I think charging the same rate for labor makes sense so it’s not anti competitive business. But why should the prisoners pocket all the money when our tax dollars are housing them?

Because they have no option to tell their landlord to fuck off and go somewhere else.

Sure, as long as it’s a reasonable rate for what they’re getting. I wouldn’t pay more than $300/mo to live in a tiny concrete room with shitty cafeteria food and no visitors. Maybe less.

Lol that’s the daily cost per prisoner :)

Prisoners did not choose to go to prison, therefore we can't ask them to pay for the costs of putting them in prison. Society decides that it is best to lock some people up; therefore it's also the society that should to pay the cost of keeping them locked up.

Prisons are expensive, which is one reason why we should really only lock up people when there is no other way. If someone is not a danger to society, we shouldn't lock them up.

Um, you make it sound like prisoners are just helpless beings that have no agency and are fully passively pushed into a situation. Society didn't ask the prisoners to commit crimes either, but they (mostly) did anyway. Society has no choice but to impose a very unproductive form of punishment, and needs to find a way to get something out of it.

The main reason to be against prison labor is that it creates perverse incentives to not rehabilitate prisoners (even though participation in labor may help with the rehabilitation process). There's also a risk that cheap prison labor undercuts legitimate businesses. Prisoners also can't be entrusted with anything outside menial and low-impact labor, and as a result the amount of productivity they can offer is really limited.

But requiring prisoners to work partially for their own food and shelter in itself shouldn't be that controversial, especially when they are convicted of serious crime.

So which society are you living in? Every statistic shows that minorities get much harsher sentences, are represented by an underfunded public defenders office, are coerced to plea bargain (95%) are harassed more by police etc. The entire criminal Justice system is corrupt to the core.

Let’s not even talk about the “War on drugs” that becomes “treat drug abuse as a medical condition” when it happens in “rural communities”

> Society has no choice but to impose a very unproductive form of punishment

No choice? That’s pretty laughably untrue and flies in the face of all the evidence about incarceration being totally rubbish as a punishment.

Incarceration is not necessarily effective but what alternative can you propose, as a scalable form of punishment? How do you define "totally rubbish"?

We could start by not prosecuting done crimes. Why do you go to jail for possessing marijuana, prostitution, crossed a border without permission, or because you are awaiting trial? (Which is why most people are in jail.)

We start by taking these hundreds of thousands of people who really shouldn't be in jail or prison at all and ask, "what programs would help them from not doing this again? What's the root cause we can address?" And we start implementing social programs that will help support, educate, and reform folks.

Some combination of:

1) Remove a lot of drug crimes from the books and clear convictions. Many of these shouldn't be punishable at all.

2) invest in housing, food, and mental health support to catch folks before they turn to low level theft. Give them to people convicted as well. If you change their situations, many will never need to commit crimes again.

3) Levy fines, garnish wages while providing support. Restrict movement if needed by requiring folks stay in contact with a parole officer or mental health support professional.

Etc

Most "criminals" are folks who are in positions where we left them few choices as a society.

Most of what you're saying is that we should select prisoners better and avoid creating more criminals as a society. The principle I agree. However this part is completely non-sequitur, as the point of contention is whether there's something better than prison to deal with after-the-fact criminals. The only alternative you give is a very soft form of restricting movement, which is devoid of reality for many forms of crime from petty theft and embezzlement to rape and murder.

The goal isn't punishment, it's rehabilitation.

Inmates are one of the largest workforce of CalFire when they need to deal with large forest fires. I don’t CalFire would be able to scale up to the task if they didn’t have this resource. Allegedly it is volunteer-based and you need to meet certain requirements and take training to participate. I’d say this kind of work is above low-impact.

Two articles that bear reading:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-history-of-califo...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2021/02/16/federal-...

This is great though ironically one of the less humane ways to utilize prison labor. To be entrusted with work like that you'd have to have a decent record for a criminal, for example serving for a less serious crime or have made good progress in rehabilitation. But the work is more grueling and dangerous than most other kinds of prison labor.

I see your point. Seems pretty subjective either way. For example, “I didn’t choose for my car to be towed so the cost should be paid by the tower.”

But to some extent maybe it’s moot because most prisoners would never be able to cover the full cost of their stay. I wonder though if there was a sort of coding-bootcamp-like profit sharing model with inmates where the gov tried to maximize their economic productivity they might end up getting trained for better and more humane jobs, trades, nursing, coding, winwin.

Should they not also pay for their food and housing, then?

Most prisoners are charged a per-diem for food and housing.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/04/1084452251/the-vast-majority-...

Sure, but then jack up the fines to account for the cost of keeping them.

I don't think it's reasonable to fine someone for the cost of imprisoning them.

Taking 30% of wages for housing and some for food, maybe. But not a fine.

I’m saying I’m fine with forced labor being part of the consequences.

Like if you steal a car, six months working a shitty job while locked in prison seems appropriate. The money shouldn’t go to you, it should go to defer the cost of catching, prosecuting, and housing you.

We even have “community service” which is literally forced labor for zero compensation, are people unhappy with that?

Community service typically doesn't also come with loss of liberty. As someone who has been sentenced to community service but got to stay out of incarceration because of a stupid teenager move, it's effectively a different punishment.