Poor People are Worth More in Jail

Neo-Slavery is a good word for this. The advent of low cost prison labor allows some businesses to skirt the marketplace. Why pay Minimum wage when you can pay below? And likely work them 40 hours without paying payroll taxes or healthcare, boon to the bottom line!

Now I get why a prisoner might want to work. It gives them something to do. And, if you can have a new skill when you leave prison it's more likely you can do something useful and not return.

Indeed as the article indicates we can be in more trouble when we have Corporations operating prisons as for profit enterprises. Reselling slave wages and taking that cut off the top is oh so attractive to the account. As we know from various Libertarian presentations the 'moral' of a business is to make as much financial profit as possible. If that's all we ask out of our Corporations using prison labor and corporate ownership should both be banned across the nation.
 
faethor said:
And, if you can have a new skill when you leave prison it's more likely you can do something useful and not return.
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But if that skill is already being provided by slave labour there isn't going to be much market for it ata livable age.
 
It seems to be all backwards. People in prison should have access to free education and skill development. Maybe they do, I don't know, never been to prison and the only ex-con I know I don't see very often anymore.
 
Glaucus said:
It seems to be all backwards. People in prison should have access to free education and skill development.
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That depends on whether you lean more to the punitive model or the rehabilitative model. That's a left/right political split - and I bet it's not too hard to guess which philosophy goes with which ideology.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
That depends on whether you lean more to the punitive model or the rehabilitative model. That's a left/right political split - and I bet it's not too hard to guess which philosophy goes with which ideology.
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I'd say it's more of a smart/dumb mental split. Even smart conservatives should know that the best way to prevent repeat offenses is to educate people and give them the skills required to function within society.
 
If you haven't read it I'd recommend Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
 
Glaucus said:
I'd say it's more of a smart/dumb mental split. Even smart conservatives should know that the best way to prevent repeat offenses is to educate people and give them the skills required to function within society.
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Strangely conservatives think the US Gov can do nothing right, but when it comes to criminal charges the state is perfect. As such most conservatives think that criminally convicted should forsake all rights within society including their right to life. As such they approve of droning robbery suspects without arrest or trial and expanding the Death Penalty.
 
Glaucus said:
I'd say it's more of a smart/dumb mental split.
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Kind of the same thing in some ways. Generally the right wing is more of the "personal responsibility" and "crime is not what you do, being a criminal is what you are" and "spare the rod, spoil the child". They tend to be more black and white thinking and authoritarian in character. That mindset also, to a certain extent, comes from privilege. Guys who are born to rich parents who know cops and judges and politicians tend to assume that everyone else also gets those advantages so can't understand how someone would end up in jail even if they did something wrong unless they actually deserved to be there for a defect of character.

Underdogs are more likely to see things in terms of circumstance. The guys that collapsed the economy walk free despite the rampant criminal fraud they participated in but the local kid spends the rest of his life in jail for getting caught three times with a blunt in his pocket even though two of those times it was planted by the cops.
 
faethor said:
As such they approve of droning robbery suspects without arrest or trial and expanding the Death Penalty.
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There is the simplistic tendency among authoritarians to assume that someone is guilty if they have been accused because otherwise why would they be accused. The law is supposed to be interpreted to counter this natural bias.
 
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