How corporations buy and food made with prison labor

Re:How corporations buy and food made with prison labor by throwaway894345 on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @10:09AM (#27208857)

I mean, that’s one hypothesis among many. An alternate hypothesis is that prison should be uncomfortable and unpleasant as a deterrent. I think it’s overly simplistic to say that punishment is about suffering—parents might punish a child for bad behavior, but the goal isn’t to make them suffer (and indeed being grounded is hardly “suffering”) but rather to teach them good behavior. So we can at least say that in some cases punishment is compatible with rehabilitation. Notably, there can be a kind of dignity in discipline, and I think there’s a subtle distinction between that kind of dignified correction and cruelty.

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).

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Re:How corporations buy and food made with prison labor by pmoriarty on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @11:50AM (#27210315)

"An alternate hypothesis is that prison should be uncomfortable and unpleasant as a deterrent."

But countless studies have shown that it's not an effective deterrent.

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Re:How corporations buy and food made with prison labor by throwaway894345 on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @12:27PM (#27210840)

I'm not sure they've shown that prison is ineffective as a deterrent, but I've heard of studies which indicate that returns on increasingly punitive measures diminish. "Prison is a not an effective deterrent" means that no one factors it into their calculus about whether or not to commit a crime, and that seems very hard to believe.

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.

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