Comment by tristan957 4 days ago
If we pay people 40 cents an hour just to say they aren't slaves, they they are slaves for all intents and purposes. They are put in poor working conditions working for for-profit companies, making much less than minimum wage. How is it legal for the State to not provide sunscreen or shade for inmates doing outdoor manual labor?
https://theappeal.org/louisiana-prisoners-demand-an-end-to-m...
In many cases the work is not really voluntary, there are sanctions for not taking it. Prisoners in some states are regularly put into solitary confinement for not "volunteering" to work these jobs (a punishment that some areas deem torture). With that amount of coercion I can't see them as voluntary, and so the slavery label is awfully close to the mark.
In those situations, I would agree that is pretty damn close to the slavery mark.
I've worked with a lot of prison facilities though in many states across the US and a few international, and have never seen that. That's not to say it doesn't happen of course, but out of curiosity do you (or anyone else) know of any facilities/jurisdictions that do that?
There is an example in this NPR article.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1210564359/slavery-prison-for...
A prisoner costs taxpayers around $50k a year on average in US. If their "take-home" wage is $0.40/h, it may still be generous.
That cost should be taken by our government and the tax payer, as a disincentive to locking people up.
If you can lock someone up and get close to free labor for it, then we're going to start locking a lot of people up. I mean, it's free labor. Which is why we used to give people 20 years for possession of marijuana. What, you think it's just a coincidence we were throwing primarily black Americans away in prison for ludicrous amounts of time where they'll spend their days picking cotton?
That's what happens when imprisoning people is cheap.
If a prisoner costs $50k a year, and "if" he would work a job where he would make $50k a year and if he didn't receive a dime from it, does it look to you like a free labor? He merely makes up for what he costs the system, not taking into consideration the likely damage that he has done that made him end up in prison in the first place. And I don't expect prisoners to have anywhere close to $50k salary jobs.
The problem here is you’re really asking for abuse with this mentality.
Prisoners should cost money, lots and lots of money. Otherwise we might just decide to imprison you and extract your labor. And that is exactly why we used to see 20 years for possession.
What, did you think we were just burning money for kicks?
I don’t think, they literally are. Feel free to look it up. Our prison labor systems in the south are direct descendants of Jim Crow era America.
In some states like Louisiana, picking cotton is still something some prisoners do.
I don't disagree that 40 cents an hour is ludicrous and is only one notch above slavery, but I do think it worth pointing out that the work for 40 cents per hour is voluntary (i.e. they can quit or choose not to accept the work), whereas "slavery" is very much not.