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U.S. prison labor programs violate fundamental human rights, new report finds

91 points by trasz4 3y ago

29athrowaway 3y ago
[flagged]
- CuriouslyC 3y ago
  If you don't give them something to do most of them watch TV, exercise and play cards all day. The work is intended to be punitive, because people can't stomach the idea of criminals having such easy lives. Alternatively, we could provide more counseling, life-skills coaching and vocational education while treating them like human beings for a comparable cost to the taxpayer, and greatly reduce recidivism rates. That would eliminate a source of cheap labor benefitting political cronies and limit their ability to posture about being "tough" on crime though, so not gonna happen.
  - iinnPP 3y ago
    The work is meant to give them a routine and responsibilities. As they would have outside of the prison. Many prisons have the option to forego work and pursue education as well. I'm sure some prisons are not like this, but not all. As others have pointed out, targetting recidivism rates would probably be the best way to tackle this problem. This means things like not allowing for discrimination on employment opportunities, a right to be forgotten, among other things. Getting out of prison and being unable to secure a job is a huge problem. Of course they will go back to crime. It's not like going to a medium or low security prison is anything more than adult summer camp anyway.
    - CuriouslyC 3y ago
      Most prisons bait people into work via a combination of carrot and stick. Prisoners often lose privileges when they don't work, parole boards look very unfavorably on declining to work, and many prisons force prisoners to buy basic things like toothpaste and deodorant from a commissary out of their wages. Not working is not a reasonable option in the majority of cases.
      - iinnPP 3y ago
        Sounds like life in general frankly. There's also typically a heavy religious influence within prisons including helping people out with necessities. It's complicated. That's not to say it is perfect by any means. I have friends who have been to prison that form my opinion and what impacts them most is not the prison but the society around them when they leave. They get passed over for jobs and end up on social assistance, social housing (when your rent cap is $376 and average rent is $1200 for a bachelor and your basic needs amount to $300 assuming you get some special diet).
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      > The work is meant to give them a routine and responsibilities. Volunteer, not-for-profit work. Ban for-profit prison labor. Put that proposal forward and see how long it takes to get lobbied out of oblivion.
DirectorKrennic 3y ago
This is a prison in Norway: https://thenorwayguide.com/norwegian-prisons/ https://thenorwayguide.com/norwegian-prisons/ > The rate of recidivism in Norway is around 20%. So only 1 in 5 end up back in prison, while the majority of people (4 in 5) don’t return to prison within a few years. > This is a sharp contrast to even the neighbor countries like Sweden with 61% and Denmark with 63%. American prisons tend to have around 60 – 75 % in most states, but it varies a lot by state. And here is a NYT article on the same prison: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/the-radical-humaneness-of-norways-halden-prison.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/the-radical-huma...
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  To be fair, Norway is also an incredibly wealthy country that can afford to do things that many other countries simply can't.
  - alphager 3y ago
    This would be a valid reason when compared to a third world country, but not to the country with the seventh highest GDP per capita (Norway is fifth).
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      GDP/capita isn't really everything. Norway's got an enormous sovereign wealth fund with decades of oil money.
      - robmccoll 3y ago
        Someone should tell that to our government. Meanwhile we've (USA) been taking spending shortcuts and borrowing against our future to enable GDP growth over the same time period with no return in sight.
        ethbr0 3y ago
birdyrooster 3y ago
To say the nation (the many varied people of the US) is at ease with torture is propaganda. In my opinion, certain elements of the state (the government of the US) are at ease with torture and it should be focused on those responsible. Words matter especially right now when Ruzzia is propagandizing everything to find allies for their illegal war.
- alphager 3y ago
  Damn those unelected governments! Oh, wait... Prison reform is not wanted by the voting majority (unless it's towards harsher punishments and worse conditions). This is on the voters all the way.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  [flagged]
- trasz4 3y ago
  >Words matter especially right now when Ruzzia is propagandizing everything to find allies for their illegal war. This is actually a good argument, and one of the reasons I've been abstaining from criticising western countries lately. But now the world consensus on Russian invasion has been reached, support for Ukraine is working full speed, so I think I can return to my regularly scheduled programme.
- laratied 3y ago
  We had this debate post 9/11 with "enhanced interrogation techniques". No one cared. Even when you called it "torture" the majority were perfectly fine with it after 9/11 in polling data.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
Disregarding that small bit in one of the constitutional amendments, isn't this straight up slavery? I don't see how having poor and resentful prisoners helps getting them back into society.
- DirectorKrennic 3y ago
  It doesn't, but American society is uniquely cruel among peer countries: https://eand.co/why-america-is-the-worlds-most-uniquely-cruel-society-c3b98b6102cb https://eand.co/why-america-is-the-worlds-most-uniquely-crue...
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  Just to point out the detail, slavery is totally legal in the USA AS A PUNISHMENT FOR A CRIME: >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. (The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution) Personally I think you need to NOT brutalize people if you want them to be rehabilitated. But you also SHOULD NOT enjoy prison. And deterrent is important (for both rehabilitation and preventing crimes in the first place).
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    > But you also SHOULD NOT enjoy prison. And deterrent is important (for both rehabilitation and preventing crimes in the first place). It seems to me that being in prison should be enough punishment. But I see now that the prison system in the US is not really focused on rehabilitation.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    The US has to make prison cruel because it also makes being poor cruel. Brejvik probably has a better life in a Norwegian prison than a poor addict has in the USA. So if a poor addict can improve their life by going to prison, it's not much of an incentive to stay out of jail... OTOH, Norway is one of the best nations of the world to be poor in. It's still no picnic, but being poor and free in Norway is still much better than being stuck in a "soft" Norwegian jail.
pmoriarty 3y ago
That there's a prison labor loophole in the 13th Amendment[1] that abolished slavery speaks volumes. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_...
- tivert 3y ago
  > That there's a prison labor loophole in the 13th Amendment[1] that abolished slavery speaks volumes. Not really. That amendment abolished all other forms of involuntary servitude too (except as punishment for a crime). If that exception weren't there, it'd outlaw pretty reasonable things, like sentences of "community service."
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> Allow incarcerated workers the same labor protections afforded to other workers in the United States, including minimum wage, health and safety standards, unionization, protection from discrimination, and speedy access to redress when their rights are violated. I am not sure how well unionization would work, though I suspect the various mafia leaders in prison and the Aryan brotherhood leaders who are in prison would love to have a way to legally organize large groups of prisoners.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
Part of the issue is that in US ( for example, IL ), the prison slave labor ( yes, based on constitution, slavery is abolished for all purposes except prison time ) is considered essential to some services[1]. The weird thing is, general population accepts it as: "Well, duh. They criminals." [1]http://www.icicatalog.illinois.gov/ http://www.icicatalog.illinois.gov/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
SuoDuanDao 3y ago
why was this flagged?
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  It’s not in the hacker spirit to raise a stink about injustice? Now, back to my retro computing project.
  - trasz4 3y ago
    Of course it is. But "Hacker News" isn't controlled by hackers, it merely uses them to as the source of free content.
meristohm 3y ago
This is an important topic. Why is this thread flagged? My uniforms when I worked for the US military were made by people we US citizens enslaved (glad to see other references to the 13th amendment here); I am not proud of that fact. I learned about it in school, as a teacher sitting in on a class taught by the social studies teacher. If I were in prison I would want: A sense of hope that I could learn and grow and continue to be a full and dignified human until I die. To this end, counseling, teaching, work that pays fairly, and general social, emotional, and intellectual rehabilitation within my zone of proximal development (teacher jargon per Lev Vygotsky) would be appropriate, and worth taxpayer expense, regardless of what I did to end up in prison. Frodo told Gandalf he wished Bilbo had killed Gollum when Bilbo had the chance, and Gandalf said no- we don't know what good anyone might do in their lifetime. This convinced me that the death penalty is wrong. Banishment is better, and even better with rehabilitation efforts. I accept the risk that a relative few people in a well-designed system will still do more harm than good.
- trasz4 3y ago
  The thread is flagged, because HN is marketing branch of YCombinator, and publishing information that's inconvenient to their business partners isn't in their best interests. Of course the admins will claim this isn't the case, but there's no reason to believe them, and lying is commercial companies' standard modus operandi.
  - tivert 3y ago
    > The thread is flagged, because HN is marketing branch of YCombinator, and publishing information that's inconvenient to their business partners isn't in their best interests. No, it's flagged because it's one of those controversial political topics that often leads to polarized slapfights and flamewars. And that's proven by the a number of inflammatory, flamebait comments already in this thread.
    - trasz4 3y ago
      [flagged]

91 points by trasz4 3y ago

29athrowaway 3y ago

[flagged]

CuriouslyC 3y ago
If you don't give them something to do most of them watch TV, exercise and play cards all day. The work is intended to be punitive, because people can't stomach the idea of criminals having such easy lives. Alternatively, we could provide more counseling, life-skills coaching and vocational education while treating them like human beings for a comparable cost to the taxpayer, and greatly reduce recidivism rates. That would eliminate a source of cheap labor benefitting political cronies and limit their ability to posture about being "tough" on crime though, so not gonna happen.
- iinnPP 3y ago
  The work is meant to give them a routine and responsibilities. As they would have outside of the prison. Many prisons have the option to forego work and pursue education as well. I'm sure some prisons are not like this, but not all. As others have pointed out, targetting recidivism rates would probably be the best way to tackle this problem. This means things like not allowing for discrimination on employment opportunities, a right to be forgotten, among other things. Getting out of prison and being unable to secure a job is a huge problem. Of course they will go back to crime. It's not like going to a medium or low security prison is anything more than adult summer camp anyway.
  - CuriouslyC 3y ago
    Most prisons bait people into work via a combination of carrot and stick. Prisoners often lose privileges when they don't work, parole boards look very unfavorably on declining to work, and many prisons force prisoners to buy basic things like toothpaste and deodorant from a commissary out of their wages. Not working is not a reasonable option in the majority of cases.
    - iinnPP 3y ago
      Sounds like life in general frankly. There's also typically a heavy religious influence within prisons including helping people out with necessities. It's complicated. That's not to say it is perfect by any means. I have friends who have been to prison that form my opinion and what impacts them most is not the prison but the society around them when they leave. They get passed over for jobs and end up on social assistance, social housing (when your rent cap is $376 and average rent is $1200 for a bachelor and your basic needs amount to $300 assuming you get some special diet).
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > The work is meant to give them a routine and responsibilities. Volunteer, not-for-profit work. Ban for-profit prison labor. Put that proposal forward and see how long it takes to get lobbied out of oblivion.

DirectorKrennic 3y ago

This is a prison in Norway: https://thenorwayguide.com/norwegian-prisons/ https://thenorwayguide.com/norwegian-prisons/ > The rate of recidivism in Norway is around 20%. So only 1 in 5 end up back in prison, while the majority of people (4 in 5) don’t return to prison within a few years. > This is a sharp contrast to even the neighbor countries like Sweden with 61% and Denmark with 63%. American prisons tend to have around 60 – 75 % in most states, but it varies a lot by state. And here is a NYT article on the same prison: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/the-radical-humaneness-of-norways-halden-prison.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/the-radical-huma...

marginalia_nu 3y ago
To be fair, Norway is also an incredibly wealthy country that can afford to do things that many other countries simply can't.
- alphager 3y ago
  This would be a valid reason when compared to a third world country, but not to the country with the seventh highest GDP per capita (Norway is fifth).
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    GDP/capita isn't really everything. Norway's got an enormous sovereign wealth fund with decades of oil money.
    - robmccoll 3y ago
      Someone should tell that to our government. Meanwhile we've (USA) been taking spending shortcuts and borrowing against our future to enable GDP growth over the same time period with no return in sight.
      - ethbr0 3y ago

birdyrooster 3y ago

To say the nation (the many varied people of the US) is at ease with torture is propaganda. In my opinion, certain elements of the state (the government of the US) are at ease with torture and it should be focused on those responsible. Words matter especially right now when Ruzzia is propagandizing everything to find allies for their illegal war.

alphager 3y ago
Damn those unelected governments! Oh, wait... Prison reform is not wanted by the voting majority (unless it's towards harsher punishments and worse conditions). This is on the voters all the way.
pmoriarty 3y ago
[flagged]
trasz4 3y ago
>Words matter especially right now when Ruzzia is propagandizing everything to find allies for their illegal war. This is actually a good argument, and one of the reasons I've been abstaining from criticising western countries lately. But now the world consensus on Russian invasion has been reached, support for Ukraine is working full speed, so I think I can return to my regularly scheduled programme.
laratied 3y ago
We had this debate post 9/11 with "enhanced interrogation techniques". No one cared. Even when you called it "torture" the majority were perfectly fine with it after 9/11 in polling data.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

Disregarding that small bit in one of the constitutional amendments, isn't this straight up slavery? I don't see how having poor and resentful prisoners helps getting them back into society.

DirectorKrennic 3y ago
It doesn't, but American society is uniquely cruel among peer countries: https://eand.co/why-america-is-the-worlds-most-uniquely-cruel-society-c3b98b6102cb https://eand.co/why-america-is-the-worlds-most-uniquely-crue...
LatteLazy 3y ago
Just to point out the detail, slavery is totally legal in the USA AS A PUNISHMENT FOR A CRIME: >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. (The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution) Personally I think you need to NOT brutalize people if you want them to be rehabilitated. But you also SHOULD NOT enjoy prison. And deterrent is important (for both rehabilitation and preventing crimes in the first place).
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  > But you also SHOULD NOT enjoy prison. And deterrent is important (for both rehabilitation and preventing crimes in the first place). It seems to me that being in prison should be enough punishment. But I see now that the prison system in the US is not really focused on rehabilitation.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  The US has to make prison cruel because it also makes being poor cruel. Brejvik probably has a better life in a Norwegian prison than a poor addict has in the USA. So if a poor addict can improve their life by going to prison, it's not much of an incentive to stay out of jail... OTOH, Norway is one of the best nations of the world to be poor in. It's still no picnic, but being poor and free in Norway is still much better than being stuck in a "soft" Norwegian jail.

pmoriarty 3y ago

That there's a prison labor loophole in the 13th Amendment[1] that abolished slavery speaks volumes. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_...

tivert 3y ago
> That there's a prison labor loophole in the 13th Amendment[1] that abolished slavery speaks volumes. Not really. That amendment abolished all other forms of involuntary servitude too (except as punishment for a crime). If that exception weren't there, it'd outlaw pretty reasonable things, like sentences of "community service."

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

> Allow incarcerated workers the same labor protections afforded to other workers in the United States, including minimum wage, health and safety standards, unionization, protection from discrimination, and speedy access to redress when their rights are violated. I am not sure how well unionization would work, though I suspect the various mafia leaders in prison and the Aryan brotherhood leaders who are in prison would love to have a way to legally organize large groups of prisoners.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago

Part of the issue is that in US ( for example, IL ), the prison slave labor ( yes, based on constitution, slavery is abolished for all purposes except prison time ) is considered essential to some services[1]. The weird thing is, general population accepts it as: "Well, duh. They criminals." [1]http://www.icicatalog.illinois.gov/ http://www.icicatalog.illinois.gov/

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

SuoDuanDao 3y ago

why was this flagged?

avgcorrection 3y ago
It’s not in the hacker spirit to raise a stink about injustice? Now, back to my retro computing project.
- trasz4 3y ago
  Of course it is. But "Hacker News" isn't controlled by hackers, it merely uses them to as the source of free content.

meristohm 3y ago

This is an important topic. Why is this thread flagged? My uniforms when I worked for the US military were made by people we US citizens enslaved (glad to see other references to the 13th amendment here); I am not proud of that fact. I learned about it in school, as a teacher sitting in on a class taught by the social studies teacher. If I were in prison I would want: A sense of hope that I could learn and grow and continue to be a full and dignified human until I die. To this end, counseling, teaching, work that pays fairly, and general social, emotional, and intellectual rehabilitation within my zone of proximal development (teacher jargon per Lev Vygotsky) would be appropriate, and worth taxpayer expense, regardless of what I did to end up in prison. Frodo told Gandalf he wished Bilbo had killed Gollum when Bilbo had the chance, and Gandalf said no- we don't know what good anyone might do in their lifetime. This convinced me that the death penalty is wrong. Banishment is better, and even better with rehabilitation efforts. I accept the risk that a relative few people in a well-designed system will still do more harm than good.

trasz4 3y ago
The thread is flagged, because HN is marketing branch of YCombinator, and publishing information that's inconvenient to their business partners isn't in their best interests. Of course the admins will claim this isn't the case, but there's no reason to believe them, and lying is commercial companies' standard modus operandi.
- tivert 3y ago
  > The thread is flagged, because HN is marketing branch of YCombinator, and publishing information that's inconvenient to their business partners isn't in their best interests. No, it's flagged because it's one of those controversial political topics that often leads to polarized slapfights and flamewars. And that's proven by the a number of inflammatory, flamebait comments already in this thread.
  - trasz4 3y ago
    [flagged]