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Forced labor is slavery, no matter how you put it. The fact of the matter is the 13th amendment needs to be fixed.

by leeter 9y ago

watwut 9y ago
Slavery was much worst, realistically. Forced labor is bad, but the comparison is whitewashing conditions under which slaves lived.
ben509 9y ago
Yes, it's slavery, that's the point, just as prison itself is imprisonment. We have a retributive system of justice, the point of a sentence is to punish you by harming you. You do a bad thing, society exacts retribution by doing a bad thing to you. Fines, prison, forced labor, the death penalty are all punishments, and if you don't want those to happen to you, don't commit crimes.
- mjevans 9y ago
  The problem is those punitive actions are not considered from a more enlightened position of causing a net positive to society. A better approach retrains the individual and helps society by enforcing a mutually beneficial result rather than administering some measured form of torture.
  - ben509 9y ago
    Retraining the individual requires that the individual wants to be retrained. That's certainly something to offer, but a sentence is something you're forcing on a person.
    - mjevans 9y ago
      For it to be effective, yes. You seem to be arguing the details of the implementation rather than the goal of what the implementation should solve. Individuals (and circumstances) are different, there should be plenty of discretion and possibly review to ensure that solutions are measurably effective.
- leeter 9y ago
  Have you considered that punishment may not actually create a positive outcome for society as a whole? Generally speaking most people come out of prison as hardened criminals and not reformed. Prison historically has been intended to kill the prisoners prior to release. Either we need accept we're trying to kill people or we need to realize that punishing people doesn't work in most cases and instead work on CORRECTING people (it is the department of the corrections after all). TL;DR; retributive punishment is useless and produces worse results.

Forced labor is slavery, no matter how you put it. The fact of the matter is the 13th amendment needs to be fixed.

by leeter 9y ago

Forced labor is slavery, no matter how you put it. The fact of the matter is the 13th amendment needs to be fixed.

Slavery was much worst, realistically. Forced labor is bad, but the comparison is whitewashing conditions under which slaves lived.

ben509 9y ago

Yes, it's slavery, that's the point, just as prison itself is imprisonment. We have a retributive system of justice, the point of a sentence is to punish you by harming you. You do a bad thing, society exacts retribution by doing a bad thing to you. Fines, prison, forced labor, the death penalty are all punishments, and if you don't want those to happen to you, don't commit crimes.

mjevans 9y ago
The problem is those punitive actions are not considered from a more enlightened position of causing a net positive to society. A better approach retrains the individual and helps society by enforcing a mutually beneficial result rather than administering some measured form of torture.
- ben509 9y ago
  Retraining the individual requires that the individual wants to be retrained. That's certainly something to offer, but a sentence is something you're forcing on a person.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    For it to be effective, yes. You seem to be arguing the details of the implementation rather than the goal of what the implementation should solve. Individuals (and circumstances) are different, there should be plenty of discretion and possibly review to ensure that solutions are measurably effective.
leeter 9y ago
Have you considered that punishment may not actually create a positive outcome for society as a whole? Generally speaking most people come out of prison as hardened criminals and not reformed. Prison historically has been intended to kill the prisoners prior to release. Either we need accept we're trying to kill people or we need to realize that punishing people doesn't work in most cases and instead work on CORRECTING people (it is the department of the corrections after all). TL;DR; retributive punishment is useless and produces worse results.