Comment by glommer
Comment by glommer 4 days ago
they take an (actually very reasonable) cut, but he is free to take his salary.
Comment by glommer 4 days ago
they take an (actually very reasonable) cut, but he is free to take his salary.
1) How is this different from any other prisoner
2) They wouldn't have to if they didn't insist on locking him up
It isn't different from any other prisoner. In many states you leave prison owing them back rent. Maine at least charges as a percentage of the prisoners income, rather than having them build debt.
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/04/1084452251/the-vast-majority-...
Maine: https://www.corrections1.com/finance-and-budgets/maine-lawma... "the state can deduct up to 20% of their income — 10% for room and board, which is sent to the state’s general fund, not the Department of Corrections , and up to 10% to cover transportation provided by the department. Since 2020, the state fund has collected a total of $2.4 million.
They need money to pay for oversight. Any time prisoners talk to someone on the outside, it's a potential conduit for contraband or organized crime.
The exact same is true of people working outside of prison.
I think it's reasonable to assume an additional risk for people in prison.
Even though the enrolled people are completely trustworthy, doing this prevents untrustworthy people to simulate interest in the program just to be able to contact the external world for illegal activities.
Not really, contraband includes many things that are completely legal for non prisoners to have like currency, phones, knives, or alcohol. Sending that stuff to prisoners is illegal https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1791
List of prohibited items: https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840...
People working outside pay rent. From a third to upto half their salary.
"No cut" is reasonable, but also "Some cut" is reasonable. However while arguing that "no cut" should be mandatory is reasonable, given that "no cut" would itself be reasonable, it is probably not pragmatic. Therefore in order to best support this kind of thing one should determine exactly how much "some cut" should be.
Isn't this largely just a one off situation that happened to work out? I doubt there will be legions of prisoners working remotely. If that future did come to be, it would be rather dystopian imo.
if, right now, it is not dystopian, then there is no reason to say it would inevitably be dystopian if there were multiple occurrences, although sure, I expect it probably would be considering what the world is like. Of course I am the last person who one would expect to say it but - there is always hope.
Fuck no! Lowering the cost of keeping people in prison would make it even easier for the government to lock people up for smaller crimes and with bigger sentences. It's even worse with the privatised prison system that the US has. They already know the "market price" (what the government is willing to spend) so adding "free money" into the equation just makes it easier for them to raise prices and end up pocketing even more money than they already do.
Framing it as offsetting the cost would also make it very easy to increase the cut, bit by bit, until it gets to a truly unreasonable level. And since the person is already in prison and we have to pay for them no matter what, why would they choose to work if the deal is so bad?
It's even worse with the privatised prison system that the US has.
This is a state by state thing. FWIW in this case, ME doesn't have private prisons. I don't bring this up to imply everything related to their cut is on the up and up, however, I believe Maine is very much incentivized to make this a useful program in terms of keeping people from returning to jail (as opposed to squeezing every dollar from the prisoners).
Don't you suppose that it's "fair" to request compensation for the room and board if the person is making a "fair" wage?
No. Prisons should cost society money. If you are taking away someone’s freedoms, there should be a high cost so you don’t do it flippantly when another solution will work.
Are you concerned that if you make prison too expensive society might resort to capital punishment to reduce prison costs? Or we end up releasing prisoners who are legitimate dangers to society.
And to be clear, I'm opposed to capital punishment and dangerous conditions in prisons. I'm just pointing out that I don't think your argument is very good. If you think we as a society are willing to flippantly put people in prison because it's cheap I don't see how you can trust us to no resort to other flippant measures if the cost was high.
To be honest, if he didn't pay a cut of his earnings while living off government allocated funds, wouldn't that put him in a better position than those who haven't been found guilty and sentenced for breaking the laws of the land in which they reside? I can't see a much resistance to the argument that they one really ought to pay the full cost back to the state, as with community service... no?
No, for the simple fact that he'd still be stuck in an American prison where people are brutalized, sexually assaulted, denied access to medical care, abused by guards, etc. regularly. He deserves everything he is able to earn under those conditions, and truthfully it's a miracle he can work at all.
Americans have become too comfortable with their everyday sadism.
If my employer payed for my housing and food I would not consider it unreasonable that my paycheck reflected that.
> Why are they paid
Because people have expenses other than food and lodging. Prisoners do to, some save money for after they leave prison others spend it at the commissary.
Huh? Universities take a 60% overhead in some scenarios.
The dude is is prison, slave like conditions are ridiculous, but there should be a healthy overhead.