>This is not rehabilitation. Its a politics long con to get free state money.

1) it can be both

2) I don't see the economic value here. If a prisoner software engineer can make 80k and can instead make 200k if they weren't in prison, what would make the state more? the garnished wages on a prisoner that need to partially go into maintaining the prison, or the taxes on the free person who's paying their own bills? (this isn't rhetorical, I think it's closer than what first blush tells us).

> "Prisoners are thriving" oh yeah? "THRIVING" In f-ing prison?]

Given the context of the article, I take "thriving" as in "being rehabilitated". Which should be the goal of the justice system, but it's been clear that is almost never is the result.

If there's anyone wrongfully imprisoned or otherwise having the book thrown at them, that's a different matter.