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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

	▲	amazingamazing 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Another stupid comment. What do you think about the death penalty? If you happen to be the one dying for no reason would you consider that just a trivial unfortunate edge case? Educate yourself: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/innocence Every day I am happy many here are techies and not politicians.

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none2585 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You should read The New Jim Crow