UNICOR is a wholly owned government corporation not a private company. Average cost to taxpayers per incarcerated person is about $100K. So let them work for free up until that amount.

But even if it were private, how ethically is this worse than private companies making billions building weapons of mass destruction? Or platforms of mass surveillance?

Unless you actually use a WMD, the moral cost of simply having it in storage is nothing.

I disapprove of my government using WMDs and I also disapprove of my government enslaving murderers. Whom benefits is besides the point.

Who said it was worse? They can all be unethical.

So they all should venture into software to recapture the value as fast as possible?

> Average cost to taxpayers per incarcerated person is about $100K

Seems to he false? For Federal inmates anyway..

It was just $35k back in 2019. So it can’t be much more than half of what you’re claiming these days.

* https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/01/2021-18...

> how ethically is this worse than private companies making billions building weapons of mass destruction? Or platforms of mass surveillance?

Doesn’t seem to be even tangentially related?

Or less - see Texas, where inmates receive no pay for work.

yes

I can hear the companies complaining now … no one wants to be an inmate anymore.