However in Germany a large part of prison work is around qualification. The inmates can learn a job and once released have a useable qualification for finding a job. Most prisons in that way are self supporting. Meaning food is made by inmates who are cooks or are learning to be a chef. Repairs for heating or doors or furniture are made by inmates etc. Only a small part of the work is for external customers and even a smaller part is for the prison's online Shop like https://www.haftsache.de/
And yes salaries are low, but they get free food and accomodation and aren't there for fun but punishment ...
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...
First,
> Law enforcement groups and prosecutors opposed the bill saying the former inmates pose a danger to the public.
The culture that creates these restrictions is still there, it's still the predominant view from law enforcement and prosecutors that prison labor should be punitive, not rehabilitative. None of the people who created and supported that system are gone, and they still have an outsized degree of control over how that system works.
Second,
> The bill, sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, lets prisoners who received "valuable training and [placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters to defend the life and property of Californians" to petition the courts to dismiss their convictions after completing their sentences.
A right to petition is not a guarantee that your petition will succeed.
Third,
When you dig into the details, the bill only allows removing the specific convictions that the prisoner was serving time for while they were a firefighter. If they had previous convictions or served time in the past, they'll still be restricted from getting EMT certification.
Fourth,
When you dig into the details, this bill actually doesn't get rid of restrictions on felons. It provides prisoners with a very narrow path to remove their felon status. That's not really the same thing as getting rid of the restrictions, and it's only available to prisoners who have "[placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters".
Think of it this way: if it's illegal for women to vote, and instead of letting women vote I instead say, "here's a pathway to get the courts to declare you a man", then I haven't really gotten rid of the restriction on voting, and it would be inaccurate to say that my system provided women with the right to vote.
----
It's good that prisoners have at least some recourse that they can use to try and benefit from the life threatening work they did in prison, but it's a far cry from solving the overall problem, and it arguably doesn't even fully solve this specific problem.
The amount of forms that need to be filled out is obscene. Determining which forms need to be filled out is a nightmarish exercise all to its own. Many of them need to be submitted in person. Email and online submission forms apparently don't exist. Each step has an absurdly short deadline for the the petitioner, and multiple month turnaround times for the state.
Then comes the fees. I had to pay out several thousand between attorney fees, application fees, filing fees.... Then come additional charges for each certified copy that you need, as you need to send one copy to any facility that would have any record for you. In my case, that came out to be 13 different facilities. Thankfully I've managed to get a decently paying job, but for most of those trying to get their life back in order, this is a complete non-starter.
I'm still in the process of trying to do this, and have been working on it for months now. It was made apparent to me that the process is designed extremely asymmetrically, and is just another form of exerting control.
Edit: This process will likely vary from state to state, but that's just what I've experienced.
The financial incentives are set up to produce as many dangerous criminals as possible. Without repeat offenders, many private prisons would have to close.
The solution is simple: The US should actually ban slavery and should also ban private prisons.
It should replace private prisons with ones that are rewarded when their former prisoners become productive members of society.
There should also be a cap on the ratio of prison spending to education, mental health, and community service programs.
The rest of the inmates are in prisons that are state-owned and thus inherently nonprofit, and the guards & other staff are either state or federal workers. Contractors do things like provide commissary goods or run the inmate telephone system, but the guard in the tower at your local prison is a state employee.
Although there's also the factor of better social safety nets as well, which will play a large part.
And why are they "dregs"? The entire attitude towards crime and punishment in the US is seriously FUBAR IMHO; people seem to think everyone who spent any time in prison as some psychopath ready to loot, plunder, rape, and murder at the drop of a hat. In reality, it's not like that at all. People are regularly shackled during trails like they're some Hannibal Lector with superpowers. Police will chase people even for fairly minor offences putting everyone's life at risk, as if they're chasing Ted Bundy. AFAIK it's the only country that routinely does drug tests on employees as if every drug user is a rabid maniac and a danger to the company.
The US puts more people in prison than China. Before the internment camps in Xinjang really took off it was more even in absolute numbers, and now even with the internment it's still significantly higher per capita. If you're locking up more people than a country which literally locks up people based purely on their ethnicity then you're doing something wrong. Very wrong.
People have been talking about the police a lot in the last year. But that's not really the core problem, it's just a consequence of the toxic and dehumanizing attitude much of the country seems to have.
I'd think HN folk would think one step past ad hominem responses before posting.
The role of firefighters has also expanded well beyond fighting fires - they also act as medical first responders, and it's required here that firefighters get EMT certified in their first two years on the job, or else they get fired.
So it's... kind of a position with a lot of public trust. I'm not saying I agree with this, but I imagine it would be very bad for a city's leadership if their firefighters went to someone's home for a medical issue and then robbed them.
How can our society accept people risking their lives for without trying to compensate them?
Really we simply doing pay based on risks. It’s far more dangerous to be a long distance trucker than a police officer, but truckers don’t get respect, pensions, or high pay.
I mean, just look at our type of jobs in IT. I can't just tell my employer that I'm leaving for a call. It seems it was the small community businesses that were the most understanding when you had to leave for that type of service.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...
A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state.
Correlation vs. causation and all that, but given the likely lack of results from either punishment or rehabilitation, perhaps that is what happened here.
https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/uploads/content/_1400_700/Cr...
The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime.
Combine this with society mandating severely curtailed opportunities to participate in non-criminal work and you get a perfect storm where prisons churn out more hardened criminals, which leads to more crime, which leads to more prisoners.
As are the streets.
In this model of 'removal', I'd say that the main point of a prison is to take a more crime prone demographic (by that I mean age, gender, ethnicity, location, wealth...the whole ball of wax) off the street until they are older and less likely to do things that the straights don't like.
In the long run, I would expect for universal surveillance (and the increased ability to parse data we are seeing) to be the main driving force in social control rather than mere warehousing.
If I were designing a prison system, it would be a mini-society. Only a minimal set of rules would be specified and enforced by those outside the prison. The rest would be voted on and enforced by the prisoners themselves.
I don't think I'd recommend it for the U.S.
If you can accept "comprehending and accepting your crimes and their consequences, and having a genuine desire to return to society as a member of it looking to make a positive contribution" as punishement then they are compatible.
But you want to transition somebody psychologically from being in the out-group "criminals" to re-joining the in-group of law-abiding citizens, and most purely punitive measures actively make a person feel further pushed into the out-group.
You want strong incentives and support towards positive re-integration. I always thought that repeat offences ought to be the most damning statistic for prisons, and their performance and budget should mostly be influenced by success on that metric.
Profit from holding prisoners and their labour are basically negative incentives to improve the repeat offending rates.
I can imagine a prison system with a redemptive quality where prisoners feel they’ve labored to redeem themselves to society (this requires society to esteem them accordingly to some degree) and learned a valuable trade in the process.
I think liberals (myself included) would do better to cast that vision for prison reform, rather than the current messaging which IMO comes across as hyperbolic (e.g., “literal slavery”) and naive (prison should be a comfortable place and the rest will work itself out).
But countless studies have shown that it's not an effective deterrent.
To be quite clear, I don't believe that prison's sole value is a deterrent. I think there's an element of justice (criminals should have to pay for their crimes), an element of deterrence (prison should make criminals think twice--this feels intertwined with 'justice' and yet distinct), an element of rehabilitation (to the extent that we can rehabilitate prisoners, we should), but mostly I think there is significant social value in protecting innocent people by keeping harmful people away from innocent people.
Even if the deterrent effect is nil and even if you don't believe in justice (or for many of my fellow liberals, you reserve 'justice' for crimes that offend you, such as white collar crimes), I would still keep prisons around for the protection of the innocent. That said, I have an optimistic view on the potential for prisons.
For the freely given work, it becomes a question of who deserves it. Giving it to a prisoner who is supposed to be punished instead of a law abiding individual stuck at a dead end job appears to be rewarding the individual with bad behavior. The same reasoning also applies when there isn't enough free labor for rehabilitation and money is spent buying more labor.
If at any point the rehabilitation offered within prisons is better than that offered for free outside of prisons then it becomes a reward. Rewards are generally viewed as incompatible with punishment and seen as cancelling out, when they are of similar scales.
Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie. There most certainly is enough social programs to go around, but our elected officials in America want to bolster the ultra wealthy and the mega corps instead. This is an artificial scarcity mindset that tries to make us pull each other down.
Is your help getting clean only offered to substance abusers that assaulted another person? If so, you might see why someone who is addicted, wants but can't afford help, and who hasn't assaulted someone might not appreciate the help only going to those who have assaulted another.
If the help is offered to everyone who needs it, then the logic wouldn't apply.
>Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie.
Where did I suggest such? I pointed out that there isn't enough purely from volunteering, meaning you'll have to spend money. I specifically pointed out that money could be spend buying more.
>and money is spent buying more labor.
Right there. My argument is that the money spent on buying more help follows the same issue. Spending money to help someone who committed a crime that you wouldn't spend to help them if they hadn't is not a widely agreeable position.
It seems to me that doing so is a great idea. Firstly, given that these folks have (presumably so, but many folks plead guilty to crimes they have not committed, which is a travesty, but beyond the scope of this comment) committed a crime is pretty clear proof that they are having issues integrating into society.
Secondly, except for those who commit violent crimes (a minority of inmates), most folks will be released at some point.
Once those folks are released, they are now responsible for taking care of themselves economically and living in society. If we continue doing what we do now, by not giving them tools and skills to reintegrate into society and stigmatizing them for life, we severely limit their ability to live as productive members of society.
This has a negative effect on society (in that these folks are being actively discriminated against and shut out from many decent jobs) and limits the productivity and economic output of these people in performing jobs compatible with society.
Those are huge negatives for all of us. We're reducing economic output, creating pariahs and increasing the possibility of recidivism, which costs society more when those folks re-offend and are then re-incarcerated.
As such, I posit that rehabilitation along with reducing/removing the stigma of a felony conviction would increase both economic output and societal well-being.
And IMHO those benefits far outweigh how much you (or anyone else) wants to stick it to those dirty criminals.
To clarify, I'm explaining why it would be unpopular. I'm not saying I personally agree with it. Please try to not conflate the argument with the person.
Many people aren't great at seeing long term or higher order effects. I'm explaining the immediate visibility problem, where someone is told that more help is provided for criminals than non-criminals. That the long term effects are worth it doesn't work well to convince people whose views are short term. We can see many government problems resulting from prioritizing short term reasoning.
Take the war on drugs. People see drugs, think "I should ban it so my kids won't be hooked on drugs." They don't think of the long term effects of a war on drug, and as a result we have our modern day war on drugs with all the harm it has brought us.
The real main difference is when people stop viewing prison as being for punishment, but that goes back to the original question of why is rehabilitation incompatible with punishment. If prison is seen as being for rehabilitation and containment for safety while rehabilitating then the comparison is different (though ideally the services offered shouldn't be better than those offered to people who follow the law).
As an example from around here (Denmark) if someone want to hire a person they do not by default know that this is a former inmate and they will only have access to this information if the job somehow is related to the crime committed in the past. You could ask the job applicant to bring a form from the police but if the sentence is unrelated to the job (or a set amount of years have gone past if it is a lesser crime) the form will be completely blank. Only related crimes will be shown.
All in all I believe that such a system is also punishment (few like to be locked up) but this rehalibation-first-system will punish everyone else less in the long run.
Picking fruit is a valid occupation and one that is not limited by post-incarceration rules like not being a stockbroker after committing securities fraud or not being a childcare worker after pedophilia. While many agriculture jobs provide on the job rather than classroom training, there are skills to be acquired that can enhance productivity and value.
My point was that fruit picking, in contrast to many other potential professional activities, is not something that is likely to help an inmate build a post-release career.
When you apply for a job as a fruit picker, the employer is not going to reject those candidates who lack former experience.
Not really, it's a seasonal job (at least in Germany, but are there climates where plants bear fruit year round?) that doesn't pay enough through the season to sustain you through the entire year.
Although there are strong caveats, and like for like data doesn't exist. After 5 years US rate goes up a lot, my link doesn't have that for Germany.
> Recidivism rates vary significantly around the world, and many countries have insufficient data. Rates of criminal recidivism around the world are reported to be as high as 50% and have not declined in recent years. It is challenging to compare recidivism between countries because definitions of recidivism outcomes vary from re-arrest to reoffending to reimprisonment. Within these definitions, countries differ in their inclusion of misdemeanors, fines, traffic offenses, and other crimes. Additionally, follow-up times (period after release from incarceration) are inconsistent between and within jurisdictions and vary between six months and five years.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recidivis...
Another great example: "The U.S. incarceration rate is 693 per 100,000 residents —compared to 76 per 100,000 in Germany, and 69 per 100,000 in the Netherlands."
There is some real academic research on the topic, but as far as international comparison goes, it's not a solved issue. For example, this paper basically concludes that countries should update their reporting:
I guess one also has to look at the sort of crimes and duration of the sentences.
Also somebody who got a death penalty won't come back ...
What percentage of the US prison population is on death row?
Let's compare "lifelong sentence" in Germany you have a high chance to get out after 15 years. (There is a mechanism for true lifelong, but that's then more of a psychiatric treatment than jail)
Point is: Comparing some statistic without context is not easy
It's one thing to learn a job, and another to waste a large part of your own life making other people rich.
"And yes salaries are low, but they get free food and accomodation and aren't there for fun but punishment ... "
So what's the point of punishment, exactly?
Endless studies which have shown it's not an effective deterrent.
As a matter of principle though... the principle is violated inevitably. A prison guard "profits" (or rather, makes a living by) imprisonment. Any company supplying a prison profits. Community service is forced labour, etc.
That said, I totally agree on incentives. It's dangerous, especially private prisons.
The pay rate does bother me... I can see why real pay isn't done, but just paying pennies per hour does not sit well. Maybe a 3rd party should get the money, and this could take on a restorative rather than punitive aspect. There might even be a case for demonetize prison labour, supply the food directly to food banks instead of for market.
The phrase, "debt to society" is used often. Debts are not redeemed by suffering, generally.
My thought is that prison guards are paid because their work is a "debt to society", to force people to slave labour on a daily basis can not be good for you. In the same vein, I think society looses by systematically making prison guards slavers. I believe this is the case for ordinary prison guards as well, but in that case at least the correctional part could be believable.
A capitalist or communist ideal(s), for example, can be good. People dealing with each other by beneficial mutual agreement. People cooperating out of social solidarity. Both exist (imperfectly) in the world.
The problems come when we overapply these ideas. Justifying abusive labour practices or banking excesses because Adam Smith's village baker parable must apply to all things always. Building whole worldviews from a core ideal, as if it were F=ma.
Modern prisons evolved entirely out of their ideals. Imprisonment wasn't a common punishment until modern times, and the early logic (eg bentham) was about rehabilitation. Lots of (retrospectively ugly) ideals about morality and character were at play. Lots of horrible things done in their name. The project essentially failed, and rehabilitation aspect of prison devolved into vestigial formalities.
I imagine the rehabilitation ideal seemed enlightened, relative to the punitive ideals of previous eras. The US' 18th century "cruel and unusual punishment" concept related, I imagine, to these new enlightenment era ideals. A few hundred years later, and we can't even imagine a society without prisons. We're not even quite sure what they're for. At least, we don't agree on what they're for.
Sorry for getting so abstract.
Is there a reason other than "because they can get away with it"?
Just don't look into how much prison shit costs.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/commissary.html
https://www.prisonerresource.com/interview/how-much-money-sh...
https://www.prisonphonejustice.org/#:~:text=Currently%2C%20i....
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2020/dec/1/cost-communi...
>prisons get less heat if they can say they payprisoners for work
Who cares how much they get paid? They're prisoners! /sarcasm
Yes.
Lock her "Hillary Clinton" up, and lock him "Donald trump" up are very real wishes of many Americans. The war on drugs, poverty, and in general garbage tvlike live pd, Jerry Springer, dr Phil, has helped to breed this retributional bent into American culture.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village
>"Many adults who have experienced disrupted or deficient attachments when young will, from whatever source, find sufficient resilience to grow into well-balanced adults."
We, all off us as society, have a role to play in ensuring that all people are sufficiently resilient. Furthermore, to breed this resiliency we must all occasionally make sacrifices so that those with great need do not suffer neglect.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247755669_Using_att...
For a practical discussion we can look at community crime prevention.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Crime_Prevention
Ultimately, we can pay for success on the front end (prevention) or failure on the back end (imprisonment).
>"The sooner at-risk students are identified, the more likely that preventative "remediation" measures will be effective."
There are many countries that treat their prisoners as prisoners, not as slaves. Maybe prison work can be good in those countries? Just not in yours.
There are many articles on how Norway is one of the best countries in rehabilitating prisoners, and in Norwegian prisons prisoners do work. I'd guess that prisoners work in all the countries that are among the world top in rehabilitation.
Here, the logic goes something like, "US prisons mistreat prisoners, therefore prison labor constitutes mistreatment". Mistreatment of prisoners through labor is an accidental property, not an essential one (as evidenced by countries like Norway).
> I don't even necessarily disagree with that possibility - sure, work provides meaning in life, it's better than sitting in a cage.
If it's better, then why don't they let the people decide for themselves whether they want to work for free? My guess is that they wouldn't get many takers. Also, exploiting people by giving them a choice between slave labor an worse options doesn't count.
Fundamentally, who are some HN commenters to decide for others what's 'good' for them? The 'maybe slavery is a good idea' stance is one I've seen around Internet forums, a trendy pseudo-intellectual provocation that is transparently absurd. Those who are serious are encouraged to volunteer first for slavery and show us how good it is, or for something much less onerous - free hard labor. It strikes me that people value their freedom and self-determination, not to mention their energy and time, and nobody is a slave voluntarily.
I used to work with mentally retarded people. They had a jobs program where they contracted with companies for small jobs that these folks could do. TI teamed up with the school, and together they set up a "workshop" where they would fold up power cords and tie with twists. The people were paid like a dollar per day... they worked a couple of hours per day. It was beneficial for all (TI indeed sold those cords with its products), and hardly slavery. It was hailed at time for all its good. That was not a prison, but it served a similar purpose. Not a single complaint of slavery or exploitation was ever raised... but this was in the 1980s.
If you want to talk about reintegrating prisoners into society, then clear prisoner's records after they leave prison and bar employers from asking about prior convictions. Otherwise, I don't buy that we're doing this out of concern for the prisoner.
Also, to be clear:
> Prisoners at Angola can be legally forced to work once cleared by a medical doctor, and most are required to perform field work, like harvesting soybeans and corn for at least 90 days upon arrival. For long hours in the hot sun, they earn as little as 4 cents per hour.
So yeah, that sounds a lot like slavery to me. What's hyperbolic about that?
4 cents an hour is not compensation. By your logic, the South wasn't practicing slavery either since plantation owners gave their slaves "free" room and board.
From the Appeal's coverage of the same prison (https://theappeal.org/louisiana-prisoners-demand-an-end-to-m...):
> Once cleared by a prison doctor, prisoners at Angola can be legally forced to work under threat of severe punishment, including solitary confinement. Even prisoners with physical impediments may still have to work. “Angola frequently fails to accommodate men with disabilities—often forcing them to work in dangerous factories or in the fields,” said Mercedes Montagnes, executive director of the Promise of Justice Initiative.
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.
The threat is that if you don't work, you receive more punishment, whether formal or informal: solitary confinement, abuse by guards, ineligibility for parole, etc. So yes, they are forced to work under duress. It's basically extortion.
Edit: why the downvotes? I'm pointing this out in good faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_disability#Termin...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/why-you-sh...
I think it's reasonable to be skeptical of consensus on a group of people on the matter of what they like to be called. Consider, for example, the backlash on the term "Latinx" and, more recently, even among some of our Black neighbors over being included in BIPOC.
I'm not trying to get into a whole thing here, it just seems to me that "intellectually disabled", taken at literal value, is more disparaging (and more open to slur-ish interpretation) than "mentally retarded".
Your links don't appear to support your position. None of them say that the people in question prefer this appellation. The WaPo piece expressly prefers "people with intellectual disabilities" (with Eades emphasizing that the inclusion of the word 'people' first is that makes the phrase better), so presumably he'd have a similar objection to the term "intellectually disabled."
The NIH doc doesn't even include the phrase "intellectual disabled" but does suggest the phrase "mental retardation" (see term number 13), so I can't imagine why you've included it if your point is to suggest that the former is more humane than the latter per this source.
In any case, if indeed there is the kind of consensus you assert, I'm happy to oblige it. But I think it's reasonable to wonder whether that's so.
So yeah, I'm also happy to use a better term if you know of one. I’m not really trying to prove a point here, per se — I just know there is widespread consensus that the r-word is a slur and I’m trying to gently help us move past it :)
You see it as a slur, and that's fine, but why should people have to change a common lexicon over some random person's feelings.
Also, 'disability' is considered offensive now, didn't you mean 'differently abled'? See, where does it stop?
Yes, as long as a reasonable amount for food and housing is deducted from their paycheck.
Outside of prison, a video call with your family is free because you use Skype or Zoom. Inside of prison, a 30 minute call can have a double digit price tag. Even basic necessities like menstrual products and tampons for women often have to be purchased at prices far above what normal consumers pay.
There's no competition or prisoner autonomy over which businesses they give their money to, and there's no commercial incentive for businesses that are authorized to sell to prisoners to lower prices; they literally have a captive market. State-approved monopolies are allowed to restrict access to those supplies and "privileges" unless prisoners pay up.
This has also led to really perverse policy incentives. Video call companies have lobbied states to restrict and/or remove in-person visiting, meaning that if you want to have any contact with your family or the outside world, you need to pay for the privilege. Often, books and entertainment will have a single company you can purchase through. Prisoners don't get access to the free market and even completely noncontroversial, obviously positive rehabilitative measures like family visits are being restricted for the sake of monetary exploitation.
So short answer, we're not giving prisoners a minimum wage and we're already charging them and their families an artificially inflated amount of money for basic necessities.
Florida comes up a lot in these conversations about prisoner rights:
> Each state prisoner shall pay from such income and assets, except where such income is exempt by state or federal law, all or a fair portion of the prisoner's daily subsistence costs, based upon the inmate's ability to pay. An order directing payment of all or a fair portion of a prisoner's daily subsistence costs may survive against the estate of the prisoner.
And Florida does not pay prisoners a minimum wage. So while I disagree with the overall premise (more on that below), giving prisoners a real wage for their work would still be an improvement over the current system, which is the worst of both worlds.
----
But ignoring that and just talking about the policy on its own merits, I would ask the same question about whether those room and board costs are fair. I can choose where I live, a prisoner can't. Prison accommodations are not a free market.
So should prisoners be allowed to "shop around" for which prison they want to be incarcerated in based on the prices of room and board? Should prisoners be allowed to decide when they turn lights on and off in their cells to save power? Prisoners have no say in how much their accommodations cost. In multiple states they don't even have voting rights, so they lack the bare minimum of input into the policy behind how those costs are determined.
To me, it's a little problematic to charge someone for something that they are legally forced to purchase from a single source. We should generally try to avoid that. But it's extra problematic to force someone to work to pay for that charge. That's when we start getting into direct comparisons with slavery. Slaves were also provided living accomodations on plantations. But like prisoners, they couldn't leave or execute any choices about their arrangement.
In practice, what really is the difference between charging a prisoner for tampons and charging them for the electricity in their cell block? Both are required purchases by a captive market.
[0]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/char...
This is indentured servitude.
Jail/prison should be for rehabilitation, not to line the pockets if every-greedier corporations.
The abuses of private prisons, etc is a tangential issue. As a high level, it's all still funded by taxpayer money.
Slaves in China peel that garlic, and the garlic is grown in california and shipped to china for slaves to peel it all, and they lose their fingernails due to how much garlic they need to peel.
I love garlic, but on par with the fucking Sackler family of Oxycontin, The garlic ranches of Gilroy are fucking despicable.
Apparently the answer is slavery? Gonna Google that and confirm, but I guess this means I’m back to peeling my own garlic.
The Gilroy thing was largely invented to draw tourists — Fresno is where the bulk is grown, ex. Fresno County grew 25,060 acres of garlic in 2017. Santa Clara County grew 761 acres. About 90% of California's garlic crop is from Fresno.
Gilroy has the festival and a couple of processing plants.
I know what I'd rather do.
Forcing inmates to work under harsh and/or exploitative conditions is wrong but forcing them to do some sort of work for some portion of their time is not inherently wrong. The devil is in the details.
Unfairly compensated labor is bad -- in this we agree -- but distinctions exist for a reason, and the surest way to appear unreasonable/extreme is to conflate them.
Slave: "a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them." -Google
>"As of 2017, Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas did not pay inmates for any work whether inside the prison (such as custodial work and food services) or in state-owned businesses. Additionally, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Carolina allowed unpaid labor for at least some jobs."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_St...
>"...in all or nearly all US states prisoners must work. If they refuse, they can be punished with solitary confinement, revoking visitation, or other measures."
https://qz.com/777415/an-unprecedented-prison-strike-hopes-t...
Solitary confinement is torture. Thus, prisoners refusing to work are tortured into compliance. This is cruel and unusual punishment and stain on the conscience of every American.
I really appreciate your attention to fair debate. Thank you for this.
I agree with you that the example of uncompensated prison labor under threat of solitary confinement is morally wrong. I also agree that it at the very least skirts the line of slavery.
Where I think we (maybe?) disagree is that prison labor is not in and of itself slavery, nor morally wrong. I'm not even sure that compelled labor is inappropriate as a sentence. Under the right conditions, I tend to see compelled labor as an exemplary sentence because it's less about punishment and more about the repayment of the proverbial debt to society. My criteria for such compelled prison labor amount to:
1. The work should be acceptably safe, at least to common standards of occupational safety.
2. The work should be useful. The goal is not to punish through toil, but to contribute to the collective.
3. The work should benefit the public. It should not be in the service of a private entity.
I may be missing something obvious, but I think this more or less communicates what I have in mind. As an example, I sometimes see inmates picking up litter on the side of the highway. This strikes me as appropriate.
Overall, I find that people conflate the essence of prison labor with the modalities of prison labor. Just because it's implemented in a horrific an inhumane way doesn't invalidate the general principle. Similarly, the fact that prisons can be inhumane doesn't invalidate the principle of depriving an individual of liberty after a fair trial.
It seems like there might be some common ground between us, here. I hope there is :)
This post would earn that.
I lived for years a few miles from a federal penitentiary, I had friends who worked inside. The picture I have is that prison jobs are good and sought after by the inmates. (Versus eternal boredom.)
It's better for the jobs to be meaningful than meaningless, as make-work projects would inevitably be. This is not a broken system, there are no credible politicians or officials calling for change.
I have no respect for someone who thinks forcing people to work as slaves is ok, and I will take the hardest stance possible on this. There is no wiggle room, there can be no compromise. Slavery is morally repugnant.
Here you can buy some products made by American slaves. https://unicor.gov/SopAlphaList.aspx
And here is an advert for slaves you can hire to run your call center. https://unicor.gov/ContactCenterVideo.aspx
Bill and Hillary Clinton had house slaves in the Arkansas governors mansion. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-clintons-had-slav...
I understand this is common practice in many state governors' mansions to have house slaves.
At what point should prisoners do something, anything, to mitigate what damage they've done to the rest of us? Is planting potatoes in the hot sun in Texas too much to ask? Regular law-abiding folks do it after all.
And note: when folks have to plant potatoes in the hot sun as part of prison, recidivism is very low. For whatever reason, though I'd guess that petty criminals are essentially lazy and having to work a real job is more than they want to do. It changes their outlook, when prison work outweighs the benefit of petty theft etc.
There's a moral dimension (who are we to judge etc) and a political one (out-of-control profiteering). But fundamentally, making prisoners work is not a bad thing.
Prostitution is legal in my country, but it'd be mad unethical to force someone into prostitution against their will.
Therefore, it's irrelevant whether "regular people do it voluntarily" - because it's the being forced against their will that's the ethical issue here.
One illustrative example of this maxim is prostitution.
Its not advancing the topic to exclaim breathlessly about loss of rights, when that's the point of prison. We could be talking about misaligned incentives or effectiveness etc.
Training and incentivizing a prisoner to change their behavior (rehabilitation) has a better chance to provide a much larger gain for society in the long run.
> But fundamentally, making prisoners work is not a bad thing.
Forced labor is a violation of human rights. Either these rights are inalienable or they aren't.
Prison guards should work for free? How about maintenance workers? How about contractors who build the prisons? Are they all incentivized to keep people in prisons? What if a government-run prison outsourced management of prison to an outside company - is that OK?
I understand your sentiment, but I think private prisons is one of those non-issues that are blown way out of proportion (like the idea that somehow prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders). Nothing changes if you get rid of private prisons. I suspect you know that because your primary objection is philosophical rather than practical. You just don't like the 'idea' of them.
>If we as a society have to do that, fine, but it's unconscionable that it be a profitable venture.
Again ... WHY?! Vilifying profit as this great evil is a common trope among the internet intelligentsia. In each case though, the individual exempts their wage and savings (i.e. profit) from this rule.
>Prison guards should work for free?
No, but their employment shouldn't be tied to how many prisoners there are.
>How about maintenance workers?
Ditto
>How about contractors who build the prisons?
Hopefully there aren't building companies that would lose out significantly if prisons stopped existing to the point that they'd be incentivized to get more people in prison.
>Are they all incentivized to keep people in prisons?
I'd hope not, but maybe they are, and if so that's awful.
>What if a government-run prison outsourced management of prison to an outside company - is that OK?
It would depend on how it's set up, but I think such things do exist and they're usually not much better than private prisons.
What's the point of all of these irrelevant questions? Their answers don't affect what we should do about companies profiting off of prison labor, at all. They're irrelevant.
>I understand your sentiment, but I think private prisons is one of those non-issues that are blown way out of proportion (like the idea that somehow prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders). Nothing changes if you get rid of private prisons. I suspect you know that because your primary objection is philosophical rather than practical. You just don't like the 'idea' of them.
This point would be better made if you had any sources to back this up, at all. Like, I could theoretically try to rebut these points with sources, but then I'd have effectively gotten gish galloped.
>Vilifying profit as this great evil is a common trope among the internet intelligentsia.
Why are you so quick to defend profit? It's pretty clear to me that allowing companies to profit off of prisoners is a perverse incentive, and the only refutation of that fact you can give is a bunch of irrelevant points, unsourced waxing lyrical about private prisons, and then blandly pointing to "oh you always hate profit". Do you own a prison? Why are you so invested in defending them?
Not irrelevant.
Don't get me wrong, I understand OPs point, but contracting out services is a very normal government function. And the line OP draws is arbitrary and he only does it for the feels.
>Their answers don't affect what we should do about companies profiting off of prison labor, at all.
That's not what's happening here. You're distorting for the purpose of an emotional appeal. A government contracts out a service, that's it. And it isn't a cart blanche. The process of how this services is executed, is still regulated by government agencies. The government sets all the rules.
>This point would be better made if you had any sources to back this up, at all.
I'm not the one making the claim that private prisons are immoral.
>Why are you so quick to defend profit?
This kind of talk comes from disaffected lefties who want to tare down the capitalist system. There is nothing wrong with profit. If you have an issue with some way that some private enterprise runs the business, then talk specifics, instead of impugning a market economy (what's the alternative? the humanitarian disaster that is socialism every time it's been tried?)
>It's pretty clear to me that allowing companies to profit off of prisoners is a perverse incentive
That's not clear AT ALL. That's just you engaging in hyperbole based on a hypothetical situation you dreamed up. You don't even know how the system works. It's just all about feels. It's like being against universal healthcare because it means that society is incentivized to euthanize old people lest they be a drag on tax-payers and society. That certainly is an incentive, but not very likely or reasonable in practice. So claiming a hypothetical incentive, is not evidence anything other than your creativity.
I don't even necessarily disagree with that possibility - sure, work provides meaning in life, it's better than sitting in a cage.
The issue here is the perverse incentives of corporations profiting off of prison labor. Same issue as private prisons - no one should be making money off of keeping people in cages. If we as a society have to do that, fine, but it's unconscionable that it be a profitable venture.