7 ms·

How is it moral for people to get rich from imprisonment?

aaron-lebo 8y ago
How is it moral to make money off of selling shoddy products and services to people and not actually holding up your end of the deal? But that happens all the time. It's the way of business for many companies. Coinbase takes money from its customers and doesn't give them anything back for months at a time while itself becoming more valuable by the day. That's not moral, but they'll have a front page posts over the next month, celebrating some venture of theirs. Or some CEO who is known for regularly exaggerating/lying or calling people they don't agree with slurs will have people rabidly defending their honor when that rich person has done nothing for them. That's not moral. When the top of society is greedy, you can't expect the lowest rungs to be any better. We barely care about people if they are contributing members of society (unless you've got money), we sure as hell aren't gonna care about prisoners. It's just hypercapitalism. You sound surprised, but it's business. If you can exploit, you do exploit as far as legally possible and then make excuses later. I bet you the contractors have some great justifications for why what they do isn't immoral and is even good and necessary. Short answer: it's not moral, but we're greedy and it's hard to admit that.
- felix_nagaand 8y ago
  Young teens to thirty somethings that seem interested in social issues aren't terribly interested. This disparity is known as virtue signaling and was pioneered by religion, politicians, and most recently, business. Now it's even trickling down to poor people. It's fashionable to lament the tragedy of the socially poor. Fashionable in much the same way as handing out jobs to the incompetent because their skin is a certain color or their sex is outside the norm. These tactics do little to solve problems, but go a long way towards increasing social divides between percieved groups. Instead of granting jobs to those incapable of meeting the standards their "less diverse" colleagues have we should be rallying for universal health care, workers rights (regardless of protected classes), universal higher education/ trades schools that track straight from high school and are continually redesigned with knowledge of leading educational research, and a massive increase in public funding for pk-12 education that does not unfairly benefit self segregated communities by wealth as a result of land taxes.
  - gt_ 8y ago
    I am really with you on this, but I’d assert there’s more to it. It’s tough to blame them. Surely awareness is lacking but even if it isn’t, we’ve got a system in which your own well-being depends on being part of a social circle. The economics of associating one’s self with issues which are themselves associated with low-income or low-popularity is not seen as an option. On top of that, there is virtually unlimited liberal political funding for virtue signaling because it’s a very indirect way to signal compassion without economic action to back it up. This plays really well to middle and upper class people and in-turn lower class people seeking to mingle with higher classes adopt the behavior. The fact of the matter is that freedom of expression is massively contingent on economic security; and at some point even moreso than education. Socialized securities are America’s greatest hope at the moment. Recommended reading: Mark Fisher, Pierre Bourdieu Recommended voting: DSA-endorsed
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
whatshisface 8y ago
Another question might be, how isn't it? In every other area of society, if someone is very good at arranging things to achieve some widely valued goal, we think it's OK for them to get rich. If someone is the best jailer in the world would it not be reasonable to reward them? Operating a prison is a lot of work. The problem is that they are being rewarded for doing the wrong things, there's no problem with rewarding them in general.
- jrhurst 8y ago
  "If someone is the best jailer in the world would it not be reasonable to reward them?" I mean if we're gonna bring up this anology we've gotta figure out what a "best failer in the world" even means? What is the value the jailer creates? How do define a high performance jailer over just a nominal performant jailer? If there is no extra value produced by the best jailer in the world then we are over paying the best jailer in the world.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Every industry in the world has to address those same questions when organizing itself, although in this case the government is (and by extension we are) involved in the decisions. I would put forward cost-effectiveness and maintaining order as a couple of good qualities that prison operators should be rewarded for but I'm sure we could come up with many others.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    > What is the value the jailer creates? People don't fear being sent to the hospital over an off-color remark. Thieves don't hold honest folk at their mercy. Arsonists haven't done an exact recreation of Sherman's March, or anything similar. Serial murderers haven't killed off any non-negligible part of the population. That's the value jailers create.
  - bdcravens 8y ago
    There's value in reducing recidivism and escapes. More practically, jails are understaffed, and there's tremendous political value in making Joe Public feel safer.
pasbesoin 8y ago
IIRC, one of the things more strongly correlated with rehabilitation is contact with family, friends, a personal support system. Such contact should be fostered, not hindered. Even if you believe in "punishment" rather than "rehabilitation", as the purpose of prison (a pretty cynical attitude, that you should examine more thoroughly including its many implications and ramifications), what do you expect these people to do when they get out? Maybe some expense for oversight is warranted, e.g. to prevent leaders from continuing to direct criminal activity while incarcerated. I don't believe that's what's going on. (Nor, with the ridiculously priced and constrained phone calls.) It's just profiteering. And letting people -- private organizations -- make money off of prisons, just encourages more prisons. Given how "free market" many of the prominent "punishment" people seem to be, this should be obvious, even to them.
- rectang 8y ago
  > what do you expect these people to do when they get out? In the US: Continue to serve as villains and "others" whose suffering pleases a bloodthirsty segment of our population.
- rhizome 8y ago
  Even if you believe in "punishment" rather than "rehabilitation" You don't have to soften your point with this, rehabilitation hasn't been a component of US prison policy since the mid-70s.
- mmirate 8y ago
  > what do you expect these people to do when they get out? Two possibilities: 1. They find some legal way to sustain themselves, in which case - because society is currently biased against excons - society can easily negotiate a good bargain. (unless the excon is able to hide their past from prospective employers) 2. They do something bad again, and get caught again, and there's approximately 300-million-to-one odds that the victim of their nastiness-of-choice, isn't me. (Or more, because I don't live in downtown goddamn Chicago.) A win-win to me, it seems.
56chan4 8y ago
I could argue the technological panopticon is a prison for the enlightened. Likewise how is moral for charity CEO's, politicians or any other head of a hierarchical in structure enterprise moral? Is money even moral? It certain makes the exchange of goods and services easier within a domain, but does the constant need for inflation of the money supply make it simply a ponzi scheme by another name? Perhaps Bitcoins is the 21st digital gold it was designed to be, considering its finite supply on a finite planet, helps to the curb the excess of capitalisation because the markets dont always know best.
akudha 8y ago
Getting rich by charging insane amounts of money from sick people (healthcare) charging insane premiums and still trying every way to not pay when a person does fall sick charging insane amounts of money in fees from students, selling textbooks for hundreds of dollars, putting them in debt for life - all with not even a guarantee of half decent job when they finish their course making sure workers get slightly less hours than required, so they don't have to pay benefits creating private prisons (WTF) and on and on... How is any of this moral? Ah, it is just business, nothing personal. How many decisions are made with morality and ethics in mind vs legality in the business world? This is what happens if we reduce everything to profit and loss
- jjeaff 8y ago
  You'll notice that every bit of exploitation you mention is enabled by governments. Imagine how cheap sending email as a prisoner would be if governments didn't create artificial monopolies either by crony selection or ridiculous barriers to entry. Hint, it would be about as cheap as it is for everyone else.
  - pastage 8y ago
    Prisons are enabled by the people, you decide what should go on in there if you live in an democracy. AFAIK the prison/jail system in the US is administered on county/state/federal level and there are also private versions. From what I've heard it's pretty bad in all of them. Here in Sweden we have some pretty crappy habits too regarding jails, so I understand the issue with getting the people to unite for prisoners rights.
trumped 8y ago
private prisons... an even bigger "joke"

How is it moral to make money off of selling shoddy products and services to people and not actually holding up your end of the deal? But that happens all the time. It's the way of business for many companies. Coinbase takes money from its customers and doesn't give them anything back for months at a time while itself becoming more valuable by the day. That's not moral, but they'll have a front page posts over the next month, celebrating some venture of theirs. Or some CEO who is known for regularly exaggerating/lying or calling people they don't agree with slurs will have people rabidly defending their honor when that rich person has done nothing for them. That's not moral. When the top of society is greedy, you can't expect the lowest rungs to be any better. We barely care about people if they are contributing members of society (unless you've got money), we sure as hell aren't gonna care about prisoners. It's just hypercapitalism. You sound surprised, but it's business. If you can exploit, you do exploit as far as legally possible and then make excuses later. I bet you the contractors have some great justifications for why what they do isn't immoral and is even good and necessary. Short answer: it's not moral, but we're greedy and it's hard to admit that.

felix_nagaand 8y ago
Young teens to thirty somethings that seem interested in social issues aren't terribly interested. This disparity is known as virtue signaling and was pioneered by religion, politicians, and most recently, business. Now it's even trickling down to poor people. It's fashionable to lament the tragedy of the socially poor. Fashionable in much the same way as handing out jobs to the incompetent because their skin is a certain color or their sex is outside the norm. These tactics do little to solve problems, but go a long way towards increasing social divides between percieved groups. Instead of granting jobs to those incapable of meeting the standards their "less diverse" colleagues have we should be rallying for universal health care, workers rights (regardless of protected classes), universal higher education/ trades schools that track straight from high school and are continually redesigned with knowledge of leading educational research, and a massive increase in public funding for pk-12 education that does not unfairly benefit self segregated communities by wealth as a result of land taxes.
- gt_ 8y ago
  I am really with you on this, but I’d assert there’s more to it. It’s tough to blame them. Surely awareness is lacking but even if it isn’t, we’ve got a system in which your own well-being depends on being part of a social circle. The economics of associating one’s self with issues which are themselves associated with low-income or low-popularity is not seen as an option. On top of that, there is virtually unlimited liberal political funding for virtue signaling because it’s a very indirect way to signal compassion without economic action to back it up. This plays really well to middle and upper class people and in-turn lower class people seeking to mingle with higher classes adopt the behavior. The fact of the matter is that freedom of expression is massively contingent on economic security; and at some point even moreso than education. Socialized securities are America’s greatest hope at the moment. Recommended reading: Mark Fisher, Pierre Bourdieu Recommended voting: DSA-endorsed

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

whatshisface 8y ago

Another question might be, how isn't it? In every other area of society, if someone is very good at arranging things to achieve some widely valued goal, we think it's OK for them to get rich. If someone is the best jailer in the world would it not be reasonable to reward them? Operating a prison is a lot of work. The problem is that they are being rewarded for doing the wrong things, there's no problem with rewarding them in general.

jrhurst 8y ago
"If someone is the best jailer in the world would it not be reasonable to reward them?" I mean if we're gonna bring up this anology we've gotta figure out what a "best failer in the world" even means? What is the value the jailer creates? How do define a high performance jailer over just a nominal performant jailer? If there is no extra value produced by the best jailer in the world then we are over paying the best jailer in the world.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Every industry in the world has to address those same questions when organizing itself, although in this case the government is (and by extension we are) involved in the decisions. I would put forward cost-effectiveness and maintaining order as a couple of good qualities that prison operators should be rewarded for but I'm sure we could come up with many others.
- mmirate 8y ago
  > What is the value the jailer creates? People don't fear being sent to the hospital over an off-color remark. Thieves don't hold honest folk at their mercy. Arsonists haven't done an exact recreation of Sherman's March, or anything similar. Serial murderers haven't killed off any non-negligible part of the population. That's the value jailers create.
- bdcravens 8y ago
  There's value in reducing recidivism and escapes. More practically, jails are understaffed, and there's tremendous political value in making Joe Public feel safer.

pasbesoin 8y ago

IIRC, one of the things more strongly correlated with rehabilitation is contact with family, friends, a personal support system. Such contact should be fostered, not hindered. Even if you believe in "punishment" rather than "rehabilitation", as the purpose of prison (a pretty cynical attitude, that you should examine more thoroughly including its many implications and ramifications), what do you expect these people to do when they get out? Maybe some expense for oversight is warranted, e.g. to prevent leaders from continuing to direct criminal activity while incarcerated. I don't believe that's what's going on. (Nor, with the ridiculously priced and constrained phone calls.) It's just profiteering. And letting people -- private organizations -- make money off of prisons, just encourages more prisons. Given how "free market" many of the prominent "punishment" people seem to be, this should be obvious, even to them.

rectang 8y ago
> what do you expect these people to do when they get out? In the US: Continue to serve as villains and "others" whose suffering pleases a bloodthirsty segment of our population.
rhizome 8y ago
Even if you believe in "punishment" rather than "rehabilitation" You don't have to soften your point with this, rehabilitation hasn't been a component of US prison policy since the mid-70s.
mmirate 8y ago
> what do you expect these people to do when they get out? Two possibilities: 1. They find some legal way to sustain themselves, in which case - because society is currently biased against excons - society can easily negotiate a good bargain. (unless the excon is able to hide their past from prospective employers) 2. They do something bad again, and get caught again, and there's approximately 300-million-to-one odds that the victim of their nastiness-of-choice, isn't me. (Or more, because I don't live in downtown goddamn Chicago.) A win-win to me, it seems.

56chan4 8y ago

I could argue the technological panopticon is a prison for the enlightened. Likewise how is moral for charity CEO's, politicians or any other head of a hierarchical in structure enterprise moral? Is money even moral? It certain makes the exchange of goods and services easier within a domain, but does the constant need for inflation of the money supply make it simply a ponzi scheme by another name? Perhaps Bitcoins is the 21st digital gold it was designed to be, considering its finite supply on a finite planet, helps to the curb the excess of capitalisation because the markets dont always know best.

akudha 8y ago

Getting rich by charging insane amounts of money from sick people (healthcare) charging insane premiums and still trying every way to not pay when a person does fall sick charging insane amounts of money in fees from students, selling textbooks for hundreds of dollars, putting them in debt for life - all with not even a guarantee of half decent job when they finish their course making sure workers get slightly less hours than required, so they don't have to pay benefits creating private prisons (WTF) and on and on... How is any of this moral? Ah, it is just business, nothing personal. How many decisions are made with morality and ethics in mind vs legality in the business world? This is what happens if we reduce everything to profit and loss

jjeaff 8y ago
You'll notice that every bit of exploitation you mention is enabled by governments. Imagine how cheap sending email as a prisoner would be if governments didn't create artificial monopolies either by crony selection or ridiculous barriers to entry. Hint, it would be about as cheap as it is for everyone else.
- pastage 8y ago
  Prisons are enabled by the people, you decide what should go on in there if you live in an democracy. AFAIK the prison/jail system in the US is administered on county/state/federal level and there are also private versions. From what I've heard it's pretty bad in all of them. Here in Sweden we have some pretty crappy habits too regarding jails, so I understand the issue with getting the people to unite for prisoners rights.

trumped 8y ago

private prisons... an even bigger "joke"