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| ▲ | MSFT_Edging 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Probably an Amendment that needs amending. It was used en masse with turn of the century vagrancy laws to arrest Black people who didn't have enough cash on hand, then send them to other states to work and/or die in coal mines as essentially slave labor. Even happened to children who committed minor crimes. The 13th Amendment provides incentive to incarcerate, and with private prison industries existing period, that incentive probably should not exist at all. | | |
| ▲ | MiiMe19 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you commit a crime tough it out and dont do it again lol. | | |
| ▲ | goodmythical 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | What about for the tens of thousands that are demonstrably innocent and still serving time? Every single innocence project has years or decades of backlogged cases. |
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| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Because it is enshrined in the 13th Amendment: Permitted, not "enshrined". It doesn't mandate it, it allows it. And despite being allowed, all US convicts are paid wages. No one is sentenced to labor, hard or otherwise. | | |
| ▲ | burkaman 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The "wages" are typically something like 25 cents per hour, often much less than that. The work is mandatory, and sentences can be extended if you refuse to work, so they effectively are sentenced to labor. | | |
| ▲ | cratermoon 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What little money they get they immediately give back.
Inmates are charged anywhere from $0.06 to $0.25 per minute for phone calls.
Prisons spend less than $2/day per inmate on meals,
barely enough for sustenance,
so many inmates supplement by purchasing from the prison commissary.
If that's not bad enough,
prisons in 40 states are so-called pay-to-stay,
charging prisoners for their accommodations. | |
| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >The work is mandatory, It isn't. It's just often preferable to sitting in a cell 23 hours per day. >The "wages" are typically something like 25 cents per hour, Why should a felon be permitted to earn whatever it is that you think they should be paid (the wages of a free man)? They are being punished. One of the aspects of the punishment is that they can't go out and get a good-paying job. > and sentences can be extended if you refuse to work This is a blatant lie. Sentences can't be extended without additional convictions. While it's not impossible to be charged with crimes committed in prison (murders occur there often enough), no one's being convicted of "refusing to work in prison". I know that this blew up a few years on reddit, but maybe you should learn about it from more reputable sources. | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Sentences can't be extended without additional convictions. This is technically true but substantively false. Fixed duration sentences in most US jurisdictions (life sentences are different) are come with essentially automatic substantial reductions for good behavior which are removable for poor behavior with minimal process, avoiding the hassle of judicial process for offenses in prison, and frequently “refusing work” is a cause for removing those reductions. So, technically, its not an “increased sentence” for refusing work. But, in practice, that’s exactly how it functions. | | |
| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >This is technically true but substantively false. Only for a certain mindset of people, who feel entitled to every possible bonus ever mentioned. We might even guess your age from that alone. >which are removable for poor behavior with minimal process, Once convicted you are subject to administrative punishments. Don't be convicted. >So, technically, its not an “increased sentence” for You misspelled literally. It's literally not an increased sentence. |
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| ▲ | burkaman 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I know it's hard to believe but I am not lying. Work is mandatory and refusal is punishable with harsher conditions and/or longer imprisonment. Here are a few examples. Alabama: Refusing to work is a "medium-level violation", which can be punished by forfeiting good time, which extends their sentence. See https://governor.alabama.gov/assets/2023/01/EO-725-Good-Time..., https://www.al.com/news/2025/12/alabama-prison-inmates-lose-... Louisiana: Inmates are often sent to solitary confinement (among other punishments) if they refuse to work. https://apnews.com/article/prisons-labor-lawsuit-investigati... Tennessee: "Any prisoner who refuses to participate in such programs when work is available shall have any sentence reduction credits received pursuant to the provisions of T.C.A. § 41-2-123 or T.C.A. § 41-2-146 reduced by two days of credit for each one day of refusal to work. [...] Pursuant to T.C.A. § 41-2-120(a), any prisoner refusing to work or becoming disorderly may be confined in solitary confinement or subjected to such other punishment, not inconsistent with humanity, as may be deemed necessary by the sheriff for the control of the prisoners, including reducing sentence credits pursuant to the procedure established in T.C.A. § 41-2-111. Such prisoners refusing to work, or while in solitary confinement, shall receive no credit for the time so spent. T.C.A. § 41-2-120(b)." This whole page is a particularly horrific read. https://www.ctas.tennessee.edu/eli/punishment-refusing-work > Why should a felon be permitted to earn whatever it is that you think they should be paid (the wages of a free man)? Yes, anyone working should be paid at least minimum wage. If we don't think they should earn that much then we simply shouldn't allow them to work. It should not be legal to force anyone to work (I know this will require a constitutional amendment to enforce). The reason, beyond the obvious that slavery is immoral, is that allowing forced labor for close to zero pay incentivizes incarcerating more people for longer sentences to increase the size of this nearly free labor pool. |
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| ▲ | boston_clone 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Simply wrong and dishonest, yet so easy to google. https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/work_programs.j... I suppose you could consider 15 cents an hour “paid wages”, but to me that’s just a bad veneer for what our system truly is. | | |
| ▲ | NoMoreNicksLeft 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | goodmythical an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | >Words have objective meanings Even if you were right about that, which you're not, but it's actually funnier if you are, you'd be wrong about the argument at hand. Wages, per both Merriam-Webster and Cambridge (which, hint is why you're wrong about the objective definition thing. Why would we need multiple disagreeing dictionaries if words had objective definitions?), are paid to employees based on a contractual obligation. Prisoners are not employees and are not contractually obligated to participate in work. Prisoners are legally (not contractually) required to complete work (regardless of being employed or not), and can (and do) face punishment for not completing compulsory work. The reason that you are not seeing people being sentenced "to labor" is that there is no need to sentence someone "to labor" because the laboring is already included in their sentence as a part of their terms of commitment as outlined in the policies of the various prisons as allowed by the 13th amendment. No court has to specify that the convicted can be compelled to slavery because that specification is inherent in the conviction. Source: Have been a prisoner. | |
| ▲ | Schiendelman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This type of comment is not welcome on HN. Please listen to the people you're engaging with, and try to see their perspective without using perjoratives or dismissing them. | |
| ▲ | boston_clone 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Here, have some facts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat... Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas did not pay inmates for any work whether inside the prison (such as custodial work and food services) or in state-owned businesses. Additionally, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Carolina allowed unpaid labor for at least some jobs. It’d be inaccurate to say that no one is paid for their labor, but it’s dishonest to claim that all prisoners receive wages, especially when it’s not always the case, it’s an order of magnitude below the federal minimum, and they are forced to pay above-market prices for necessary goods, as others have pointed out. You can also review Council v. Ivey about parole denial to continue forced labor through one of those fancy terminals. |
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