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Well, if you do give them practical job training, another voting segment is going to scream bloody murder at "prison labor".

by SilasX 6y ago

tyingq 6y ago
It's not lack of skills that's being cited here. It's being unemployed because of your criminal background check.
- SilasX 6y ago
  They're not independent. Sufficient skills can overcome the stigma of a criminal record. But providing prisoners skills usually involves some on-the-job training to be useful.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > Sufficient skills can overcome the stigma of a criminal record. Not when there's an HR department in between the applicant and the hiring manager. People with "sufficient skills" get rejected all the time for reasons far more benign than e.g. having killed someone 30 years ago. Like, this ain't about "stigma". This is about Kafkaesque corporate bureaucracy actively driving crime rates.
    - SilasX 6y ago
      So you're saying the problem isn't the prison system.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        I'm saying the problem ain't just the prison system - and neither is the punishment.
SamBam 6y ago
That sounds like a straw man. There's a big difference between practical "practical job training" and "breaking rocks." If the labor is entirely volunteer and something that actually requires some training, it's job training. If it's forced (which is legal in many states) and it's entirely grunt work like janitorial duty or highway cleanup, then it's prison labor.
- SilasX 6y ago
  It's not a strawman that some people scream bloody murder for any use of prison labor. Bloomberg famously took flak for using paid, voluntary prison labor for call centers -- not exactly back-breaking labor. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/24/mike-bloomberg-2020-prison-labor/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/24/mike-bloomberg-2020-pris... Just because you're not personally uncharitable enough to object to something like that, doesn't man it's not a common view.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Per your article: > John Scallan, a ProCom co-founder, said his company pays the Oklahoma minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, which then pays the incarcerated people working in the call centers. The Department of Corrections website lists the maximum monthly wage for the incarcerated at $20 dollars a month, but another policy document says there is a maximum pay of $27.09 per month. > When asked if their total monthly earnings are capped at these levels, Scallan said incarcerated people who work for ProCom make far higher wages. “I can tell you unequivocally that is not us,” Scallan said. “Some of them are making that much every day.” > The Oklahoma Department of Corrections did not respond to multiple requests for comment to clarify the discrepancy, nor to answer questions about ProCom’s arrangement with the Bloomberg campaign. Given the refusal to clarify that discrepancy, it ain't unreasonable to assume - barring concrete evidence to the contrary - that these prisoners are being paid a pittance for their labor, and Bloomberg - and ProCom, and the state of Oklahoma - definitely deserve any flak coming to them for that exploitation. The very fact that there is a maximum monthly wage for prisoners at all, let alone one as pathetically low as $27.09 per month, is barbaric.
yellowapple 6y ago
A couple points: - I was more referring to job opportunities after release; even if an inmate received a bunch of hands-on training while incarcerated, a lot of public and private sector employers alike consider a criminal record to be a disqualification. This makes getting a job harder, which makes supporting oneself legitimately harder, which makes crime more attractive to put food on the table, which drives recidivism. - On the topic of inmate vocational training and prison labor, the primary objections to said labor revolve around the lack of compensation (we're talking multiple orders of magnitude less than federal minimum wage) and poor working conditions; it's legal slavery (quite literally; the 13th Amendment carved out prison labor as an exception to the abolition of slavery). Prison laborers need the ability to negotiate for better wages and working conditions, and this negotiation is currently impossible because prisons can compel them by threat of violence to accept any terms, no matter how unfair to the worker. Indeed, if prisoners were fairly compensated for their labor, they might be able to save up enough money to not feel as strong of a need to return to a life of crime should they remain shunned by employers, per above (and hell, they might even be able to bootstrap themselves a startup and sidestep said shunning entirely).
- SilasX 6y ago
  >I was more referring to job opportunities after release; even if an inmate received a bunch of hands-on training while incarcerated, a lot of public and private sector employers alike consider a criminal record to be a disqualification. This makes getting a job harder, which makes supporting oneself legitimately harder, which makes crime more attractive to put food on the table, which drives recidivism. That's irrelevant to the question of whether prisons are wrong to provide it. >On the topic of inmate vocational training and prison labor, the primary objections to said labor revolve around the lack of compensation (we're talking multiple orders of magnitude less than federal minimum wage) and poor working conditions As in the cousin thread, this may be your objection, but it isn't the popular objection; Bloomberg was famously forced to drop prison labor, regardless of the terms offered. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26392005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26392005
  - yellowapple 6y ago

Well, if you do give them practical job training, another voting segment is going to scream bloody murder at "prison labor".

by SilasX 6y ago

Well, if you do give them practical job training, another voting segment is going to scream bloody murder at "prison labor".

tyingq 6y ago

It's not lack of skills that's being cited here. It's being unemployed because of your criminal background check.

SilasX 6y ago
They're not independent. Sufficient skills can overcome the stigma of a criminal record. But providing prisoners skills usually involves some on-the-job training to be useful.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > Sufficient skills can overcome the stigma of a criminal record. Not when there's an HR department in between the applicant and the hiring manager. People with "sufficient skills" get rejected all the time for reasons far more benign than e.g. having killed someone 30 years ago. Like, this ain't about "stigma". This is about Kafkaesque corporate bureaucracy actively driving crime rates.
  - SilasX 6y ago
    So you're saying the problem isn't the prison system.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      I'm saying the problem ain't just the prison system - and neither is the punishment.

SamBam 6y ago

That sounds like a straw man. There's a big difference between practical "practical job training" and "breaking rocks." If the labor is entirely volunteer and something that actually requires some training, it's job training. If it's forced (which is legal in many states) and it's entirely grunt work like janitorial duty or highway cleanup, then it's prison labor.

SilasX 6y ago
It's not a strawman that some people scream bloody murder for any use of prison labor. Bloomberg famously took flak for using paid, voluntary prison labor for call centers -- not exactly back-breaking labor. https://theintercept.com/2019/12/24/mike-bloomberg-2020-prison-labor/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/24/mike-bloomberg-2020-pris... Just because you're not personally uncharitable enough to object to something like that, doesn't man it's not a common view.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Per your article: > John Scallan, a ProCom co-founder, said his company pays the Oklahoma minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, which then pays the incarcerated people working in the call centers. The Department of Corrections website lists the maximum monthly wage for the incarcerated at $20 dollars a month, but another policy document says there is a maximum pay of $27.09 per month. > When asked if their total monthly earnings are capped at these levels, Scallan said incarcerated people who work for ProCom make far higher wages. “I can tell you unequivocally that is not us,” Scallan said. “Some of them are making that much every day.” > The Oklahoma Department of Corrections did not respond to multiple requests for comment to clarify the discrepancy, nor to answer questions about ProCom’s arrangement with the Bloomberg campaign. Given the refusal to clarify that discrepancy, it ain't unreasonable to assume - barring concrete evidence to the contrary - that these prisoners are being paid a pittance for their labor, and Bloomberg - and ProCom, and the state of Oklahoma - definitely deserve any flak coming to them for that exploitation. The very fact that there is a maximum monthly wage for prisoners at all, let alone one as pathetically low as $27.09 per month, is barbaric.

yellowapple 6y ago

A couple points: - I was more referring to job opportunities after release; even if an inmate received a bunch of hands-on training while incarcerated, a lot of public and private sector employers alike consider a criminal record to be a disqualification. This makes getting a job harder, which makes supporting oneself legitimately harder, which makes crime more attractive to put food on the table, which drives recidivism. - On the topic of inmate vocational training and prison labor, the primary objections to said labor revolve around the lack of compensation (we're talking multiple orders of magnitude less than federal minimum wage) and poor working conditions; it's legal slavery (quite literally; the 13th Amendment carved out prison labor as an exception to the abolition of slavery). Prison laborers need the ability to negotiate for better wages and working conditions, and this negotiation is currently impossible because prisons can compel them by threat of violence to accept any terms, no matter how unfair to the worker. Indeed, if prisoners were fairly compensated for their labor, they might be able to save up enough money to not feel as strong of a need to return to a life of crime should they remain shunned by employers, per above (and hell, they might even be able to bootstrap themselves a startup and sidestep said shunning entirely).

SilasX 6y ago
>I was more referring to job opportunities after release; even if an inmate received a bunch of hands-on training while incarcerated, a lot of public and private sector employers alike consider a criminal record to be a disqualification. This makes getting a job harder, which makes supporting oneself legitimately harder, which makes crime more attractive to put food on the table, which drives recidivism. That's irrelevant to the question of whether prisons are wrong to provide it. >On the topic of inmate vocational training and prison labor, the primary objections to said labor revolve around the lack of compensation (we're talking multiple orders of magnitude less than federal minimum wage) and poor working conditions As in the cousin thread, this may be your objection, but it isn't the popular objection; Bloomberg was famously forced to drop prison labor, regardless of the terms offered. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26392005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26392005
- yellowapple 6y ago