7 ms·

Presumably, most of the incarcerated people are there for a reason. What is collective economic damage that they caused? Is it more than $11B? What should we do

Presumably, most of the incarcerated people are there for a reason. What is collective economic damage that they caused? Is it more than $11B? What should we do instead? Pay them the minimum/reasonable wage while they are incarcerated, and then charge them a full rate for the economic and societal damage that they caused, so that they and their families would be in financial debt for the rest of their natural lives?

woodruffw 4y ago
For a start, we shouldn't use them as slaves. Two wrongs don't make a right. If we determine, as a society, that convicted criminals should "pay" for their crimes, that should be a civil matter determined by civil processes, not the fancies (and profit motive) of a prison corporation.
mdavis6890 4y ago
Why is this relevant? Are the proceeds of their labor given to the people they harmed? Who gets to measure the harm? There is, however, a very clear conflict of interest caused by allowing the justice system to benefit financially from the people they imprison.
- TheFreim 4y ago
  > Who gets to measure the harm? Courts do by giving different sentences based on sentencing guidelines, the nature of the crime, and the individual circumstances.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  In an indirect way, yes. States have Victims Compensation Funds, which help defray the losses incurred by victims [1]. No, the profits from criminals' indenture do not go directly there, but they do defray the cost of holding prisoners. [1] https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/4416 https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/4416
  - mdavis6890 4y ago
    It's all about the conflict of interest created by having prisons earning money by having prisoners.
klodolph 4y ago
Is charging prisoners a “full rate for the economic and societal damage they caused” somehow connected to the issue at hand? Sounds like a false dilemma here. Because the prison doesn’t have to pay fair wages, it takes work from others that would earn better wages—this unfairly concentrates wealth in the hands of prison owners at the expense of free workers who are competing in the same market.
lesuorac 4y ago
I dunno, it doesn't seem to take that much proof to convince juries beyond a reasonable doubt (see John Oliver's Last Week Tonight [1] [2] [3] [4]) I forget the URL, but somebody last year posted a link that let you search court cases and I did a search for "confidence interval" (CI). One of the top searches was written by a judge and wrote about how if the forensics industry doesn't care about CI for their results then they don't think it should matter for their cases. Which I basically interpret as, the judge doesn't care if forensics don't bother to check if their methods work. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kye2oX-b39E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kye2oX-b39E [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYYdCzTpps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYYdCzTpps [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y
croes 4y ago
The use of these slave workers destroys jobs for others. Why paying someone if you can get slaves who do the work for free. That damages the economy on multiple levels, not to mention that a demand for slave workers leads to unnecessary imprisonment and cases like this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
mywittyname 4y ago
Society should bear the costs to imprison people. That's a fundamental pillar of a functioning and fair government. To make prisoners a profit center is to encourage a society to imprison more people and for unjust reasons. The fact that the USA has the largest prison population per capita in the world, and by a fairly large factor, is solid evidence that slave labor for prisoners is bad. Our legal system has facilities for extracting reparations from criminals. Let's use that instead of continuing slavery.
anonymoushn 4y ago
There are 400,000 people in prison for drug offenses. People found guilty of possession are not accused of causing any economic damage. People found guilty of possession with intent to distribute are accused of being productive members of society. In either case, the state causes economic damage to them and their communities by imprisoning them. This article is about what the government produces using their slave labor though.
- rajin444 4y ago
  How many of those 400k are solely in for possession? i.e no priors, no anything, just possession
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Why should priors enter the picture at all?
    - dionidium 4y ago
      For the same reason that if your partner comes home drunk at 5AM and offers a flimsy story about where they were it matters a lot if this is the first time it's ever happened of if they were unfaithful 7 previous times in the marriage. We all understand on a fairly commonsense level that the number of prior offenses tells you something about the likelihood of future offenses and also informs one's willingness to tolerate the marginal offense. If this last of your partner's indiscretions drives you to leave the marriage and your friend says to you, "wow, man, you left a marriage because they came home late one time?" we all understand why that's a ridiculous characterization of what happened. And, yet, when someone with a long rap sheet commits a relatively minor crime and is punished harshly because of their prior offenses we have to endure headlines like, "Man sentenced to prison for stealing candy bar." This headline makes the same mistake as your incredulous friend. The modern backlash against 3-strikes laws, etc, seems to me to be deeply confused. Our language is full of idioms like, "the straw that broke the camel's back," because our willingness to tolerate an offense is obviously informed by the number of previous offenses. How could one's priors possibly not matter?
BeetleB 4y ago
> What should we do instead? Pay them the minimum/reasonable wage while they are incarcerated, and then charge them a full rate for the economic and societal damage that they caused, so that they and their families would be in financial debt for the rest of their natural lives? There are plenty of alternatives, and it doesn't take much cogitation to come up with much more reasonable ones than the one you propose.
toss1 4y ago
Sentences often require both jail/prison time AND paying restitution. The legitimate funds could indeed go towards restitution. That does not validate slavery.
magicalhippo 4y ago
> Presumably, most of the incarcerated people are there for a reason. About a decade ago, The Economist ran an article highlighting how the folks owning the prisons lobbied for harsher laws and such, as they made so much money off the "free" prison labor. The details are a bit fuzzy given it's been so long since I read it, but one example that stuck with me was US citizen who had been in prison for several years, due to transporting normal fish, crabs or similar in a plastic container, which apparently was against the law in the Caribbean country he was visiting (IIRC to protect endangered species from illegal export). He was prosecuted and imprisoned back in the US, due to some law that was initially intended to be used against drug cartel folks. Of course, not saying that this applies to all of the prison population.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

woodruffw 4y ago

For a start, we shouldn't use them as slaves. Two wrongs don't make a right. If we determine, as a society, that convicted criminals should "pay" for their crimes, that should be a civil matter determined by civil processes, not the fancies (and profit motive) of a prison corporation.

mdavis6890 4y ago

Why is this relevant? Are the proceeds of their labor given to the people they harmed? Who gets to measure the harm? There is, however, a very clear conflict of interest caused by allowing the justice system to benefit financially from the people they imprison.

TheFreim 4y ago
> Who gets to measure the harm? Courts do by giving different sentences based on sentencing guidelines, the nature of the crime, and the individual circumstances.
GauntletWizard 4y ago
In an indirect way, yes. States have Victims Compensation Funds, which help defray the losses incurred by victims [1]. No, the profits from criminals' indenture do not go directly there, but they do defray the cost of holding prisoners. [1] https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/4416 https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/4416
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  It's all about the conflict of interest created by having prisons earning money by having prisoners.

klodolph 4y ago

Is charging prisoners a “full rate for the economic and societal damage they caused” somehow connected to the issue at hand? Sounds like a false dilemma here. Because the prison doesn’t have to pay fair wages, it takes work from others that would earn better wages—this unfairly concentrates wealth in the hands of prison owners at the expense of free workers who are competing in the same market.

lesuorac 4y ago

I dunno, it doesn't seem to take that much proof to convince juries beyond a reasonable doubt (see John Oliver's Last Week Tonight [1] [2] [3] [4]) I forget the URL, but somebody last year posted a link that let you search court cases and I did a search for "confidence interval" (CI). One of the top searches was written by a judge and wrote about how if the forensics industry doesn't care about CI for their results then they don't think it should matter for their cases. Which I basically interpret as, the judge doesn't care if forensics don't bother to check if their methods work. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kye2oX-b39E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kye2oX-b39E [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYYdCzTpps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpYYdCzTpps [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y

croes 4y ago

The use of these slave workers destroys jobs for others. Why paying someone if you can get slaves who do the work for free. That damages the economy on multiple levels, not to mention that a demand for slave workers leads to unnecessary imprisonment and cases like this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

mywittyname 4y ago

Society should bear the costs to imprison people. That's a fundamental pillar of a functioning and fair government. To make prisoners a profit center is to encourage a society to imprison more people and for unjust reasons. The fact that the USA has the largest prison population per capita in the world, and by a fairly large factor, is solid evidence that slave labor for prisoners is bad. Our legal system has facilities for extracting reparations from criminals. Let's use that instead of continuing slavery.

anonymoushn 4y ago

There are 400,000 people in prison for drug offenses. People found guilty of possession are not accused of causing any economic damage. People found guilty of possession with intent to distribute are accused of being productive members of society. In either case, the state causes economic damage to them and their communities by imprisoning them. This article is about what the government produces using their slave labor though.

rajin444 4y ago
How many of those 400k are solely in for possession? i.e no priors, no anything, just possession
- int_19h 4y ago
  Why should priors enter the picture at all?
  - dionidium 4y ago
    For the same reason that if your partner comes home drunk at 5AM and offers a flimsy story about where they were it matters a lot if this is the first time it's ever happened of if they were unfaithful 7 previous times in the marriage. We all understand on a fairly commonsense level that the number of prior offenses tells you something about the likelihood of future offenses and also informs one's willingness to tolerate the marginal offense. If this last of your partner's indiscretions drives you to leave the marriage and your friend says to you, "wow, man, you left a marriage because they came home late one time?" we all understand why that's a ridiculous characterization of what happened. And, yet, when someone with a long rap sheet commits a relatively minor crime and is punished harshly because of their prior offenses we have to endure headlines like, "Man sentenced to prison for stealing candy bar." This headline makes the same mistake as your incredulous friend. The modern backlash against 3-strikes laws, etc, seems to me to be deeply confused. Our language is full of idioms like, "the straw that broke the camel's back," because our willingness to tolerate an offense is obviously informed by the number of previous offenses. How could one's priors possibly not matter?

BeetleB 4y ago

> What should we do instead? Pay them the minimum/reasonable wage while they are incarcerated, and then charge them a full rate for the economic and societal damage that they caused, so that they and their families would be in financial debt for the rest of their natural lives? There are plenty of alternatives, and it doesn't take much cogitation to come up with much more reasonable ones than the one you propose.

toss1 4y ago

Sentences often require both jail/prison time AND paying restitution. The legitimate funds could indeed go towards restitution. That does not validate slavery.

magicalhippo 4y ago

> Presumably, most of the incarcerated people are there for a reason. About a decade ago, The Economist ran an article highlighting how the folks owning the prisons lobbied for harsher laws and such, as they made so much money off the "free" prison labor. The details are a bit fuzzy given it's been so long since I read it, but one example that stuck with me was US citizen who had been in prison for several years, due to transporting normal fish, crabs or similar in a plastic container, which apparently was against the law in the Caribbean country he was visiting (IIRC to protect endangered species from illegal export). He was prosecuted and imprisoned back in the US, due to some law that was initially intended to be used against drug cartel folks. Of course, not saying that this applies to all of the prison population.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]