Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to popular food brands

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2024-01-29/prisoners-in-the-us-are-part-of-a-hidden-workforce-linked-to-hundreds-of-popular-food-brands.html

by PaulHoule • 2 years ago

203 211 2 years ago

english.elpais.com

harywilke• 2 years ago

This is not a 'food brand' thing. And has been going on for ages. It's awful exploitation. From Microsoft getting their packaging for Windows '95, to Victoria's Secret,Nintendo, and Starbucks.Just to name a few. https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2002/mar/15/prison-coff...

tomoyoirl• 2 years ago

it’s been going on for ages

“All day long they work so hard Til the sun is going down Mending all the highways and byways And wearing, wearing a frown You hear them moaning their lives away Then you hear somebody say: That’s the sound of the men Working on the chain / gang.”

Sam Cooke, 1960 https://youtu.be/zBn5aIfZElE

My my my my my my my my my my my my My work is so hard Give me water I’m thirsty

WarOnPrivacy• 2 years ago

I grew up in a prison town, adjacent to their corn and cattle fields. It began about 1910 as a reformatory where Wash DC convicts would be sent to rural Lorton and taught working trades, from brick making to farming.

I've been reflecting how this and similar prisons all (AFAIK) elapsed into the same dismal hellholes that 19th century sanitariums did. Eventually reformers die and are replaced by politically driven, officious beancounters.

picadores• 2 years ago

This would be different, with a different incentive. Like if the reform is working, the instituation gets the taxes on the wages paid to a reformed prisoner after prison.

systemtest3• 2 years ago

My country abolished forced prison labour in 2021 and I'm happy with that.

samstave4• 2 years ago

So what do voluntary prison laborers get paid?

systemtest3• 2 years ago

95 eurocents per hour, which can be used for the prison shop, to rent a TV or radio. You can buy a can of coke, phone cards, condoms, cigarettes or a packet of crisps.

Beijinger3• 2 years ago

Which country?

systemtest3• 2 years ago

The Netherlands. Since July 1 2021 we abolished the work duty for prisoners. It is now voluntary.

rtkwe2• 2 years ago

A lot of the US prison labor is also largely voluntary they're just paid pennies and make loads of money for the state or private prison contractor running their prison.

crtasm• 2 years ago

How voluntary is it when they're paying ridiculous amounts of money for things as basic as making a phonecall?

tw042• 2 years ago

There was a decent Netflix special on this - 13th amendment (I believe that was the name). Basically slavery never actually ended, it’s just hidden in the prison system now. Society is ok with it because we’ve somehow gotten this distorted view that prison is about punishment and not rehabilitation.

Then wonder why we have such a high rate of recidivism.

lr4444lr3• 2 years ago

While I certainly would not support the abuses in the article, being required to work 5 days a week whether you want to or not is rehabilitative for many people who cannot hold down a job because they lack discipline and patience to appreciate that this is how productive citizens afford the basics of life. Along with drug addiction treatment, education, and psychological services, participation in labor is part of making them productive members of society again.

It should also not be for the profit of private companies. They are maintained by our tax dollars, and the public should reap that benefit.

slater-• 2 years ago

But I assume you’re talking about being paid for that work

Zigurd• 2 years ago

This is an issue that needs to be considered in the context of all the ways US prisons in various states are highly exploitative and abusive.

burkaman6• 2 years ago

Prison labor has no impact on recidivism, so it can't be considered rehabilitative in its current form: https://mn.gov/doc/assets/Effects%20of%20Prison%20Labor%20on..., https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/impact-f....

I couldn't find any studies that specifically focused on involuntary labor; presumably some of the people in the linked studies were willing to work and not forced.

cush7• 2 years ago

Wow this comment reads like it was written 150 years ago. You should really both read the article and watch the documentary about which you’re replying to, you'll learn a lot.

Between racially-biased mandatory minimum sentences, forced prison labor, and the fact that felons lose their right to vote, the United States prison industrial complex is a system that truly isn’t far off from slavery.

underlipton• 2 years ago

"Slavery as a cure for NEEThood," is an interesting (read: horrifying) proposition. Assuming that people "lack discipline and patience" is begging the question; the requirement of productivity to justify one's existence, post-industrialization, is circumspect, particularly in an economic system that relies on some level of unemployment to keep prices for even basic goods down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Othe...

tw042• 2 years ago

While I certainly would not support the abuses in the article, being required to work 5 days a week whether you want to or not is rehabilitative for many people who cannot hold down a job because they lack discipline and patience to appreciate that this is how productive citizens afford the basics of life.

That’s odd, because the countries with the lowest rate of recidivism don’t have forced labor. “Lack of discipline” isn’t the reason most of them are in prison, it’s lack of skills and opportunity. Nothing about the prison industrial complex is fixing either of those problems.

It is subjecting them to a dog-eat-dog culture of violence though. Not exactly surprising people generally come out even less able to productively participate in society than when they go in.

cush7• 2 years ago

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. It’s an excellent documentary.

bill_joy_fanboy4• 2 years ago

Noted this in a comment above, but restating it here: If someone has wronged me or my family or society at large in some kind of serious manner, rehabilitating is not really a concern for me. I think they should be punished. Plain and simple.

giraffe_lady6• 2 years ago

Yes, we know, thank you. As the moral and spiritual arguments against bloodthirsty retribution are well established in most of the world's belief systems I won't try to rehash them here. Yours isn't a fringe view, we're all aware of it and it has been taken into account, in fact is the basis of the current system. Please allow us to discuss other approaches. Don't stress too much, I'm sure we will continue to torture the slaves.

wellthisisgreat• 2 years ago

Have you ever been wronged in a serious manner?

I haven’t been, but I’ve been close with multiple people who have been wronged personally (near-deadly assault, unprovoked, all cases unrelate) and they all came around quickly to not wanting any vengeance on the assailant, legal or not. I was surprised, frankly.

In all cases survivors just wanted to move on, and simply not hear about the perps.

aurizon• 2 years ago

As it sits, do the prisoners have the right to refuse this work = sit in a cell or yard doing nothing? I might well choose the activity of the work. The world's prison systems are, as we all know, systems that promote the wide dissemination of DIY crime instruction from 'old boys' as well as 'tech boys' and it works very well at that!! With the rise of AI, and the application of AI to detailed instruction (AKA teaching) where each prisoner would have 3-4 hours of instruction, followed by 3-4 hours of AI supervised homework/surfing make a valuable day where they learn various new skills and are taught STEM matter as well as history/arts - as their intellect and interest allows. Prisoners could gain from this, as would we all.

burkaman6• 2 years ago

No they do not have the right to refuse, and can be punished if they do. The text is pretty clear: "involuntary servitude" is permitted as punishment for a crime.

More than 76 percent of incarcerated workers report that they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation, or the inability to pay for basic life necessities like bath soap.

- https://www.aclu.org/publications/captive-labor-exploitation...

kredd4• 2 years ago

It’s a bit more complex than that and has a bunch of edge cases.

For example, in most of the states, there are prisons that are pay-to-stay, so prisoners basically go in debt while they’re incarcerated. This further troubles their debts, putting more pressure on them to take on work. Part of this debt can be written off by working on specific jobs that are sourced by local employers. There was a case of a woman I read about, how she’s paying off her pay-to-stay prison debt working at a wings place part time, while serving her sentence.

Since every state has its own laws and complexities, you get a bunch of scenarios that add up, which, in my opinion, are highly immoral.

rightbyte• 2 years ago

Uhm ... how can prisons be pay to stay? Do you get a worse prison if you don't pay?

gustavus• 2 years ago

That's the part I don't get about people comparing this to slavery. You have the right to refuse. Everything I've heard from people actually in prison say they're grateful for it because it gives them something to do. Do we need to have reform around the prison system? Yes. Is targeting the one place where they are able to do something productive and earn some money the way to do it? Probably not.

sdenton42• 2 years ago

You're not going to get much reform if the prison operators are making bank on the status quo.

pc862• 2 years ago

Recidivism is so high for a lot of reasons, but two big ones are 1) prisons are focused too much on punishment for the sake of punishment and not enough on reforming those inmates who can be reformed (not all can); and, 2) ex-cons typically have little to no resources when they get out, have trouble finding employment, and turn back to crime as one of the only ways they can make any money at all. Does this mean they should get a pass for the crimes? Of course not.

But it does mean that we could combat #2 by actually paying convicts working as part of a prison sentence the wage they'd get for that same job after release. Why are we paying convicts less than $0.50/hr[0] for jobs they'd earn $25-30/hr for? Because it benefits those local economies, but at the cause of driving up recidivism. Imagine if you were incarcerated, had the option of working (the majority of incarcerated workers are punished if they don't work), and if you did you'd have thousands in savings when released to get back on your feet?

[0] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

drekk• 2 years ago

Being tossed in solitary confinement because you won't work for $0.40/hr sounds like slavery to me. It's right there in the language of the 13th amendment. Maybe has something to do with the US having the largest prison population in the world. Larger than China even, an authoritarian nation with 4x the population. Does that happen in a vacuum?

mihaaly• 2 years ago

I wonder what those competing with the prisoner made products in the US market but subject to stricter rules and higher cost say about all that. And about Unfair Methods of Competition or Unfair Trade Practices.

billy99k• 2 years ago

What would you rather have the prisoners doing besides working? This actually gives them some sort of skillset that can be used when they get out.

saagarjha• 2 years ago

Learning? There's not much you get from doing menial work for almost zero wages.

klyrs• 2 years ago

No, I think there is some learning occurring. Only, the lesson is that society isn't worth integrating into. This is a beneficial lesson for the slavers.

burkaman6• 2 years ago

I would rather have them choosing whether or not to work so they aren't slaves.

SkyBelow4• 2 years ago

A slave that isn't given tasks to do is still a slave.

We can discuss the negative incentives of having them do labor and how that might pervert our legal system (companies that benefit lobbying for harsher penalties on victimless crimes), but they are still denied their freedom regardless of which way that discussion goes.

brink2• 2 years ago

Yeah, I don't understand why prison labor should be controversial as long as they're not being treated terribly. Give them minimum wage if weighs on your conscience, and pay it out in a lump sum when they get out.

burkaman6• 2 years ago

Please read the article, it addresses all of your points and should help you understand.

sdenton42• 2 years ago

Because we tend not to like slave labor in the modern world. Using prisoners for slave labor creates perverse incentives to enslave more people, and keep them enslaved longer.

KSteffensen• 2 years ago

Because it sets up incentives for whoever benefits from the labor to lobby for stricter crime laws regardless of whether those stricter laws lead to less crime in the long term.

bobbylarrybobby• 2 years ago

Studying, choosing whether to work, making at least minimum wage

connicpu3• 2 years ago

If prisoners at least got paid minimum wage then maybe when they left prison they'd have a pool of funds to get their life put back together rather than resorting to crime in order to survive, repeating a cycle that gets them put back in there.

Beijinger3• 2 years ago

You realize that prison is interested in getting them back?

This is an industrial complex and they are the product.

There are exceptions of cause, see Norway.

SkyBelow4• 2 years ago

Wouldn't in many of those cases those funds be more needed by their victims to help restore a little of what was lost. Direct things like paying medical bills or supporting someone who can no longer work or less direct things like paying for therapy for someone who is now traumatized?

As for victimless crimes, do they really deserve prison to begin with and wouldn't we do better with alternatives, or perhaps even removing some of those laws entirely?

FireBeyond6• 2 years ago

Many states will bill inmates for their room and board on release.

Some even do so when there has been no conviction.

cush7• 2 years ago

That’s slavery, friend.

orwin• 2 years ago

Can you at least pay them a correct wage? In my country they are paid at least minimum wages, and have the choice of studying instead.

MisterTea• 2 years ago

Education and Socializing activities for starters. Slavery isn't exactly going to rehabilitate anyone. At best they'll be indifferent and at worst it will just make them more angry and resentful at "the system". Hard to integrate back into society with that kind of head on your shoulders.

bill_joy_fanboy4• 2 years ago

If someone has wronged me or my family or society at large in some kind of severe manner by committing a crime, I don't really care if they are rehabilitated. I want them punished. Why complicate things?

Also, I recognize that there are a lot of people in prison in the U.S. who shouldn't be there. I think our the way people end up in prison needs reform, of course. However, once there, the point is to punish people for doing something wrong, IMHO. "Rehabilitation" is not the point of prison.

yunwal2• 2 years ago

Keeping someone trapped in order to force them to do work is called “slavery” and it’s generally frowned upon in the modern era. There shouldn’t be profit associated with prisoners, that’s how you get wrongful arrests and draconian drug laws.

ecf2• 2 years ago

It’s not slavery when the human has done things that society deemed bad enough to lose their rights for however long the sentence is.

BurningFrog2• 2 years ago

They're not imprisoned in order to force them to do work.

5555624• 2 years ago

Keeping someone trapped in order to force them to do work is called “slavery” and it’s generally frowned upon in the modern era.

It may be frowned upon; but, it's legal. Even in 1865, prison labor was scene as "acceptable" slavery. It's the exemption in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

EasyMark3• 2 years ago

People aren't "trapped", they are there because they broke the law. The work should be voluntary though. Also Portland is showing exactly how well allowing hard drugs to flourish works. The voluntary uptake of drug rehabilitation offers has been terrible as most skeptics suggested. I'm glad they are doubling down on it for the forseeable future so the rest of the country will be slow to enact "shoot up heroin on the corner lolz" laws. Weed is fine but fenty, crack, meth, etc will destroy people and kill any will they have to recover from it. Imprisoning addicts is ridiculous. Imprisoning drug dealers and other 1 step removed killers? I have zero problems with that.

samstave4• 2 years ago

its not about them working or not, its about what companies benefit from using such labor as opposed to employing people who need to support self/family.

mistrial93• 2 years ago

if industry can capture labor at the lower price point, there is a lot of incentive not to hire civilians with health care and worker rights, instead get more prison labor. This is older than Egypt.

tenebrisalietum• 2 years ago

To avoid two bad things, the following should be true when a company uses prison labor:

- The prisoner should be able to freely choose to work or not to work.

- The prisoner should be able to choose whom to work for and be able to quit.

- The prisoner should be making the same wage as someone not in prison. This wage may be garnished by the jail to pay for prison (separate topic), but it should still cost the company the same as a non-prisoner laborer.

The bad things that are avoided are:

- being unethical

- making sure corporations don't lobby to expand prison labor - which could have the side of effect of criminializing things that most people don't consider crimes.

kyleyeats• 2 years ago

Working is fine but they should get paid normally so it doesn't ruin the labor market for all the non-slaves. They should start getting the paychecks they earned when they get out. If they mess up and re-offend, that's when we take that money away. The incentives now are all aligned with going back to crime, which works well for the slavers but not for anyone else.

rqtwteye• 2 years ago

Give them something to do that normally doesn't get done. I could think of them building trails and huts in national parks like the CCC did in the 30s. Or other charitable things. Them working for cheap for profitable corporations is a massive market distortion which costs other non-imprisoned people their jobs.

katbyte• 2 years ago

The fact companies and people can make money of prisoners created an incentive to imprison more people for longer. That’s the problem.

deadbabe2• 2 years ago

Shouldn’t they be focusing on their rehab and mental health?

BHSPitMonkey• 2 years ago

Rehabilitate our prisoners? And dry up the supply of cheap labor for the corporate interests? Come now.

rolph3• 2 years ago

i would certainly not want, anyone in a prison situation to handle food or critical dual purpose items, at any point during manufacture.

to wit; how often is prison product tested or monitored for tampering or expectorative adulterations ?

FireBeyond6• 2 years ago

Working as a firefighter, inmate firefighters are among the hardest workers on the fire line, and do so despite often getting the worst work to do (hoeing and clearing fire breaks in 100F+ windy days with smoke and fire).

I'm very much appreciative of the fact that, though not mentioned, a growing number of fire departments are willing to overlook (certain) criminal history for hiring ex-inmate firefighters.

rtkwe2• 2 years ago

It's not that they're working it's that they're paid basically nothing for their labor which is bad for them and also the people in surrounding areas who have to compete with the absolute pittance the prison labor forces are paid.

Ericson2314• 2 years ago

They are paid far too low a wage. Even if they don't have much opportunities to spend money, they should be paid a regular wage.

(To be clear, they are being paid far below minimum wage; it would be illegal if they weren't prisoners)

If this makes prison labor no longer economical, so be it.

samstave4• 2 years ago

We should put airTags on all prisoners so we can see where they get trafficked.

mistrial93• 2 years ago

There was a meeting about Electronics Recycling in California, long ago.. A new California law was going into effect regarding E-Waste. Many companies, media outlets, smart people and activists were gathered.

A particular guy stood up and pitched his company solution. That company was called Unicor. The spokesman was well-spoken, had clear points, and was African American. The pitch essentially was, use prison labor for E*Waste, contracted via Unicor.

A second person stood up in the audience and called it what it was, in front of everyone. Privately, the two nearly came to blows back stage out of sight, shortly afterwards.

this is not fake in the USA, and even more not fake elsewhere in the world.

Supermancho2• 2 years ago

I heave heard of Unicor, when I lived in CA. My best friend used to haul for them to e-waste distros.

https://resource-recycling.com/e-scrap/2016/12/01/federal-pr...

mistrial93• 2 years ago

yes, true story. The anti-humor follow-up is .. that same "prison labor objector" gave a rousing and heartfelt speech to Googlers in Mtn View around the same time.. more than 200 engineers and others at a meeting.. Googlers did nothing.. Apple did (almost) nothing.. it never was solved really.. much worse going on now

Georgelemental• 2 years ago

Discussed 7 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39187236

cush7• 2 years ago

The comments in that thread make me feel like they actually read the article.

PaulHoule• 2 years ago

I find it funny that the karma score and comment counts are very close to that article but I perceive the comments are way better.

imwillofficial• 2 years ago

Literal slavery

hedora• 2 years ago

People always get confused when I say the US should finally get around to banning slavery.

I tried to compute an estimate of the current percentage of the US population that's forced labor vs. at the peak of the pre-abolition slave trade, and from what I can tell, it's currently higher than it ever was back then.

People argue that what we currently have isn't the same or as bad, but present-day prisoners would point out that the current system is a form of eugenics: We keep a large percentage of reproductive-age black males locked up where they can't father or raise children. Back in the slave days, owners often chose who breeded with whom. Both are reprehensible, but you could argue either situation is worse than the other. At least the old policy didn't have the effect of slowly reducing / diluting out the black population.

Anyway, the US should ban slavery.

ausbah• 2 years ago

you should provide numbers for that for a claim that big

malfist2• 2 years ago

I did some digging because I was curious.

From the 1860 census [1]:

Total Number of slaves: 4m

Total Population: 31.4m

Percentage of population as slaves: 12.7%

From the 2010 census [2]:

Total Population: 309m

Total Incarcerated Population: 7m [3]

Percentage of population incarcerated: 2.2%

OP is absolutely not correct, even if we are generous and assume every incarcerated person is forced into labor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_census [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_census [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...

gruez3• 2 years ago

I tried to compute an estimate of the current percentage of the US population that's forced labor vs. at the peak of the pre-abolition slave trade

Wikipedia says

According to the latest available data at the World Prison Brief on May 7, 2023, the United States has the sixth highest incarceration rate in the world, at 531 people per 100,000

531 people per 100,000 works out to about half a percent. Meanwhile during slavery in the US, wikipedia says

The slaves of the colonial era were unevenly distributed: 14,867 lived in New England, where they were three percent of the population; 34,679 lived in the mid-Atlantic colonies, where they were six percent of the population; and 347,378 in the five Southern Colonies, where they were 31 percent of the population.

Even in low slavery areas, the slavery rate is higher than current incarceration rates by several fold.

mjburgess5• 2 years ago

they mean absolute numbers

trobertson• 2 years ago

Looking at the Colonial era is looking at slavery ~300 years before it peaked just before the Civil War. Therefore, the numbers you give for the Colonial times don't have anything to do with the conversation.

mustacheemperor4• 2 years ago

The 1860 census counted just over 4 million enslaved African Americans in the South, out of a population of about 31.4 million.[0][1]

There are about 1.9 million people incarcerated in jail or prison in the United States today.[2]

The scale of incarceration in the US today is mind-boggling, but is itself under half the number of people enslaved at the height of the Southern slave economy.

[0]https://usafacts.org/articles/the-1860-census-counted-4-mill... [1]https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1864/dec/1860a.h... [2]https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2023.html

StopTheTechies• 2 years ago

The oddness of referring to the "slave trade" is the height of the "Atlantic Slave Trade" far predated the peak of slavery in the US and contributed directly far more to the Caribbean and Brazil than to the rest of the Americas. US chattel slavery, particularly the form that exploded post cotton-gin, was a system of directly controlling the reproductive capacity of enslaved black and native Americans.

lupusreal2• 2 years ago

AFAIK, US prisons aren't making use of that 13th amendment exception and prison labor is voluntary. Prisoners choose it, despite the low wages, because it beats sitting around on their ass all day. There's a very valid argument to be made for paying them the normal minimum wage, if for no other reason than to be fair to the rest of the workforce, but doing away with the opportunity to work for prisoners would just be cruel.

As for it being eugenics, most prisoners are in for violent crimes or property crimes. Imprisoning people for stuff like failure to pay child support (modern debtors prison) is shameful, but not the sort of thing most US prisoners are in for.

tejohnso• 2 years ago

We keep a large percentage of reproductive-age black males locked up where they can't father or raise children.

To tie this into eugenics I think you'd have to make the case that black people who aren't criminals are being unfairly targeted for imprisonment. Otherwise it's just a side effect of criminal behaviour, and criminals end up in prison regardless of ethnicity.

I'm not suggesting it would be difficult to make that case. But some people tend to disregard systemic bias, so it would seem that everything is fine. If you don't want to be imprisoned, all you have to do is stop acting like a criminal.

mjburgess5• 2 years ago

you'd only need to make the case that laws were created to systematically target black people and hence rope them into prison slavery

this is a fairly easy case to make, see, for example the reason for the current distribution of race in us prisons

nycticorax6• 2 years ago

Forced labor in prison is not "slavery", as that term is generally understood. It may be bad, and that labor benefiting private companies may be worse, but that doesn't mean it's "slavery". Also, people duly convicted of crimes lose many of their civil rights. This is not new, and there's nothing wrong with it per se. (It happens in every country.) Seriously people, you're not being clever or radical. You're just being foolish and/or dishonest. People who are against forced prison labor are trying to convince other people that it's "slavery" because they want to get rid of it (or pare it back, or stop private companies from benefiting from it, or whatever). It is very much an Orwellian tactic.

ceejayoz7• 2 years ago

Forced labor is indeed slavery, which the Thirteenth Amendment unfortunately permits.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

It may not be chattel slavery.

gjsman-10005• 2 years ago

For most of the world's history, life ran on one motto:

"If you don't work (or someone who loves you doesn't work for you), you don't eat."

The alternative is manifestly unjust: A prisoner who might have killed 20 people gets to just live life, and can't be ordered to even keep the cell doors clean.

nycticorax6• 2 years ago

Forced prison labor is very clearly not chattel slavery. And chattel slavery is what 99.9% of people mean when they talk about slavery in the US.

And I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" qualifies "involuntary servitude", not "slavery". And in any case, lawyers like to err on the side of ruling out any possible misinterpretation, no matter how ridiculous.

If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. You're being either daft or disingenuous, or both.

mardifoufs2• 2 years ago

By that definition, forcing a dad to work for child support (which happens sometimes, and I fully understand why) is slavery. That definition can apply to a lot of stuff if you stretch it, or if you remove context. Obviously having to work when you put yourself in a situation through the consequences of your own actions, with a sentence and due process, is not slavery. Having to work to provide for your children (legally so) is not slavery either. Now you can totally be against prison labor, I myself don't think it is beneficial for anyone, but you don't have to say it's "slavery" just to frame it as a pro or anti slavery debate lol.

By the legal definition of kidnapping, putting someone in jail could be considered to be kidnapping yet everyone knows very well that it just isn't the same

dvngnt_• 2 years ago

how is it not?

With the passage of the 13th amendment in 1865, slavery was deemed unconstitutional. Involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, was still explicitly allowed.

nycticorax6• 2 years ago

See my response above. When people talk about slavery in the US, they mean chattel slavery. Forced prison labor is clearly not chattel slavery. To pretend otherwise is to be either silly or disingenuous, or both.

mdgrech23• 2 years ago

I don't see why you're attempting to mitigate this horrible shitty thing.

nycticorax6• 2 years ago

Because it pisses me off when people try to 'argue' by stretching the commonly-understood meanings of emotionally-charged words like "slavery". Argue the merits, don't attempt cheap rhetorical legerdemain.

mardifoufs2• 2 years ago

It can be shitty without being slavery. You don't have to frame every debate like this just to strengthen your point.

Viliam1234• 2 years ago

people duly convicted of crimes lose many of their civil rights. This is not new, and there's nothing wrong with it per se.

The wrong part is when you connect "X loses many of their civil rights" to "Y makes a greater profit", and now Y has a lot of money and an incentive to spend a fraction of it on lobbying for legislative changes that will send even more people to prison... which means even more money for lobbying, etc.

A few iterations of this feedback loop and you get a system which routinely sends people to prison for trivial things, which routinely sends innocent people to prison, heck even a system where the innocent people are officially advised to "confess" and accept a plea bargain rather than insist on their rights and risk 10x greater penalty if they are falsely convicted.

vintagedave• 2 years ago

Forced labour _is_ slavery, by definition. If your rights are taken away and you are forced to work, you are a slave.

The US 13th amendment says,

either slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted". Ie, you're in prison, and required to labour. It's slavery. It's right there in that US consitutional amendment.

There are different types of slavery. You may be thinking of chattel slaves, where a person is owned. A prisoner is not owned. That does not mean that someone who is not owned by another human, yet who is forced to labour, is not a slave: it's called de facto slavery or state imposed forced labour slavery.

See https://www.antislavery.org/what-we-do/state-imposed-forced-...

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 2 years ago

Just force them code in Rust.

zqfm• 2 years ago

It's pretty appalling the number of people in this thread trying to rationalize and justify slavery.

sesuximo• 2 years ago

Perhaps a solution could be requiring them to be paid full wages? Then there is no incentive to hire prison laborers vs others

Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to popular food brands

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