The unchanged, deliberately awful incarcerated situation is the punishment, of course.
In many minds, that’s the whole point of the system.
Frank, seriously, please learn how to use the quote function here on these boards. It makes it far easier to tell to whom you’re replying (especially in those cases where you’re replying to multiple people).
I think prisoners should have the choice of working or getting stuck in an unheated cell with a diet of bread and water. But it should be a choice.
Using a whip on a man, whether he is free or a prisoner, is just plain wrong.
It really reduces their resale value.
Others have tried pointing this out.
Yeah, I know, which is why I was hoping repetition would have an effect. 
Probably be better off sending all the criminals to Harvard.
You could almost double your pay by cutting the Cable :dubious:
Some of the things you count in your Groceries are things captive laborers would have to buy with their $1. And they mostly don’t get Cable.
Nah, they get fed for free. Snacks are extra though.
How is the state inhumane in this case? It sets out a list of laws intended for the protection of humans and property. In other words, for everyone’s safety. It also offers the public the opportunity to change, through legislative process, any of those laws with which the majority disagree.
Then, furthermore, it gives advance notice that anyone violating such laws will have a consequence. At that point every citizen has knowledge and choice of how he chooses to conduct himself. If he has broken the law rather than work within a legal framework to change the law he has knowingly and with full freedom of choice put himself at risk of being incarcerated.
At that point he no longer has the luxury of choice that law-abiding citizens have. Guess it depends on which side of the fence you want to be on.
Requiring prisoners to work, with or without pay is not unconstitutional. It’s says right there in the constitution, amend 13, that slavery and or servitude as punishment for a crime is constitutional.
I’ve seen a lot of injustice in the correctional system in my many years of working in it.
But a convicted felon inmate being offered the privilege of working outside the prison walls and fences for money is not one of those injustices that I’ve observed.
Exactly.
I’m speaking specifically of the conditions of incarceration, not of the terms for how people get there.
If typical American conditions of incarceration are not somewhat inhumane to begin with, then it can’t be more humane to relieve them, can it?
Yep.
The problem in this thread is that some people are trying to argue that prison laborers are really not anything like slaves–people want to believe that the decision is ‘voluntary,’ that offering it demonstrates our ‘humanity.’ Hogwash. Captive labor is an exploited resource, and a tool of inmate management. Don’t fool yourself by prettying it up.
Yes. And doesn’t it count towards “good behavior”? Personally I’d be working for free if it got me out of the prison for a while.
Assume much? At times in my life when I’ve squeeked by paycheck to paycheck, I sure don’t recall spending what little money I had for groceries on junk food.
Kenobi says: “Frank, seriously, please learn how to use the quote function here on these boards”
What the aboves means is that I am quoting what Kenobi said, if anyone doesn’t realize it.
People may not read my posts becAuse of how they are formatted? I’ll be ruined!
Kenobi, you do what you want, I’ll do what I want. If you can’t stop complaining, just stop reading my posts - I’ll never know the difference - well, I guess I’ll be able to tell because I won’t have you chuffing at me.
Oh and in the case you are complaining about, I was responding to one post up - internet era attention span anyone?
If you want to be upset about slavery in your city try looking into Chinese buffet type restaurants and “massage parlors”. I have very little problem with prisoner labor. It has to be more rehabilitating than sitting in a concrete box or playing gang warfare in the yard.
Up until as recently as 1996, “fallen” girls in Ireland were held as slaves and suffered in the Magdalene Asylums, big industrial laundry institutes exploited by the Catholic Church.
It was in the news today that the Irish Government finally has offered apologies to the girls held as slaves there.