Jason Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 California lawmakers revive effort to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes WWW.LATIMES.COM California lawmakers could let voters decide whether to 'prohibit slavery in any form,' which could change work requirements in prisons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepee Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 Just let them WFH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bacon Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwinIon Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 I knew that CA had prisoners work as firefighters, but I didn't realize that after signing up for that work, they didn't really have any option to stop doing it. Inmates should definitely be allowed to work, but they should be paid real wages for their work and they shouldn't be forced into do it. The objection that I don't really understand from that article is about restitution payments. From what I can tell, it's not like the State hires out Johnny Criminal at $15/h, pays him $1 a day and then puts the rest towards restitution. They just hire him out for the $1, which get put into his inmate trust account and 50% of that put towards restitution. So if you started paying Johnny $10/h for firefighting or making detergent or whatever, he'd be making a ton more money and his victims would get their money that much quicker. I suppose their argument is that if you have to pay them more or if their work is no longer mandatory, prison work would go away entirely, but that seems unlikely. Even if it did, the article mentions how one person make a grand total of $300 firefighting for an entire season. So it's not like victims are being paid back at any noticeable rate as is. The other thing that stood out to me in the article was that there are only ~7,000 inmates doing work assignments. Right now there are ~143,000 inmates in the CA dept of corrections. 5% seems pretty low for a program that does as much good as they seem to claim it does. In an economic impact study they like to flaunt they estimate that state savings on recidivism alone work out to $9.5M. Given an average of 5500 inmates working over that time, that's an average savings of $17k per inmate in the system. I haven't spent much time looking into this, but I imagine that the reason that inmate labor is pretty much only used to benefit the state is that they don't want inmate labor competing against other business that need to actually pay their employees. However, if you actually had to pay inmates, I imagine you could reform that restriction significantly, which would greatly open up what work inmates could do, and likely dramatically increase the number that might actually be willing to work. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unogueen Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 Inmate labour is an abomination. As long as prison rates set a specific expectation it is just a caste system. There are better prison programs world wide if a lesson was necessary but let's be honest no one' s here to learn anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheShader Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 2 hours ago, TwinIon said: I suppose their argument is that if you have to pay them more or if their work is no longer mandatory, prison work would go away entirely, but that seems unlikely. Even if it did, the article mentions how one person make a grand total of $300 firefighting for an entire season. So it's not like victims are being paid back at any noticeable rate as is. I think you're looking at our prison system too much in good faith. Our prison system was designed to keep slavery alive and well in the country what little they get paid is just an effort to obscure this by allowing politicians to say 'see, we're paying them, so totes not slavery'. In case you've never read it, here's the 13th amendment in its entirety: Quote “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.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedarkstark Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 It's mind boggling to me that people defend the practice. Most people have been to conditioned to see prison only as a means of punishment and not a means rehabilitation. Guess what? 90% of prisoners will be released at some point, what kind of person do you want to release back into the world? An eye for eye leaves the whole world blind. 2 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commissar SFLUFAN Posted February 28, 2023 Share Posted February 28, 2023 12 minutes ago, thedarkstark said: It's mind boggling to me that people defend the practice. Most people have been to conditioned to see prison only as a means of punishment and not a means rehabilitation. Guess what? 90% of prisoners will be released at some point, what kind of person do you want to release back into the world? An eye for eye leaves the whole world blind. The American Carceral Industrial Complex wants that high recidivism rate to ensure a steady flow of revenue. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted February 28, 2023 Author Share Posted February 28, 2023 23 minutes ago, thedarkstark said: It's mind boggling to me that people defend the practice. Why do you hate the constitution? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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