Could be.
I'm not familiar enuf to weigh in.
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Unpaid Prison Labor
- Thread starter The Hammer
- Start date
I'm not familiar enuf to weigh in.
McBell
Unbound
Nor am I.
And since no one seems interested in the finance side of it, I bowed out the conversation.
Heyo
Veteran Member
There was a case a few years ago where a judge sent juveniles to prison and got kickbacks from the prison industrial complex. Iirc it was discussed on RF.
Heyo
Veteran Member
One possible conclusion from that is that US citizens are four times as criminal as Europeans. People from the US don't like to hear that logic.How Much Does It Cost To House a Prison Inmate? - Prison Inside
Curious about the cost to house a prison inmate? The answer varies depending on the state, but it can be upwards of $30,000 per year.prisoninside.com
"The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of 2020, there were around 1.8 million people in state and federal prisons and local jails across the country. "
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
No it's not. It's compulsory at the discretion of the prison system. People are forced to work or suffer the consequences. At least inside the United States.
Making people work isn't that onerous.
Were they out in the world, they'd be working.
Rehabilitation is a choice separate from work.
I doubt that any prison makes a profit.
But the major issue is whether prisons deter
crime, rehabilitate, & keep inmates healthy.
Could money making influence courts?
I recall that it has. USA's prison system
needs an overhaul, with closer & better
regulation, & accountability for actions
of prison staff.
Profit itself has pluses & minuses.
But so does its elimination.
There's a common claim of problems caused
by privatizing prisons, & making money with
prison labor, but useful research is lacking.
Government run prisons can be hell holes too.
So it strikes me as a public policy problem
that voters (& consequently leaders) are
un-interested in.
Much of what little I know about prisons is
based upon people I know who've served
time or worked in the system.
I recall it too. But this doesn't speak to
whether it's a systemic problem or not.
Note that even not for profit government
run prisons also benefit from more inmates
because it determines the budgeted money
they get from government.
One of my workers was also a prison guard
in a federal facility (Milan MI). Oh, the stories
of waste & corruption he could tell. I've other
connections to that prison too....although I've
not served time there....yet.
Colt
Well-Known Member
Prision's should be self-supporting, they should produce enough to pay to be incarcerated.
Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes to Coca-Cola.apnews.com
Unpaid (2-40¢/hour slimly maybe) labor in The US prison system seems to me to be just modern slavery with extra steps.
"ANGOLA, La. (AP) — A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.
Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill." (Emphasis mine)
Do you eat at any of these places/brands that serves slave labor food?
View attachment 87605
"The AP found that U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years. For instance, the U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China."
Seems we should be following our own advice then? But hey, we were a nation founded on slavery, why would that go way. It just gets rebranded (yay capitalism, and the profit over people mentality).
Colt
Well-Known Member
Like when governments confiscate 50%+ of people's wages??? Seems governments are for profits!!! The US government is the wealthiest, greediest entity in the world! The parasitical state can be seen as slave owners! In prison room and board and medical care is all paid for while the inmates get high and lift weights!
It's never gonna happen.
The kinds of people you get in prison
aren't the most productive. But they
could at least defray some of the cost.
Comparing prisoners who have committed violent crimes to slaves is nothing short of laughable...and insulting, unless we're just plucking random people off the streets and throwing them into prisons. Is this what's happening? Did I miss something?
Out of this, 2-40¢/hour, are they paying rent? Utilities? Groceries? Health insurance? If not, who is paying for these things?
Sorry, but prisoners are not entitled to the same rights as the rest of society.
Samael_Khan
Qigong / Yang Style Taijiquan / 7 Star Mantis
To me it seems that this opens the possibility of imprisonment for profit by corporations. Why pay people to work when you can work the justice system to make it easier to imprison people and then get free labour? I wouldn't be surprised if imprisonment gets used for profit.
Can we be truly certain that this is not happening? We hear all kinds of horror stories of police abuse, corrupt courts, and innocent people being locked up - oftentimes with very little explanation or any real commitment from government that they're interested in fixing the problem.
US public prisons do not make profit. They are allocated a set dollar amount per prisoner incarcerated paid by the government. It's citizen tax dollars that pay for these prisons.
No, we can't be sure that innocent people don't get locked up for the reasons mentioned above. But do you really think the motive for locking these people up is free labor/slavery? Because this is the topic, not whether crooked cops and courts lock up innocent people. I think that's a topic for another thread.
I don't claim to know it for a fact, but at this point, I'm not ready to rule out the possibility.
I would also include this information which might give some perspective on the topic of this thread: Incarceration Rates by Country 2024
I think these figures are very telling. States with high incarceration rates seem to be associated with dictatorships and authoritarian societies, as most of the countries on these lists would suggest. If not, then it might suggest a very lawless and chaotic society where the civil authorities are desperate to maintain law and order.
But neither scenario would appear to apply to the United States, so what exactly is going on here? It's because of this that I'm not ready to rule out other possibilities.
Prisoners in the US are not forced to work, they are paid for their work, thus they are not slaves.Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes to Coca-Cola.
Unpaid (2-40¢/hour slimly maybe) labor in The US prison system seems to me to be just modern slavery with extra steps.
"ANGOLA, La. (AP) — A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.
Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill." (Emphasis mine)
Do you eat at any of these places/brands that serves slave labor food?
View attachment 87605
"The AP found that U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years. For instance, the U.S. has blocked shipments of cotton coming from China, a top manufacturer of popular clothing brands, because it was produced by forced or prison labor. But crops harvested by U.S. prisoners have entered the supply chains of companies that export to China."
Seems we should be following our own advice then? But hey, we were a nation founded on slavery, why would that go way. It just gets rebranded (yay capitalism, and the profit over people mentality).
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
Well, technically, they are both. If they refuse to work, they are often faced with solitary confinement and refusal of parole (SOURCE: How NY Prison 'Slave Labor' Powers A $50 Million Manufacturing Enterprise). And the amounts they are paid ranges from 10 cents to 65 cents an hour (SOURCE: Increasing Prison Wages to Dollars Just Makes Sense).
I mean, think of it this way: if I turned up with a gun and told you to carry out some jobs for me or I would shoot you, then you carried out the work and I gave you a couple dollars, you wouldn't argue that you weren't being "forced" to do the work because I paid you, and you wouldn't say the pay was a genuine incentive for you to do the work.