> They have also asked that lawmakers amend the Constitution to abolish the 13th Amendment exclusion that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
Slavery work and for profit prisons may incentivise to send as many people as possible to prison. It seems a bad incentive if you are looking for a fair justice system.
This is not a hypothetical problem. Former slave-owning states passed Black Codes that made it easy to convict blacks of things..where they wound up in prisons where they were leased out as workers. Since it mostly happened to blacks, nobody cared much if there was much fairness in the process. And given the economic incentives, it was done fairly liberally.
It costs an average of about $106,000 per year to incarcerate an inmate in prison in California. Working prisoners almost certainly do not produce $106,000 worth of value per year as they typically perform low-skill work. So the state certainly does not have a financial incentive to incarcerate more inmates.
The impact of for profit prisons is hilariously overstated. Only 8% of US prisons are privatized, and it's only in a few select states. The UK, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand all have higher rates of prison privatization.
Correctional workers unions do far more local and federal lobbying than any private prison company. The CCSO fought tooth and nail against pot legalization in CA. There are no private prisons in CA.
Ignoring the effect on prisoners, this drives down wages for low skill people on the outside. No labor should be able to be sold below minimum wage, otherwise it really isn't one.
The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, made slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional in the United States “except as punishment for crime.”
These companies have a well well orchestrated PR effort though that attempts to flip the narrative towards all the good they are doing for these people.
In my mind, both are likely to be true.
Giving prisoners a purpose and minimum wage is far better than prison laundry rates ($0.50 per hour). That said, obfuscating the fact that your customer-facing pricing and incredible margins are based on what we'd all consider to be a form of slave labor is disingenuous a best. Transparency (think home page of their site) vs. back channel PR aimed at arming lobbyists would go a long way.
A prisoner costs the same in funding ($150k/year) as 10 school children ($15k/year). The two million inmates in america cost the same as educating 20 million kids -or increasing funding foe x number of kids who need it most-. Further questions: is the work mandatory? Or is it optional for those looking to shorten their sentence?
So yet another example of the state subsidizing corporations - pay 150k/year for an inmate, and force them to work for a company who gets to keep the profits.
> The ACLU also found that more than 76 percent of incarcerated workers surveyed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics say that “they are required to work or face additional punishments such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation.”
> A prisoner costs the same in funding ($150k/year) as 10 school children ($15k/year). The two million inmates in america cost the same as educating 20 million kids -or increasing funding foe x number of kids who need it most-.
But there is no evidence that increasing educational funding for children will have any positive effect. The correlation between educational funding and educational outcomes in the US is already negative.
America: The Farewell Tour (book) talked about this. There's also the issue of prisoners getting nickel and dimmed on basic supplies, phone calls, etc where many leave in debt.
If the prisons use the revenues for the prison and not for profit, then I don't really see a problem with it. The working and living conditions should be addressed too, but those are a wider spread issue.
And a reminder for everyone that 2-10% of the incarcerated are wrongly convicted. This is where we should be starting in my opinion.
Prisoners also cost a ridiculous amount of public funds -I’ve seen numbers in the $100k-$150k/year range-. Prison work contributes to sentence reduction and contributes to their cost of imprisonment.
I'm not aware of a list, but for most states you can Google "$state correctional enterprises" and the first result will be the "public" corporation that's using prison slave labor.
For example, here are Maryland's[1] and New York's[2]. These corporations may be reselling their slave labor to other companies, so it's difficult to get a complete picture.
Edit: One of the more evil aspects of NY's "corcraft" is that we send prisoners into toxic worksites to clean up asbestos and other hazmat[3].
Honest question: is the wage data from imprisoned workers included in gender pay gap calculations? I could see arguments for and against. Seems like either way you'd have to make this explicit since the vast majority of prisoners are men and the pay is so very low.
These are not "workers" in any common sense, and they are not receiving a "wage" per se. They are slaves, compelled to work under the 13th ammendment, and receive a stipend when they do so. The state could compel them to work even without this money (it's just more efficient to have a somewhat willing slave than one who is fighting you every step of the way).
By contrast, a worker has a choice of who to work for, can negotiate their salary, and can choose not to work.
When analysing data you try to compare like to like. Similar positions at similar career levels & experience in similar economic sectors.
If you want to explorer gender pay gaps while including prison inmates then the proper way to do that would be male inmate pay for similar jobs compared to female inmate pay.
Room and board is not cheap and working to pay for it makes sense IMO. If that’s slavery, then so be it. But that doesn’t excuse other detailed injustices in the system, such as not having medical care or basic necessities.
On a related noted, a friend Dr. Brett Derbes in History is currently compiling his graduate work into a book about prison labor, methods, and output in the Antebellum South and during the Civil War. Some of the things he shared with me in the process have been hard to stomach.
Would it be legally possible in the US circa 2022 and beyond to run a "silent prison" where no talking was allowed among inmates sun up to sun down & when working? That was actually part of a movement in prison management.
I just shake my head and hope for more efforts to rehabilitation and social acceptance such as the FL citizen result indicating a majority would like to restore voting rights to Felons in this modern world. Times can change!
The loss of voting rights is another outreageous detail, breaking fundamental human rights.
Just for comparison: In my home country (Germany) you can only use the right to vote for crimes against democracy (incitement to insurrecton, attempted insurrection, high treason, voting fraud, ...). This additional punishment has to be added by the judge, and it for at most 5 years.
This affects, in a country with 80Mio inhabitants, about 1.4 individuals per year.
For comparison, in the USA, the flagship of western democracy, the democratic human right to vote is taken from Millions (!) of citizens. Most of them black, who'd thunk...
They're paying the penalty of crime. At least they're being given something productive to do, and easing the burden on taxpayers.
Just read about an Illinois father who drowned his three young children to keep his wife from taking them. You think it's slave labor for this man to work below minimum wage while being given a roof, bed, bathroom, and food, at the expense of our taxes?
That's nothing. I just read about an angel who never did anything wrong and volunteered every Sunday reading for blind children, but was put in prison because he didn't have an alibi for a crime that was later shown to have been committed by someone else. Do you really think that he should have been enslaved in order to pay for the cage that imprisoned him?
edit: and about that guy who you mention. Do you really think that there's anything wrong with carving the names of his victims in his back, rubbing the wounds with salt and having him sexually abused by dogs? Wouldn't feel bad about that, right? Why draw a line anywhere if you're not going to draw a line at slavery?
If you're forced to work against your will, yeah, that's slave labor. Blame, culpability, guilt, etc is besides the point. Prison labor in practice is the enslavement of criminals.
edit: people deemed criminals by the state (includes false positives)
I think the definition of slavery doesn't change when people do awful things. I don't think it's great for the economy either.
I think people need to think more about their theory of justice, and about psychology and sociology, and I hope nobody is deciding their ideas about what a justice system should be based on an anecdote like that.
The idea of justice as retributive punishment, a penalty you pay, is older than the bible.
And Beccaria was writing centuries ago, Howard Zehr and John Rawls are both influential 20th century thinkers who had important ideas on what a more just society should look like.
I recently read the The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind by Jan Lucassen that covered this (and all the other types) of labor in great, if also sleep-inducing depth.
If you like something a bit longer than this article about "unfree labour", want to know what "corvee labor" is, learn the difference between serfdom and slavery, and be depressed about how much slavery there still is in the world, this is a great book for you.
The embarrassment of it all is this: a study of global prison systems and their efficacy tells us what our governments should be doing. If we want to improve recidivism rates, we can look around at this world and do something better. If we want to inflict more punishment, there’s no end to the examples of inhumane torture. If we want to turn it into a profitable big-business slavery farm and factory system, we can find free-market exemplars.
We, our government, need to temper the amoral economic system if we wish to avoid having slavery-adjacent for-profit businesses running amuck on our land.
Do you work in tech in any capacity? Then you work for a company that uses, or at least benefits from, forced labor on many levels, all the way down to child slaves being forced to mine rare earth minerals by militant juntas. If you don't, you probably purchase and use technology, feeding one of the many economic sectors that depend on forced or coerced labor. Clothing? Slavery. Agriculture? Slavery. Manufacturing? Slavery.
When people say there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, this is what they mean. No one's hands are clean here. It's a problem something as simple as boycotting won't fix, because you would have to boycott everything - the entire system runs on blood and violence, top to bottom.
This thread offers us an opportunity to understand why it does. Look at how many comments ordain the practice out of a callous disregard for those who incur the unfortunate label of "criminal." A criminal can be anything from a man who kills a child to a homeless man who was caught sleeping in the wrong place too many times, but this nuance doesn't seem to factor into the thinking of supporters of modern day slavery.
I've also noticed that people carry with them a suppressed anger that comes from being forced to follow the law and perform all the duties of a functional citizen. Anyone who breaks the law is not enduring the burdens of citizenship as they are, and so the "criminal" becomes a virtuous outlet for their suppressed rage. The criminal thus becomes a kind of scapegoat.
The cost of imprisoning people is subsidized by the government. Who profits off of their labor though?
When my mother was in prison she worked for a private company for well below our states minimum wage. So her employer profited off of her nearly free labor.
[+] [-] hourago|3 years ago|reply
Slavery work and for profit prisons may incentivise to send as many people as possible to prison. It seems a bad incentive if you are looking for a fair justice system.
[+] [-] btilly|3 years ago|reply
https://innocenceproject.org/13th-amendment-slavery-prison-l... documents that it still happens in places like Louisiana.
[+] [-] olalonde|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] missedthecue|3 years ago|reply
Correctional workers unions do far more local and federal lobbying than any private prison company. The CCSO fought tooth and nail against pot legalization in CA. There are no private prisons in CA.
[+] [-] willcipriano|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twiddling|3 years ago|reply
The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, made slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional in the United States “except as punishment for crime.”
[+] [-] schwinn140|3 years ago|reply
https://therealnews.com/corporations-are-making-millions-of-...
These companies have a well well orchestrated PR effort though that attempts to flip the narrative towards all the good they are doing for these people.
In my mind, both are likely to be true.
Giving prisoners a purpose and minimum wage is far better than prison laundry rates ($0.50 per hour). That said, obfuscating the fact that your customer-facing pricing and incredible margins are based on what we'd all consider to be a form of slave labor is disingenuous a best. Transparency (think home page of their site) vs. back channel PR aimed at arming lobbyists would go a long way.
[+] [-] someluccc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enragedcacti|3 years ago|reply
you know, incentives like allowing the prison to profit off of slave labor.
[+] [-] tsimionescu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markovbot|3 years ago|reply
> The ACLU also found that more than 76 percent of incarcerated workers surveyed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics say that “they are required to work or face additional punishments such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation.”
[+] [-] anonymoushn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BeetleB|3 years ago|reply
This is addressed in the (short) article.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|3 years ago|reply
But there is no evidence that increasing educational funding for children will have any positive effect. The correlation between educational funding and educational outcomes in the US is already negative.
[+] [-] kolbe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] failrate|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] googlryas|3 years ago|reply
telling them to dig a hole: slavery
[+] [-] blobbers|3 years ago|reply
Criminals have shown their behavior to be counter productive to the laws of our society.
[+] [-] cpursley|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
And a reminder for everyone that 2-10% of the incarcerated are wrongly convicted. This is where we should be starting in my opinion.
[+] [-] someluccc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markovbot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodruffw|3 years ago|reply
For example, here are Maryland's[1] and New York's[2]. These corporations may be reselling their slave labor to other companies, so it's difficult to get a complete picture.
Edit: One of the more evil aspects of NY's "corcraft" is that we send prisoners into toxic worksites to clean up asbestos and other hazmat[3].
[1]: https://www.mce.md.gov/
[2]: https://corcraft.ny.gov/
[3]: https://corcraft.ny.gov/abatement-services
[+] [-] booleandilemma|3 years ago|reply
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/09/new-york-is-making-hand-...
[+] [-] Vladimof|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankharv|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crackercrews|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsimionescu|3 years ago|reply
By contrast, a worker has a choice of who to work for, can negotiate their salary, and can choose not to work.
[+] [-] ineedasername|3 years ago|reply
If you want to explorer gender pay gaps while including prison inmates then the proper way to do that would be male inmate pay for similar jobs compared to female inmate pay.
[+] [-] otikik|3 years ago|reply
You didn’t end slavery, you just moved it to special buildings
[+] [-] therealdrag0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rcrestomods|3 years ago|reply
Would it be legally possible in the US circa 2022 and beyond to run a "silent prison" where no talking was allowed among inmates sun up to sun down & when working? That was actually part of a movement in prison management.
I just shake my head and hope for more efforts to rehabilitation and social acceptance such as the FL citizen result indicating a majority would like to restore voting rights to Felons in this modern world. Times can change!
[+] [-] froh|3 years ago|reply
Just for comparison: In my home country (Germany) you can only use the right to vote for crimes against democracy (incitement to insurrecton, attempted insurrection, high treason, voting fraud, ...). This additional punishment has to be added by the judge, and it for at most 5 years.
This affects, in a country with 80Mio inhabitants, about 1.4 individuals per year.
For comparison, in the USA, the flagship of western democracy, the democratic human right to vote is taken from Millions (!) of citizens. Most of them black, who'd thunk...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement#Germany
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/deutsches-strafrecht-wah...
[+] [-] hereme888|3 years ago|reply
Just read about an Illinois father who drowned his three young children to keep his wife from taking them. You think it's slave labor for this man to work below minimum wage while being given a roof, bed, bathroom, and food, at the expense of our taxes?
[+] [-] pessimizer|3 years ago|reply
edit: and about that guy who you mention. Do you really think that there's anything wrong with carving the names of his victims in his back, rubbing the wounds with salt and having him sexually abused by dogs? Wouldn't feel bad about that, right? Why draw a line anywhere if you're not going to draw a line at slavery?
[+] [-] ssalka|3 years ago|reply
edit: people deemed criminals by the state (includes false positives)
[+] [-] WesternWind|3 years ago|reply
I think people need to think more about their theory of justice, and about psychology and sociology, and I hope nobody is deciding their ideas about what a justice system should be based on an anecdote like that.
The idea of justice as retributive punishment, a penalty you pay, is older than the bible.
Have folks heard of Beccaria, Howard Zehr, and John Rawls? Here's a short blog post about Beccaria, whom Voltaire said everyone should read. https://www.exurbe.com/on-crimes-and-punishments-and-beccari...
And Beccaria was writing centuries ago, Howard Zehr and John Rawls are both influential 20th century thinkers who had important ideas on what a more just society should look like.
[+] [-] danielodievich|3 years ago|reply
If you like something a bit longer than this article about "unfree labour", want to know what "corvee labor" is, learn the difference between serfdom and slavery, and be depressed about how much slavery there still is in the world, this is a great book for you.
https://www.amazon.com/Story-Work-New-History-Humankind/dp/0... for the book, https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2021/07/22/a-long-v... for the in-depth review.
[+] [-] moistly|3 years ago|reply
Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html
We, our government, need to temper the amoral economic system if we wish to avoid having slavery-adjacent for-profit businesses running amuck on our land.
[+] [-] archhn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hunglee2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mywittyname|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krapp|3 years ago|reply
When people say there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, this is what they mean. No one's hands are clean here. It's a problem something as simple as boycotting won't fix, because you would have to boycott everything - the entire system runs on blood and violence, top to bottom.
[+] [-] azinman2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ejb999|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] telaelit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archhn|3 years ago|reply
I've also noticed that people carry with them a suppressed anger that comes from being forced to follow the law and perform all the duties of a functional citizen. Anyone who breaks the law is not enduring the burdens of citizenship as they are, and so the "criminal" becomes a virtuous outlet for their suppressed rage. The criminal thus becomes a kind of scapegoat.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|3 years ago|reply
So these $11B do not come close to making it profitable to lock more people up.
¹ https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/the-economic-co...
[+] [-] sosodev|3 years ago|reply
When my mother was in prison she worked for a private company for well below our states minimum wage. So her employer profited off of her nearly free labor.