Someone explain to me why those who wronged society shouldn't contribute back to it in recompense. The biggest issue I see with this is that it benefits private corporations, and not the public.

[–] Leg 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because morality is not, and has never been the primary directive of America's prison industrial complex. People still locked up for marijuana charges dropped on them pre-legaliziation did not wrong society in any way. People put in directly as a result of explicitly racist legislation did not wrong society. We all know Stanley didn't steal those sneakers, my man!

America's prison population is insanely inflated, and it's been doing that ever since we freed the slaves by using an amendment that simultaneously designates criminals as slaves. Justifying prison labor is one degree removed from justifying slavery.

[–] dlpkl 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I absolutely agree that America's prison industrial complex and their justice system as a whole is fucked beyond repair. But in a more general sense, taking into account other countries as well, I don't really have an issue with inmates working from prison to contribute back to society. That, along with rehabilitation, should be what they're there for, no?

[–] Leg 2 points 10 months ago

Theory and practice are separate in America's case. We're not rehabilitating criminals as much as we're punishing the poor and disenfranchised for being such. The majority of prisoners aren't doing any prison labor at all, because slavery is the point first and foremost. We're stripping people of freedom, reducing them to less than human, removing opportunities to become more than the bottom caste of society, and telling the country its their fault. And then a very small percentage of that population is given the privilege of working for minimum wage, which I feel says a lot about how awful prison conditions are when we consider how embarrassing minimum wage work is in America.

This is very far from an ideal system, and we seriously need to rethink the purpose of prisons here before we attempt to make any arguments that slave labor is a good thing, if only for a fact that it is still slave labor and not rehabilitative work. Otherwise, what you're really saying is "our slaves ought to work to prove they're capable of being working slaves, as opposed to the subhuman trash we've determined them to inherently be". We've had this very same conversation before, and it was just as fucked up the first time.

[–] Chestnut 1 points 10 months ago

Prisoners having jobs isn't the issue here

The issues are due to, among other things, lack of compensation, protections, and choice. These companies are taking advantage of a vulnerable population.

We don't use prison populations for experiments for similar reasons but since businesses don't have ethics boards there's nothing stopping them from exploiting them.

[–] Maggoty 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Because forced labor isn't recompense. It's torture for profit. They can contribute by learning and growing as people who can then get out and lead legally productive lives. The purpose of the system shouldn't be revenge or exploitation. It should be to create people we want back in society. But we can't get over this idea of punishment, wherein we can just declare somebody a criminal to be punished. For example with marijuana. They could be a perfectly fine person, but God forbid they have the plant equivalent to alcohol around. There's no rehabilitation needed there so all we do is punish them and then suddenly we've created a need for psychological counseling and job help.