• @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    Housing inmates also costs about $115 a day on average. Or around $42,672 of tax payer money. Might as well work to pay back society.

    Slaves didn’t have a choice. Felons did.

    • @LowtierComputer
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      168 months ago

      How do you feel about those convicted for selling marijuana or just having marijuana in enough of a quantity that the police decided they were selling?

      • @[email protected]
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        -58 months ago

        Completely different topic. My brother was a victim of this so I don’t feel very fondly about it. Like I said though, completely different topic.

        • @Donkter
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          8 months ago

          How is it a completely different topic? Do you think the choice to smoke or carry marijuana justifies being imprisoned and enslaved?

          • @[email protected]
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            -118 months ago

            False dilemma. It would be like me saying “do you think pedophiles and mass murderers shouldn’t have to pay back their debt to society?”

            As far as marijuana decriminalization goes - I’m all for it. And I don’t even smoke.

            • @Donkter
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              68 months ago

              I think the issue in this thread is that when you think of slavery, the only thing that comes to your mind is the worst of chattel slavery, which was worse than our current prison system. There are many other forms of slavery throughout history some were “better” than our current prison system, many were worse.

              • @[email protected]
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                -48 months ago

                Curious if people in this sub would rather be in an American, Russian, or Chinese prison system.

        • Ech
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          58 months ago

          The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Do you really think it’s all people that “deserve” it? Also, only 31% of the prison population is white. Do you think that’s a coincidence? Are POC that much more likely to commit crimes worthy of prison time? Or is the system maybe prejudiced in who it targets? None of this is a “different topic”. It’s all interconnected.

            • @I_Fart_Glitter
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              38 months ago

              It’s not really even relevant. El Salvador has a smaller population than New York City (6M vs 8M) and statistics don’t really scale like that when you’re comparing a country of 6 million to a country of 333 million. The US has 4.2% of the world population and 20% of the world incarcerated population. We have more than 3 times more people in prison than the total population of El Salvador.

                • Ech
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                  48 months ago

                  You’re acting like you’re intellectually superior here, but dismissing someone’s overall point because one thing they said wasn’t exactly correct is lazy and obvious, and your commitment to defending the exploitation of the unjustly incarcerated is gross.

    • @I_Fart_Glitter
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      68 months ago

      Most people in prison are there for crimes of poverty, or for “crimes” that rich people are not punished for. So you’re punishing people for their circumstances, not their actions. https://qz.com/1233966/new-data-clearly-illustrate-the-poverty-to-prison-pipeline Do you think white collar criminals are out working in regulation-free hard labor lines? No, no they are not.

      You know prisoners are charged for every day of their incarceration, right…? If they work a 12 hour day and make 25cents per hour, that’s $3 per day, but they owe $150+ per day for their housing and food expenses, they are being punished beyond their stay as they will be in debt and have garnished wages for life. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/paying-your-time-how-charging-inmates-fees-behind-bars-may-violate? , https://apnews.com/article/crime-prisons-lawsuits-connecticut-074a8f643766e155df58d2c8fbc7214c

      Maybe focus on not imprisoning people that do not need to be imprisoned rather than extracting cash and labor from people who have basically been kidnapped for profit.

    • @Olgratin_Magmatoe
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      8 months ago

      Might as well work to pay back society.

      But that work generally doesn’t get payed back to society, it goes towards enriching the for-profit prison owners, and enriching the businesses that use slave prisoner labor.

      Overall, nearly three-fourths (72.1%) of federal prisoners are serving time for a non-violent offense and have no history of violence.

      Non-violent offenses shouldn’t result in forced labor within a for-profit prison. That’s neo-slavery, with the prison owners motivated to change the laws to get as many people imprisoned as possible.

      That’s why we have such a high prison rate, and that’s why such a disproportionate amount of prisoners are POC.

      Slaves didn’t have a choice. Felons did.

      Felons didn’t perpetuate the prison industrial complex. They didn’t perpetuate the laws that made the dumbest non-violent crimes imprisonment level offenses. The people who enrich themselves off of prison labor did.

      • @[email protected]
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        -48 months ago

        Okay, so you are for forced labor on the hardened violent criminals, but lenient (no work) for the non-violent?

        What should they all do in their free time?

        If you are talking about justice reform, that’s a different topic and I completely agree with you.

        • @Olgratin_Magmatoe
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          48 months ago

          Okay, so you are for forced labor on the hardened violent criminals, but lenient (no work) for the non-violent?

          No. Forced labor should be abolished. I was merely using the fact that the majority of “felons who made their choices”, are people who have no place being there in the first place. The prison industrial complex lobbied the legislatures to make laws which increase the prison population as much as possible. The end result being many non-violent “criminal” offenses land you in jail and enslaved.

          What should they all do in their free time?

          Rehabilitation, learning trades, work, reading, whatever, it doesn’t matter. But none of it should be forced.

          If you are talking about justice reform, that’s a different topic and I completely agree with you.

          All of this is justice reform. You can’t have justice reform without acknowledging that slavery is wrong.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 months ago

      c/shitUSApesSay

      Might as well make it like similar to a plantation and make sure they make the minimum then, huh?

        • @Bolt
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          98 months ago

          One problem (there are many) with not caring about the rights of criminals is that “criminal” is not an immovable line. Governments can, have, and do throw away the rights of criminals using these kinds of arguments, and then re-categorize groups of people they don’t like as criminals.

          • @[email protected]
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            -78 months ago

            Are we talking about the ethical considerations regarding prison work or are we talking about specific issues regarding reintegrating criminals back into society?

            • @Bolt
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              8 months ago

              Good question, I’m not sure what your stance is. You seem to be saying two different things.

              • Prisoners should have work available to them so that they can maintain a sense of normalcy and reintegrate with society.
              • Prisoners are in prison of their own choice, so we can make them work against their will.

              Are those both representations of your beliefs? I don’t want to strawman you.