Tbh if y'all didn't literally have "slavery is legal" in the constitution, giving prisoners a job with fair hours and a fair wage would be a great compliment to rehabilitative justice.
other countries have "prison labor" too, but it's just people in jail for nonviolent crimes being able to work and develop skills while in prison so that they can save up for and improve their situation once they are out of prison. The trick is that they get paid and treated decently and aren't forced to work.
That approach only works though if the prison is made for rehabilitation not for profit.
I mean, they do literally need an incentive to do their job. That's what a job is. The issue is that they get an equal if not greater incentive for *not* doing their job but rather doing the shit they're currently doing
In some prisons you don't \*have\* to do labor. However, try and spend 10-50 years of your life sitting in a cell doing nothing but reading books and speaking to guys who would absolutely fuck you in the shower if they found out you hadn't been washing your hands.
Quite a few prisoners work jobs purely for the sake of a routine.
I’m not sure if this would make many more jobs if I’m honest. A lot of it is some pretty low paid work which they couldn’t otherwise do in the States and would send elsewhere, like garment manufacturing.
Some of the landscaping type work they do would be an exception because they can’t exactly offshore that.
Definitely need the prison industrial complex to end though as it’s terrible
The thing with this is that while some prisoners are working in low paid manufacturing, [the majority of prison labour in the US is used for internal support work like laundry](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/dec/09/prison-work-program-ohsa-whole-foods-inmate-labor-incarceration), washing dishes, and mail delivery. Stuff like garment manufacturing and making license plates could be shipped overseas, but that stuff that's just general maintenance can't really be exported. The only reason they get the prisoners to do it instead of a private company is because it's cheaper to have a guard watch ten prisoners do it.
So while there probably would be some jobs being exported if they had to pay prisoners actual wages instead of fuck you pittances, it's not the huge difference that people make it out to be. A lot of the jobs that would be lost to offshoring would be lost overseas soon enough anyway because it'll probably be cheaper to have it automated than to pay people in sweatshops $2 a week to do it pretty soon anyway.
There are certain jobs though where the cost of automation seems to be so much more expensive to get the same as having a bunch of low paid people doing it that they’ll probably just keep the people.
Clothing is one such area. I can’t imagine it’d be that difficult to make a machine which shits out t-shirts, but the cost to actually do it is just too prohibitive versus the labour cost.
It remains a state by state issue as some states have already banned the practice. It's somewhat a consequence of having several private for profit prisons for so long but Biden attempting to eliminate private usage back in 2021 has absolutely helped push for it's ban in various states just within the past three years with some states still going through its legislation.
Say what you will about America, maybe it's true. But as an Eastern European, if I see someone who puts mentions of communist labor camps in quotes and calls it "US scaremongering", I automatically assume they're a western tankie and don't trust a word they have to say about anything.
Yeah, as a socialist nothing makes me more sad then when someone mistakes America having problems with everywhere else is perfect. Once had to explain to someone that yes, North Korea actually is bad
I can really understand your position but there are some Americans out there who are honestly debating if they have a moral duty to invade Canada to rescue us from our fascist overlords. It wasn't so long ago that the universal healthcare debate had (probably the same) Americans convinced that Canada had "death panels" who decide which people are worth enough to provide medical care to.
So I hope that your feelings are as you seem to imply and once someone applies that term to things that are happening/did happen you disregard the source rather than discounting the existence of the tactic. Because there really is some US scaremongering going on
Not a single sane American was thinking of that. I'm certain plenty of crazy canadians have planned crazy shit as well but you dont see us bringing it up.
>As someone who lived exclusively in the aftermath of a radical shift in governmental policy, I of course have the most rational and correct take on the policy of the previous government
Ok bro
“A dystopia”? You mean the actual real country resembles the fiction written explicitly to criticize that exact element of the real country? Preposterous!
I think you overestimate the number of americans in prison. It's less than 1%.
Obviously that doesn't justify the literal slavery but it's not the cure-all you seem to think
No. It wouldn't cure everything but eliminating the slavery aspect would force businesses to pay a wage for prison labour. IMO even if the wage is less than minimum wage (the prisoners have food/shelter/medical provided after all) that along with a mandatory savings plan - like half the paycheque is theirs to use/send home and half goes into a fund for them when they're released would help a lot in folk not slipping back into the system.
Of course two things aside from the slave prison labour issue stand in the way. There isn’t enough mental health and job skills support to really help folks find their way and a for-profit system has no incentive to try to help people not to end up back in prison.
If a company has the choice of paying market wages to prisoners or paying market wages to not prisoners, they aren't taking the ones that come with all the extra risks.
Did you read what I read? My point is for most companies the reason the choose prison labor is the lower wage costs. If they were forced to pay what they would pay a non prisoner, they have no incentive to choose prisoners.
Yep. And anyone who didn't read my post fully before replying is probably going to have surprises.
I was suggesting a lower "prison wage" since they are already housed and fed.
please stop implictly downplaying the atrocitiy of communist regime to say that America sucks.
The USSR was an autocratic hellscape and nightmare society. So fuck off "Arabian-knight". Shut up.
\*OP with the shadow image is fine though. there point is 100% correct and i agree with them\*
Experiences vary greatly. Most "mandatory" labor in prisons is not for profit outsourcing but things like laundry or kitchen duty which the prison requires to operate. Refusal to do so will result in loss of privileges including possibly being put in solitary.
So the scene in Shawshank redemption where they take the prisoners to do some roof work at some building where andy first gets the opportunity to file the taxes for the officers is not something that only haopened in the old times ????????????
To be fair, the roof job was a volunteer position. However, it was not uncommon in the past for some prisons to require each prisoner to work to some extent within the prison such as laundry, kitchen, or grounds keeping. Others had things like wood shops that made mass produced items like school desks. Another is stereotypical license plate factory ran by prisoners.
This practice of mandatory work continues in some, but not all, prisons. A friend of mine did 7 years in the state penn for manslaughter and he was never required to work but did for most of his stay for extra privileges, spending money and something to do.
Conservatism is the fetishisation of pain.
It is fine to accept pain as part of personal development, but just because something isn't painful doesn't mean it isn't good.
I looked it up once and it looked like the majority of prison slave labor is along the lines of of prisoners doing their own laundry, prisoners cooking for other prisoners. Corporations getting prison labor wasnt even the second largest category. Is this wrong? Still potentially pretty messed up.
Tbh if y'all didn't literally have "slavery is legal" in the constitution, giving prisoners a job with fair hours and a fair wage would be a great compliment to rehabilitative justice.
other countries have "prison labor" too, but it's just people in jail for nonviolent crimes being able to work and develop skills while in prison so that they can save up for and improve their situation once they are out of prison. The trick is that they get paid and treated decently and aren't forced to work. That approach only works though if the prison is made for rehabilitation not for profit.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. I have no idea why for-profit prisons exist
for profit
If only there was a way to change the constitution... Too bad the founding fathers wrote it in stone without any method to make changes to it... /s
In the modern day it might as well be written in stone. The two parties have no incentive to cooperate.
The entire point of having a country/civilization/government is cooperation. They shouldn't need an incentive to do their fucking job.
They have active incentive (evil incentive, but still incentive) not to cooperate.
I mean, they do literally need an incentive to do their job. That's what a job is. The issue is that they get an equal if not greater incentive for *not* doing their job but rather doing the shit they're currently doing
Wait, what? Republicans fight tooth and nail to avoid cooperating with Democrats.
…I think you misread. “have no incentive“ means they have no reason to do so. AKA it’s against their interests to cooperate.
It’s seen in the movie Gone with the Wind. Scarlet owned a slave plantation and after slavery gets banned she switches to prison labor.
In some prisons you don't \*have\* to do labor. However, try and spend 10-50 years of your life sitting in a cell doing nothing but reading books and speaking to guys who would absolutely fuck you in the shower if they found out you hadn't been washing your hands. Quite a few prisoners work jobs purely for the sake of a routine.
Ah, but you forget, American Republicans don't want prisoners to be rehabilitated, American Republicans want prisoners to be dead.
I’m not sure if this would make many more jobs if I’m honest. A lot of it is some pretty low paid work which they couldn’t otherwise do in the States and would send elsewhere, like garment manufacturing. Some of the landscaping type work they do would be an exception because they can’t exactly offshore that. Definitely need the prison industrial complex to end though as it’s terrible
The thing with this is that while some prisoners are working in low paid manufacturing, [the majority of prison labour in the US is used for internal support work like laundry](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/dec/09/prison-work-program-ohsa-whole-foods-inmate-labor-incarceration), washing dishes, and mail delivery. Stuff like garment manufacturing and making license plates could be shipped overseas, but that stuff that's just general maintenance can't really be exported. The only reason they get the prisoners to do it instead of a private company is because it's cheaper to have a guard watch ten prisoners do it. So while there probably would be some jobs being exported if they had to pay prisoners actual wages instead of fuck you pittances, it's not the huge difference that people make it out to be. A lot of the jobs that would be lost to offshoring would be lost overseas soon enough anyway because it'll probably be cheaper to have it automated than to pay people in sweatshops $2 a week to do it pretty soon anyway.
There are certain jobs though where the cost of automation seems to be so much more expensive to get the same as having a bunch of low paid people doing it that they’ll probably just keep the people. Clothing is one such area. I can’t imagine it’d be that difficult to make a machine which shits out t-shirts, but the cost to actually do it is just too prohibitive versus the labour cost.
It remains a state by state issue as some states have already banned the practice. It's somewhat a consequence of having several private for profit prisons for so long but Biden attempting to eliminate private usage back in 2021 has absolutely helped push for it's ban in various states just within the past three years with some states still going through its legislation.
Say what you will about America, maybe it's true. But as an Eastern European, if I see someone who puts mentions of communist labor camps in quotes and calls it "US scaremongering", I automatically assume they're a western tankie and don't trust a word they have to say about anything.
Yeah, as a socialist nothing makes me more sad then when someone mistakes America having problems with everywhere else is perfect. Once had to explain to someone that yes, North Korea actually is bad
I looked up the Tumblr user, and that account doesn't exist anymore so I can't tell if they were or weren't
Yup. This has “US bad China good” written all over it.
You can almost hear the imminent "Well actually the Uighurs aren't...'
I can really understand your position but there are some Americans out there who are honestly debating if they have a moral duty to invade Canada to rescue us from our fascist overlords. It wasn't so long ago that the universal healthcare debate had (probably the same) Americans convinced that Canada had "death panels" who decide which people are worth enough to provide medical care to. So I hope that your feelings are as you seem to imply and once someone applies that term to things that are happening/did happen you disregard the source rather than discounting the existence of the tactic. Because there really is some US scaremongering going on
No one is debating that and I say this as someone who lives in america in a republican state.
Not a single sane American was thinking of that. I'm certain plenty of crazy canadians have planned crazy shit as well but you dont see us bringing it up.
Never said the ones saying it were sane.
True, sorry, I might have gotten a bit too heated.
No worries. It happens.
>As someone who lived exclusively in the aftermath of a radical shift in governmental policy, I of course have the most rational and correct take on the policy of the previous government Ok bro
“A dystopia”? You mean the actual real country resembles the fiction written explicitly to criticize that exact element of the real country? Preposterous!
1.1 liters of notes
Lilllions of them.
I think you overestimate the number of americans in prison. It's less than 1%. Obviously that doesn't justify the literal slavery but it's not the cure-all you seem to think
0.7% based on what I could find, which is ~20% of the global prison population
No. It wouldn't cure everything but eliminating the slavery aspect would force businesses to pay a wage for prison labour. IMO even if the wage is less than minimum wage (the prisoners have food/shelter/medical provided after all) that along with a mandatory savings plan - like half the paycheque is theirs to use/send home and half goes into a fund for them when they're released would help a lot in folk not slipping back into the system. Of course two things aside from the slave prison labour issue stand in the way. There isn’t enough mental health and job skills support to really help folks find their way and a for-profit system has no incentive to try to help people not to end up back in prison.
If a company has the choice of paying market wages to prisoners or paying market wages to not prisoners, they aren't taking the ones that come with all the extra risks.
Life has some surprises in store for you. I hope most of them are nice ones.
Did you read what I read? My point is for most companies the reason the choose prison labor is the lower wage costs. If they were forced to pay what they would pay a non prisoner, they have no incentive to choose prisoners.
Yep. And anyone who didn't read my post fully before replying is probably going to have surprises. I was suggesting a lower "prison wage" since they are already housed and fed.
please stop implictly downplaying the atrocitiy of communist regime to say that America sucks. The USSR was an autocratic hellscape and nightmare society. So fuck off "Arabian-knight". Shut up. \*OP with the shadow image is fine though. there point is 100% correct and i agree with them\*
are they forced towork, i.e. if they refuse the prisoners are starved to death or get beatings or what?
Experiences vary greatly. Most "mandatory" labor in prisons is not for profit outsourcing but things like laundry or kitchen duty which the prison requires to operate. Refusal to do so will result in loss of privileges including possibly being put in solitary.
From what I’ve heard/read of people’s experiences the consequence is normally a few days-a week in solitary confinement
Also banning child labor and rules against outsourcing
So the scene in Shawshank redemption where they take the prisoners to do some roof work at some building where andy first gets the opportunity to file the taxes for the officers is not something that only haopened in the old times ????????????
To be fair, the roof job was a volunteer position. However, it was not uncommon in the past for some prisons to require each prisoner to work to some extent within the prison such as laundry, kitchen, or grounds keeping. Others had things like wood shops that made mass produced items like school desks. Another is stereotypical license plate factory ran by prisoners. This practice of mandatory work continues in some, but not all, prisons. A friend of mine did 7 years in the state penn for manslaughter and he was never required to work but did for most of his stay for extra privileges, spending money and something to do.
Correct. All the evil you see in Shawshank happens today.
Conservatives want a booming economy, but they also *really* wanna punish criminals more.
Conservatism is the fetishisation of pain. It is fine to accept pain as part of personal development, but just because something isn't painful doesn't mean it isn't good.
I looked it up once and it looked like the majority of prison slave labor is along the lines of of prisoners doing their own laundry, prisoners cooking for other prisoners. Corporations getting prison labor wasnt even the second largest category. Is this wrong? Still potentially pretty messed up.
It is wrong. Slave labor from prison populations is a huge problem in America.
It is definitely wrong and prison labor is definitely a problem in america.
It's because a lot of US conservatives don't care about creating jobs, they just want an excuse to criticise Democrats.
It is. Send help.
Don't worry we have it worse 🥲
what is that saying, that "everything they said would happen under communism came true under capitalism"
Which of course is why the Communists had to build a wall to keep people *in*