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The USA has ~5% of the world's population but 22% of the world's prisoners. Financial profiting from prisoners: Prison Labor - paid $0.93-0.16/hr California Pr

• wonderous 9y ago
  "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Legally speaking seems like in the US that prisoners are slaves. SOURCE: https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.htm...
  • pessimizer 9y ago
    Yup, it's literally and constitutionally slavery.
  • wallflower 9y ago
    13th is a Netflix documentary about this. Warning: It may be quite difficult to watch. https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741 https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741
    • yjgyhj 9y ago
      Is there a DRM-free way to watch this?
      • kefka 9y ago
        That appears to work. https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/16102495/13th.2016.NF.WEBRip https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/16102495/13th.2016.NF.WEBRi...
    • Spellman 9y ago
      Arguably also very liberal biased (speaking as a liberal-leaning individual). Much of this theory is based on The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander which first popularized the idea of how we utilized the prison system to intentionally discriminate and keep locked up (for free labor) the african-american populations. There recently was a book discussing a different explanation. In this book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform by John Pfaff, Pfaff argues it's the perverse incentives of prosecutors and judges that are pushing up the prison population. I don't know enough to say which is true, just wanted to get awareness of the competing ideas on the topic. But definitely there's some really perverse incentives to lock people up for free labor. And, as the documentary accurately points out, it's all built in to the Constitution.
      • anigbrowl 9y ago
        Just because they're different doesn't mean they're incompatible. How do you think those perverse incentives came to exist in the first place? I'm amazed at the mental gymnastics some people will go through to avoid engaging with the fact that some other people are bigoted, selfish, and outright evil. Nor does the existence of perverse incentives mean that those presented with them are helpless to do otherwise than go along with them. That is an abdication of moral responsibility. If you are presented with a perverse incentive that you feel is incompatible with your personal moral calculus, then it is your duty to reject it. To go along with it and then say you had no other choice is no different from the behavior of the 'good Germans' described by Hannah Arendt in The Banality of Evil. It's literally the exercise of privilege. Liberalism only works so long as people are invested in the integrity of the institutions which underpin it. When those institutions are corrupted, liberalism becomes complicit in oppression. This is how democracies devolve into autocracies.
    • smartbit 9y ago
      Thank you. Great tip.
  • danielam 9y ago
    If hard labor is the punishment, and the punishment is commensurate with the crime, then no, it's not slavery. Slavery obtains under different conditions.
    • grasshopperpurp 9y ago
      If the boots taste like candy, you're really licking a lollipop! If locking people up and forcing them to work is making people billions, it's slavery. Period.
    • throwawayjava 9y ago
      It's certainly involuntary servitude, and I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference between that and slavery. Also, the word "except" is our key hint here.
      • danielam 9y ago
        It is involuntary (all punishment is!), but it's not servitude in the same sense that slavery is. If you want to call that "slavery" nonetheless, that's up to you, but you'd be equivocating. There is a difference between slavery as an institution of unjust forced submission and "slavery" as just punishment for crimes committed.
        • hajile 9y ago
          The fundamental issue is that the majority (or the oligarchy) decide what is "wrong". I seriously doubt (and see no evidence for the idea) that the US is so lawless that we can have almost a quarter of all prisoners in the entire world while only having a fraction of its population. This speaks strongly to the idea that huge amounts of wrongful imprisonment occurs and (as a logical consequence) these people are slaves against their will without their having done anything worthy of punishment.
        • conanbatt 9y ago
          > There is a difference between slavery as an institution of unjust forced submission and "slavery" as just punishment for crimes committed. The difference is solely the standing law. During the nazi regimen (godwin's law, but really) many of the appalling things they did were legal. It was legal to execute, and it was legal to do forced labor. Slavery was always legal, that was the problem all along! A slave could not physically escape without the fear of unpunished retribution.
  • logfromblammo 9y ago
    From my strict reading of the amendment, persons convicted of crimes are not automatically slaves, but could become such if the judge saw fit to include that in sentencing. That's why the Hollywood version sometimes has the judge say, "I sentence you to ten years hard labor at Camp Rockcrusher." If they just said "ten years confinement in Oubliette Prison," then the prisoner would not be compelled to do anything against their will. Instead, we oversentence criminals, and use the low-wage prison jobs as a carrot to reduce their prison time. You can work for peanuts and get out early, or you can serve your entire sentence. The net effect is the same. The rent-seeking profit motive makes the criminal justice system more cruel and exploitative.
  • bighi 9y ago
    Well, it's not like the justice system in the US cares for the constitution. Or even the laws.
• theBobBob 9y ago
  That really is simply disgusting. Keeping people imprisoned mainly so that they can be used as a source of cheap (borderline free) labour is pure exploitation. It really doesn't seem very many steps above slavery. I know that at least in theory people are in prison because they have done something wrong so that them working to in part pay for the cost of their incarceration seems justified but if they should be released but are only being kept as cheap labour then I think that that argument goes completely out the window.
  • vidarh 9y ago
    I don't think it is any steps above slavery. In Norway, partly for this reason, prisoners have the legal right to choose education instead of work. If part of their punishment is meant to be financial restitution, then I believe that should be spelled out in the judgement, and they should be paid market wages for whatever work they do, and that should be garnished accordingly and kept out of the prison system entirely so there is no profit motive to keep people in, and so that the amounts are transparent.
    • jorvi 9y ago
      Hell, the European system (rehabilitative instead of punitive) works so well our prisons in The Netherlands are so empty Norway sends us some of their prisoners, presumably because you guys don't want to 'anticipate' by building more jails. We even used some jails as temporary refugee shelter (for those horrified: prisons in The Netherlands are a lot less stark than America).
      • vidarh 9y ago
        It was somewhat amusing that one of the rented prisons is called Norgerhaven. Norge is the Norwegian name for Norway, and in old/conservative Norwegian, "have" is garden (in modern Norwegian it'd be "hage". In Norwegian it halfway sounds like someone who doesn't know Norwegian is trying to say "garden for Norwegians". On a more serious note: The Norwegian prisoners in question actually have to volunteer, and the department of justice have made a "marketing" video to entice prisoners, which led to complaints from prisoners when it turned out they'd exaggerated a bit (some stuff was not ready when the first prisoners arrived). Overall the attitude is very different to the US one. > We even used some jails as temporary refugee shelter (for those horrified: prisons in The Netherlands are a lot less stark than America). Same in Norway. Low security Norwegian prisons have fences no more than normal garden fences for example - they're there to show the prisoners how far they are allowed to go, not to physically stop them, as the type of prisoners sent to those places are more concerned about getting it over and done with than escaping. I think that is an essential element: To give people a chance wherever possible to show they can take responsibility. More serious prisoners too can demonstrate they can be trusted and are serious about rehabilitation and get moved to prisoners without barriers that will actually hold them. After all, if we can't trust them the day before their release, there's no reason why we should suddenly trust them the day after... I'm happy we let these prisoners gradually prove that they are likely to have reformed. And the rehabilitation rates thankfully reflect that people respond to being treated humanely. Maybe one day America gets over its mentality of vengeance.
• Retric 9y ago
  There is nothing cheap about this labor, they are paying companies 70k to house someone so they can pay them 20c/h.
  • csmark 9y ago
    Any OSHA or safety regulations don't apply to inmate working conditions. They are literally beyond the reach of the protection of the government in the "workplace."
  • manquer 9y ago
    well you are paying the 70k, the labour is benefitting some one else
  • crpatino 9y ago
    The cheapest kind of cheap is the one where you reap the benefits but make someone else pay the bill. And make that bill extra expensive, to add insult to injury.
    • Retric 9y ago
      Except it's the state paying for both prisoners and firefighting. So, it's more stealing money from your own left pocket.
      • crpatino 9y ago
        Corruption 101 - As a government official, run an effective bu ineficcient operation, then position your friends and family to benefit indirectly from it: easy and secure jobs, contracts to provide supplies at overprice, real state appreciation, etc.
• cubano 9y ago
  At the risk of being boorish about the subject... I was recently released from Las Vegas County Jail (CCDC) where all sentenced inmates, myself included, are forced, by state law, to "work" in some manner in the jail. In this case, work consisted of 11-hour shifts, 6 days a week, of ultra back-breaking kitchen work. We were not even allowed to have water cups anywhere outside the break room. They actually yelled faster! faster! as we ran "the line"...I never could get over that one. All that was missing were the whips and the guards with shotguns spitting tobacco. We processed approx. 10 thousand trays per day, and were constantly harassed and threatened big time by the corporate kitchen staff in charge. It wasn't enough that we were clocking 60-70 hours a week for the grand total of 1 extra tray per meal (not every meal grant you, just the ones we were working during), but you could actually get thrown in the box and lose gain time (more days in jail) for eating a cookie or some trivial such thing. If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence. I did the math...2 shifts of 28 workers 365 days a year...with overtime and all that, approx $50k per week($2.6mil/year) of free basically coerced slave labor for the Aero-mark Corporation that ran the kitchen. [edits]
  • 77pt77 9y ago
    > If you refused to work, you were put in the box and 5 days were added to your sentence. Don't you need a judge to determine that?
    • bbctol 9y ago
      Prisons have a certain amount of gaintime (small reductions in sentencing) that's there to be withheld at the prison's discretion, specifically in order to motivate work and good behavior.
    • kodt 9y ago
      They aren't actually adding anything to your sentence, but are just taking away 'gain time' that has been earned for good behavior. You can accrue gain time and eventually earn early release. However, they can also take this away for bad behavior. Obviously some sentences are not eligible to earn gain time.
    • 9y ago
• chrshawkes 9y ago
  Well we have laws and plenty of dangerous people who belong in these prisons. Another thing to consider is other countries will execute their prisoners over drug dealing where we put them in prison. There is also the fact that we are the third most populated country and a melting pot combined with plenty of terrible neighborhoods of all ethnicity's.
  • tdb7893 9y ago
    European countries are often similarly diverse and don't have the same prison population. Also, when you are talking about numbers in percents of population the amount of executions to make a real difference in population would be staggering and border on genocide, which, outside of a few exceptions, isn't the case.
    • lazerpants 9y ago
      Actually, European countries are not nearly as diverse as the USA with the exception of the UK. The best analysis I can find on the subject is [1]. I disagree with the point I think chrshawkes is making but the diversity claim is valid. 1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level#List_based_on_Alesina_et_al.27s_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...
  • sgift 9y ago
    > Another thing to consider is other countries will execute their prisoners over drug dealing where we put them in prison. You can almost always find someone doing something even more horrific. That's a pretty low bar, which is usually not seen as sufficient.
• tomjen3 9y ago
  The commissary right for a prison should probably be a public auction, although that would put more money into the states coffers, not give much lower prices.
• jaggi1 9y ago
  It surprises me that US government has not yet started harvesting organs of the prisoners. Why does someone who has been sentenced for 20 years in prison need his extra kidney for ? > 30% of California forest firefighters are prisoners .. The state argued against parole credit for these prisoners as it would draw down the labor force and lead to depletion of the firefighter force. I guess if some of them die fighting fire we as a society are told to think "good riddance". Lack of compassion for those wronged by the state is a Achilles heel of US civilization. It is going to cause a damage down further as people's respect for law erodes over time.
  • rdtsc 9y ago
    I can totally see them doing it. It would be the same as the GP described. It wouldn't be compulsory but those that don't agree get their good time reduced, get written up, marked for non-cooperation and so on. In other words there enough mechanisms for this to happen.
• paulryanrogers 9y ago
  I'd like to hope the US is just better at catching criminals than the rest of the world. Sadly these conflicts of interest make that the less likely explanation.
• bashinator 9y ago
  > cheap labor Let's call it what it is - slave labor. Text of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."