take a really, really tough stance on those immigrants. Keep 'em coming.

Completely coincidentally, the US has the highest incarceration rates on any halfway civilized nation on the planet by a large margin.

Free markets for the win.

Also, don't forget about clandestinely supporting terrorists like the Nicaraguan Contras who were smuggling billions of dollars of cocaine into inner cities in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_co...

When you work for next to no pay in an American prison (And are then billed for room and board when you are released...) Well, that's something else.

How many millions of lives has this institution of liberal democracy destroyed?

That's pretty fucked up.

The 14th amendment's exception from prisoners is broad but kind of essential for the whole concept of incarceration to work at all it seems. Amendments are left generally broad because it's so hard to fix any mistakes and Congress can always put further protections in place should the need arise.

How is this an institution "of" liberal democracy? I can either interpret that as liberal democracy as destroying lives, or that working while incarcerated is a feature of liberal democracy. I don't think either are true.

The problem of liberalism is its failure to adequately guard against such institutional abuses, just as the problem of communism is its failure to guard against being hijacked by authoritarians. In the 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union and the general consensus that communism was an ideological failure, western democracies own ideological limitations have been examined and found wanting in many respects. Chief among these are an incarceration rate that far exceeds that of the most stereotypically autocratic nations, and the deplorable conditions therein.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

Liberalism all too easily degenerates into mere license, and has demonstrably failed to result in liberation for those who suffer unjustly under the yoke of authority. To some extent the blame falls on a myopic utilitarianism that equates its quantitative capability with omniscience, and by assuming its own goodness as axiomatic has lost the ability to evaluate its own moral anchorings, instead drifting about aimlessly on the currents of its own desire.

My point is that we turn a blind eye to it happening at home. People working in the GULAG were also paying their 'debt to society'. Not all of them were political prisoners, either.

It's the nasty downside to American Exceptionalism. On one end, it spurs people to attempt to be better because they expect they should be better, on the other it causes people to infer differences between our attributes and those of others that we don't particularly like, even when in practice those differences don't amount to all that much.

Nothing that OP mentioned is specific to for-profit prisons.

The prison-industrial complex is perfectly capable of existing and generating incredibly lucrative profits for the industry even if the prisons themselves are ostensibly either state entities or structured as non-profits. The "for-profit/private" vs. "public/state-run" distinction only changes how the money gets accounted for on paper; ultimately, the same entities are capable of making the same amount of money on either form of incarceration.

Must be incredibly hard to come out of a system like that rehabilitated, and not very bitter.

http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-prison-labor-african...

the fact that this was only widely noticed 20 years after publication is amazing

I think this story is an enormous opportunity to get bipartisan opinion against abuse of prison labor. What better way to get popular support against AG Session's incarceration increase than to tie it to a deeply unpopular politician with his constituency?

the point of my observation is that this passage only became a widespread topic AFTER the recent election, after a sharp-eyed and thoughtful reader commented on it via Twitter and it went viral last week.

In the end I don't think having prisoners work is in itself a bad thing either. I do think most the systems we have in place that allow for that cause major problems through externalities, and I'm not sure how to allow one while effectively preventing the other.

My mother when leaving prison was given a bill for her stay - as if she were staying at a motel. So not only was she then a felon with little hope for a 'good job' but also was laden with debt, which fortunately had very tolerant pay back policies.

No person with a debt is entitled to the profits of their work, free or otherwise. The debt here is the cost of their incarceration. I don't propose they pay back the entire portion of their incarceration, but I think they should be responsible for paying back what they can while they're in prison. Within this model, you could make provisions for prisoners to elect to pay a sum after release (thereby making it optional labor as a means of repaying the debt they entered into), but this isn't without its own moral quandaries.

The crux of the issue in my mind is that someone needs to pay for incarceration, and while tax payers are going to have to pay a large portion regardless, the incarcerated should contribute what they can. Of course there are likely many injustices in the justice system which would cause this policy to impact some groups more than others (males vs females, for instance), but those issues are orthogonal to this, and consequently they should be addressed separately, insofar as they exist.

This is morally bankrupt. You are locking people up, against their will, taking away years of their productive working life - and then sending them a bill for it.

This is a debtor's prison by another name. (Which are, by the way, widely recognized among the Western world, including in the US, to be immoral, and illegal - in theory.)

It's slavery as the punishment for a crime, but it's slavery without qualification.

Not sure how the wider legal landscape treats this, especially whether other laws narrow the exemption to apply only to the "involuntary servitude" portion of the amendment, but if a state wanted to try to actually enslave people as punishments for crimes in the US they'd probably at least have a lively court case on their hands, and they might even win it, depending on how the rest of the laws are structured—the constitution alone wouldn't be enough to guarantee defeat.

You are stretching a definition of "slavery" to encompass simple incarceration. That cheapens the word.

Is there actually forced labor in present-day civilian prisons? (Courts-martial have traditionally been allowed to impose sentences "at labor", but I have not observed this in the civilian case).

Across history, there have been many forms of slavery that were not chattel slavery. This is one of them. They have all been morally repugnant.

At the end of the day, incarceration costs money, and the people responsible for the incarceration would ideally foot the bill. Obviously the incarcerated rarely have such means, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to pay a little bit more than the average law-abiding citizen. I don't have a strong opinion about how they repay their debts--whether it's garnished wages while in prison or after their release, but it should be one or the other. Actions have consequences, and a fundamental purpose of prison is to remind people of that. Moreover, work is a rehabilitating endeavor--it build skills, confidence, and character. It's mutually beneficial.

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.

Technically, it is apparently legal. But it is still slavery.

Even better if the prisoners keep a substantial portion of that.

I don't know anything in particular about the program, but why do you think the business should pay the prevailing wage? How many prisoners would get hired with that requirement vs. without it? As a business owner why would I prefer to hire a prisoner instead of someone not in prison? Or am I thinking about it the wrong way? It sounds like hiring a prisoner benefits the prison system and the prisoner (and also the business as long as there is an incentive of some kind).

You make a fair point of incentives to hire prisoners rather than others though.

I think a better standard is that the labor should be competitively bid for with multiple buyers at any given time so there's actual competition for it. The prevailing wage would be lower than for free(..dom) labor, but not the pittance they're currently stuck with.

[1] yes, which to some, is a feature not a bug

Inside the prison system I'd be fine with making them do the accounting based on prevailing wages even if the money is going in a circle.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/prison_inmate...

Prison jobs are notoriously low paying such as cook or dishwasher which ranges from $0.10-0.15/hr.

I interviewed several prisoners at a state prison in utah (draper perhaps?) back in 2005 and got the scoop and it was very belittling to see that prisoners were paid that low.

i just dont see how it could've jumped so high in only ten years.

From the info i gathered this is not a utah phenomenon either the prisoners are paid extremeley low wages in other parts of the states as well.

Not saying I agree with the practice. But just getting other people to agree that it's slavery won't change anything.

That's not really a source. If this was published, then tell us where! The published findings would be the source.