| ▲ | phyzome 8 hours ago |
| Correction: The US still has not abolished slavery. It is still legal in the case of prisoners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un... |
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| ▲ | froh 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| yes! which is _the_ driving factor behind the US prison system with its private prison labor facilities. there is zero financial motivation for the state for prevention or rehab or any other activities to reduce imprisonment rates did I mention disenfranchisement of the imprisoned? |
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| ▲ | anonymars 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Related: https://newjimcrow.com/about/excerpt-from-the-introduction "Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy" | |
| ▲ | sokoloff 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you suggesting that the state turns a net profit on prisoners, making more from their labor than the full cost of their incarceration? That seems…unlikely. | | |
| ▲ | none2585 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not the state but the companies that run the prisons and those that contract the workers to work at an extremely low wage. | | |
| ▲ | sokoloff 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | What’s the financial motivation for the state then? | | |
| ▲ | atmavatar 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | For the state itself? None. For state employees (i.e. representatives, judges, etc.)? Some get kickbacks. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal See: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dhs-contractors-told-wh... Alas, the "kids for cash" scandal was such a big news event that it dominates the results for any search you'd do on the subject of private prison corruption, but it's hardly the only example. | |
| ▲ | generj 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The state as a whole does not have a financial motivation. The interests of the criminal justice system on the other hand is heavily financially benefited from the current state of affairs. More incarcerations means more judges, more lawyers, more job security. Moves to correct this are labeled as “soft of crime” and surely my opponent Congresswoman Y isn’t pro crime? | |
| ▲ | scarecrowbob 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's possible that you're genuine in your confusion here; it is, however very hard for me to believe that there are people who genuinely don't understand that when the state spends money it -goes somewhere-. | |
| ▲ | none2585 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I wasn't claiming there was a financial motivation one way or the other simply stating the actors who do turn a profit with regards to the US prison system. The explosion of incarceration and the private prisons resulting from that largely come from "the war on drugs". The book The New Jim Crow is pretty good if you're interested in the topic. | |
| ▲ | compsciphd 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | to lose less money on the prisoners? i.e. its not a good motivation to increase the number of prisoners (even if one looses less money per prisoner, more prisoners will mean more loss), but it does motivate investigating ways on how one can minimize the loss on individual prisoners. | |
| ▲ | Brian_K_White 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Irrelevant. There doesn't need to be any. "What's the financial motivation for the state" is way too blinkered and makes at least 2 different false assumptions. There are other motivations besides financial, and it doesn't have to be the state's own motivation for the state to end up doing something. Countless government policies and programs exist which give no legitimate benefit to the state or the people, no legitimate motivation, financial or otherwise, yet they exist anyway because they do benefit and motivate someone, financially or otherwise, who has some mechanism of influence to cause it to happen. This is almost like asking "Why would anyone do something bad?" Gosh golly why indeed? 517,000 reasons and 124 new ones every day. | |
| ▲ | insane_dreamer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | in many cases the motivation is not financial, it's racial; modern-day Jim Crow |
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| ▲ | elmer2 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I suppose using this logic, murder is legal, because of self defense. Theft is legal because of tax laws. Prisoners aren't 'slaves'. They are being punished for crimes they committed. Very dofferent than being born into it and bought/sold to the highest bidder. |
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| ▲ | voakbasda 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Read the Constitution. The 13th amendment that “abolished” slavery also explicitly reserved the right for the government to keep prisoners as slaves: AMENDMENT XIII Section 1. 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. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. | |
| ▲ | tmtvl 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If someone is abducted against their will and forced to do work without (fair) compensation and without being allowed to exercise their human rights, is that person not a slave because they were neither born into it nor bought or sold? | | |
| ▲ | ShinyLeftPad 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Abduction against their will" is something that happens when a person is arrested. If you are done for crime I don't think freedoms apply to you anymore. |
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| ▲ | crote 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > They are being punished for crimes they committed The punishment is being locked up in a cell. Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery. | | |
| ▲ | ivell 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery. Why is it not part of the punishment? I think it is dependent upon interpretation. Otherwise arresting and locking up can be interpreted as kidnapping and so on. I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though. | | |
| ▲ | blooalien 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Why is it not part of the punishment? Indeed it is part of the punishment. As an earlier comment in this thread points out from the 13th amendment: > "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime" (emphasis added by me) | |
| ▲ | insane_dreamer 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though. They're not. That's why it's slavery. And slavery of prisoners is permitted by the Constitution, which is the main point here. |
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| ▲ | Brian_K_White 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Self denese isn't murder. It's killing but not murder. And yes, there are forms of killing that are legal and not murder. And yes indeed you are correct that the sate does commit theft and declare it legal for itself. Prisoners that are made to perform any useful work that anyone else benefits from are slaves, not merely prisoners. If you want to invoke the word "logic" you should actually employ it. | |
| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | encom 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Prisoners are not slaves, because they are not the property of the prison or any other entity. It's called involuntary servitude. I'm sure the people affected do not care about the distinction, but words matter. It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude. |
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| ▲ | hylaride 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude. Look, you're not entirely wrong. But you're not entirely right, either. In some states, the prisons are privately run and the prison labour is part of the profit motive. They have no incentive to rehabilitate and the states with these "programs" have some of the highest recidivism rates in the USA. That also ignores the fact that some people are born into situations that make it far harder to live a "legit" life than others, and I'm not even talking about historical racism as part of that equation (which certainly does contribute). I'm also NOT saying that prisoners shouldn't be made to work, but it should be outside of a system designed to exploit them. | |
| ▲ | amazingamazing 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude. Stupid people always say nonsense like this as if no person in prison is innocent. | | |
| ▲ | grantith 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's also black and white thinking that carries an ego-filled, nuance-lacking, disregard for the myriad of circumstances that underpin human behavior. | |
| ▲ | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Stupid people also assume there are not exceptions to every rule. But you can't build your systems (or your arguments) around edge cases, because that would be ignoring the vast majority of use cases. | | |
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| ▲ | none2585 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You should read The New Jim Crow |
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