US Prison Inmates Strike In Prisons Nationwide Over Slave Labor, Working Conditions

Nithavela · Sep 12, 2016

Hank77 said:
Being lockup without freedom of movement, incarceration, is paying the penalty for crime.
Humane working conditions should be a given.
Fair pay for labor in order to take care of oneself is justifiable. Taxpayers pay on the average $36,000 per yr. per prisoner. They are not taking care of themselves or their families.
So is there a solution that is both fair to all concerned and respects the inmate who respects themselves and others? I believe there is and I believe there is a way to encourage this mind set.
1. The first thing that needs to happen is for the governments to get out of business with private prison corporations who are paid $36,000 by the taxpayers and are making millions every year off the products that inmates build.
2. Inmates are paid a fair wage, starting at minimum wage, for their labor.
3. Inmates see these funds put into their account and out of that they pay their own food, clothing, and shelter.
5. Inmates pay for medical ins. through a group plan that goes into a fund for shared medical services.
4. Inmates pay their child support, a percentage of the wages after their own food, clothing, shelter, and medical.
5. Inmates that have any left over funds put 10% in a savings account that is theirs upon release.
6. Inmates who still have funds can use those funds anyway they choose within what is legal and decent.
7. Inmates are given the opportunity to advance their labor skills and are paid according to their efforts and success.
8. Inmates should also have a record, that they can see, of guaranteed specific time off their sentence for their success.

There will always be exceptions to the rule. Some people are so violent and/or so mentality ill, that they should never be allowed to reenter society and that includes within the prison system society itself.

The people hired, especially guards, should be thoroughly vetted, including a mental evaluation, to insure that they are the type of person who can be respectful to inmates that are making efforts to live in a decent society within the prison system.

We need to reevaluate the people who are serving time for non-violent crimes or crimes such as simple possession of drugs for their own use.
We need to standardize prison terms across the country. I believe this because the taxpayer is paying for inmates that were arrested from all states around the country. So one state gives a person 5 yrs. for possession and another state gives 2 yrs. and that can even depend on the judge overseeing the conviction. I don't see the logic either morally or financially.

It is not slavery to have to take care of yourself and your family even while in prison. But one must have the means to do that.
When there are working people on the outside, who have never committed a criminal offense, that cannot support themselves and their families, let alone have .30 cents and hr. left over after the necessities of life, the incarcerated person is better off financially than they are.

What should be done with prisoners that are unwilling or unable to work?

Greg J. · Sep 12, 2016

Let's offer to move them to a prison in the foreign country of their choice outside of Canada/Western Europe. That would resolve the situation.

jeager016 · Sep 12, 2016

Aryeh Jay said:
Free them all, they are innocent after all, and lock up all the police. I want to live in the utopia I keep hearing about.

Me too.
Except for locking up the police bit.

I'm disabled with 22.5 years service. Broken back #4.
Did I mention I did 9 months in rehab learning to walk again, went to college, earned
two degrees and retired again from G.M.!
We had a couple crooked cops.
I put one in prison for a year where he was in SOLITARY confinement lest the
other crooks kill him.
The guy that broke my back did a couple months in jail and last I knew he
was out and on food stamps and welfare where he came from.
He's making babies and living off of working peoples taxes.

jeager016 · Sep 12, 2016

From my personal experience those few that go to prison and want to enter
society as a productive member have plenty of programs in jail they can
take advantage of.
Few do so.
I know one man that did 7 years in prison and became an alcohol a drug counselor.
He married a nurse, works, pays taxes, supports his kids and contributes to society
and is a fine family man.
He's a good friend of mine.
Sadly he is the exception.

grasping the after wind · Sep 12, 2016

Nithavela said:
Slaves being payed a "pittance" has been a tradition since ancient roman times. Some ancient slaves actually saved up for years until they could buy their freedom.

Slavery is not defined by being forced to work without pay, but by being forced to work without fair recompensation, and without a way to refuse to work entirely.

"Fair compensation" is a completely subjective term. The state's position would be that the amount given added to the services rendered is not only fair compensation but generous compensation for work that is not in any way essential to the state. If one added up the worth of all the services rendered by the state to the criminal it would seem to me difficult ult to conclude that the criminal has been short changed by having free lodging, free food, free access to higher education, free health care, free use of exercize equipment and a small stipend all for doing a little menial labor. Slavery is when one person is owned by another and legally subject to whatever treatment that other desires to mete out up to and including beatings, rape and outright killing. It is an insult to actual slaves who have suffered those cruelties to suggest that their lot is even a bit akin to a criminal not getting as much money from the state as they want.
As an alternative, the state could instead charge convicts for food, shelter, clothing and an activity fee as part of the punishment for criminal activity. The criminal, after all, voluntarily entered into a state of criminality that is universally understood to carry a consequence. This constitutes a contract willingly entered into by the criminal. Should a citizen not wish to enter into this type of contract with the state all the citizen need do is not break the law.

TheBear · Sep 12, 2016

It's hard labor. They should be paid at least $25 an hour, with a generous benefits package.

brinny · Sep 12, 2016

TheBear said:
It's hard labor. They should be paid at least $25 an hour, with a generous benefits package.

LOL!

Shodan · Sep 12, 2016

Oafman said:
There is no possibility of finding figures for a statistically significant number of people from the same background (by which, I assume you include nationality) who go through radically different criminal justice systems.

Instead, we could look at rates of recidivism amongst different developed world countries, and compare them with the principles of the criminal justice system in each case? This discussion never gets far before Norway's fantastically successful criminal justice system gets a mention...!

That would still be apples and oranges.

Regards,
Shodan

Near · Sep 12, 2016

Audacious said:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...de-prison-strike-alabama-south-carolina-texas

Personally, I think this is fantastic and long overdue. Slavery of any form is wrong, and that includes forced labor and paying people literally pennies a day because you can. I don't care if they're criminals or black people or any other outgroup -- you don't get to oppress people for the sole purpose that it's convenient or cost-effective. This is the real world, and denying people their rights is wrong even if you don't like them.

Criminals are still human beings. They're already being punished for their crimes. We at least owe them humane working conditions and fair pay.

Prison in and of itself is a form of taking away one's rights. Sometimes prison isn't meant for rehabilitation, it's meant for control, and punishment, and punishment unto death. Depending on the degree of their crimes, we don't owe them humane working conditions nor "fair pay".

SummerMadness · Sep 12, 2016

I think the issue is that many people, like some in this thread, do not care about recidivism, they only care about hurting someone that wronged another. From instinct this makes sense, someone steals from me and I want to ask them which hand do they want to lose. Someone rapes me or a loved one, I wish them to experience violence and rape in prison. Someone commits a crime and I want divine retribution against that person.

The problem is most people will leave prison and reenter society and the question really is, do you want that person to reoffend? The answer is obviously no, but what has best outcome for decreasing recidivism, is it treating them harshly so they will be too afraid to come back or provide them the aid to have the tools to successfully reintegrate into society? We know the former method doesn't work, so why continually push such practices?

You push those practices because you are not concerned with recidivism, you don't actually care about how much we pay for inmates, you just want to hurt them. That's the real heart of the issue, people don't care about reoffense, hence cheering and chuckling for prison violence and rape for those that "deserve" it. Yet for every Dylann Roof or Jared Fogle that is attacked to cheers of the crowd, there are the 45%+ non-violent, mostly drug offenders, who experience that violence and leave prison worse.

Hank77 · Sep 12, 2016

Nithavela said:
What should be done with prisoners that are unwilling or unable to work?

No work, no pay and they stay in their cells during working hours.

There are very few people who are so disabled that they cannot do some sort of necessary work whether that be in food service, laundry service, the library, etc. One can sit in a wheel chair or even be blind and fold towels, their wages could be based on piece work and quality.

jeager016 · Sep 12, 2016

TheBear said:
It's hard labor. They should be paid at least $25 an hour, with a generous benefits package.

Are you trying to evoke a response with that silly post?
Methinks you are joking.
I hope.
"hard labor".
Now I know it's a joke.
There isn't any hard labor any longer in prisons.

ThatRobGuy · Sep 12, 2016

dgiharris said:
Stop. Process that thought.

Our prisons have become a factory that makes criminals worse then throws them back into society.

The US prison system isn't designed to actually solve any problems...it's designed to make some people a lot of money.

When you have Corrections companies that you can literally buy stock in...if a judge, police union, lawmaker, etc... how do you think they're going to conduct business? (knowing that every prisoner makes them money)

aieyiamfu · Sep 12, 2016

redleghunter said:
Then I would ask, what is your alternative for those who are paying their debt to society?

They do not owe a debt to society. Most people in prison do not even belong there. Only violent criminals should be in prison and they should be treated humanely.

Hank77 · Sep 12, 2016

aieyiamfu said:
They do not owe a debt to society. Most people in prison do not even belong there. Only violent criminals should be in prison and they should be treated humanely.

I cannot agree with this. People who steal from others do belong in prison. Committing fraud or slandering a person so that it adversely effects their ability to prosper should be addressed.
How would you do this if not through incarceration for a time?

jeager016 · Sep 12, 2016

If our prisons don't work suggest an alternative that does.
I have an open mind.

dgiharris · Sep 12, 2016

jeager016 said:
If our prisons don't work suggest an alternative that does.
I have an open mind.

Prison should be a combination of incarceration, therapy, vocational training and education.

Prisoners have nothing but time, they literally have years of time. In 2+ years you can easily teach someone a vocation and educate them and do some therapy to give them life coping skills and repair (some or most) emotional dysfunctions they may have.

To do the above would cost more or less what we already pay. Money spent on rehabilitation is money you don't have to spend on damages , riots life insurance payments (injured or killed guards, etc). Not to mention you are dropping the recidivism rate from near 90% to something maybe around 25% which equates to huge savings

SummerMadness · Sep 12, 2016

dgiharris said:
Prison should be a combination of incarceration, therapy, vocational training and education.

Prisoners have nothing but time, they literally have years of time. In 2+ years you can easily teach someone a vocation and educate them and do some therapy to give them life coping skills and repair (some or most) emotional dysfunctions they may have.

To do the above would cost more or less what we already pay. Money spent on rehabilitation is money you don't have to spend on damages , riots life insurance payments (injured or killed guards, etc). Not to mention you are dropping the recidivism rate from near 90% to something maybe around 25% which equates to huge savings

Recidivism rates should be the biggest alarm that your prison system is not working the way it should, but I think the main problem is doing everything you've listed above is considered rewarding people (as if the lack of freedom was not enough).

dgiharris · Sep 12, 2016

SummerMadness said:
....but I think the main problem is doing everything you've listed above is considered rewarding people (as if the lack of freedom was not enough).

You are right. Historically, we as a people just have the wrong idea about prison and I think it stems from our Puritan roots that feel that "punishment" is warranted. We take a hidden pleasure in bad things happening to evil doers.

However, at the end of the day there is only one metric that matters, and that is recidivism rate.

If giving prisoners milkshakes every day and allowing them to go to amusement parks once a month reduced the recidivism rate from 90% to 10% then guess what, that is what we should do. The number 1 metric here is recidivism rate, that should be king. Everything else is secondary.

If you look historically at prison stats, they were relatively flat until the War on Drugs and privatization of prison in the 80s (horrible idea).

In any event, much like our other problems in the Law Enforcement system, people have the wrong focus

redleghunter · Sep 12, 2016

aieyiamfu said:
They do not owe a debt to society. Most people in prison do not even belong there. Only violent criminals should be in prison and they should be treated humanely.

Only violent criminals? What about thievery? Child predators?

US Prison Inmates Strike In Prisons Nationwide Over Slave Labor, Working Conditions

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