As a non-prisoner in a first world country, toiletries are not given to me for free, I have to work for money to pay for them - why is it “sickening” that prisoners who cannot otherwise afford them would also have to work to pay for theirs?
Having driven through rural Nevada a few times, I feel like brothels and prisons (or at least prison work camps) are just about the only things out there.
I was hoping you would reply. 4 & 5 are American specific and I had not thought of 8.
I got the idea from this Cracked article..
How would (moral arguments aside, where my views are in consonance with yours) prostitution differ in essence from using prison labour. The only real arguements that are different for prostitution are 3 and perhaps 6. And for 6 as that linked article shows, they are actually quite good at maintaining security.
At many prisons, there are more inmates than jobs (there are only so many toilets to clean or yards to mow), so even people who want to work may not be able to find jobs.
Many inmates have physical or mental impairments such that holding a job isn’t practical (particularly as the inmate population ages). There are also other job restrictions: hepatitis, e.g., is rampant in inmate populations, and having people with hep A in the kitchen ain’t such a great idea.
Security concerns figure into job assignments: protective-custody inmates usually aren’t allowed to mingle with those in general population, and inmates under investigation, with serious security issues, or with certain kinds of sentences are confined to their cells at least 23 hours a day, thus precluding work assignments. (Certain psychiatric diagnoses are also grounds to deny a work assignment.)
Many work assignments are seasonal or otherwise demand-based. The lawnmower crew doesn’t get much work this time of year, e.g., while industry jobs may depend on the volume of orders received. No orders = no work = no pay.
Most systems shuffle inmates around quite a bit, and you usually don’t get a job assignment the day you arrive at a new facility, or for several weeks or months thereafter while the administrative process grinds along.
In the world outside, unemployment and disability payments are available to pay for necessities during hard times. Inside, neither are available. (However, the Kansas state system, among others, has “lay-in” pay; if you are not working for reasons other than your own behavior, you get $9/month to pay for your necessaries.)
Also true on the outside, for various reasons, in various regions.
This applies to various degrees to people outside prison as well.
This perhaps not so much, but there are people who are short of criminal but who could never really pass a job interview for certain kinds of work due to just being off-putting enough to not put the interviewer at their ease.
There are whole regions of the country which depend on seasonal labor. That’s why the unemployment figures have a specific break-out for “non-farm” jobs.
Getting unemployment benefits can be hard on the outside, too, especially if you haven’t put in enough credits to get SSDI.
If you are outside and get laid off because your employer didn’t get any orders this week, unemployment is easy to get. That’s also true if your employer decides to move your job to another state. On the outside, you can move yourself, or you can try to find another job in another line of work.
Inside, moving yourself elsewhere is frowned upon. 
The facility decides what job you can have, and at many facilities you don’t even have the option of “applying”; you take the job they give you, or sit around waiting until they decide to give you one.
(And people with documented disabilities who don’t have enough credits for SSDI are usually eligible for Supplemental Security Income [SSI], which has no work credit requirement. On the outside, there’s a whole network of social welfare programs sufficient to ensure that people who want to work but can’t for various reasons have opportunity to buy toothpaste. )