
Louisiana records give insight into businesses that utilize prison labor - frgtpsswrdlame
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/jun/08/Louisiana-inmate-labor/
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endymi0n
Sounds what you get if you sell what essentially are sovereign duties of a
state to the highest bidder: An extremely lucrative system of modern-day
slaves that have to shell out their hard earned below-market dollars to a
rigged monopoly system completely provided by my buddies (of 10$/min landline
calls, cash transfers with 50% fee, all kinds of shady "service charges") to
extract the maximum amount of cash while they're in.

So what do you do if you're sitting on such a gold mine? Well, I'd probably
fuel an endless and hopeless war on drugs, introduce mandatory minimum
sentences and take a really, really tough stance on those immigrants. Keep 'em
coming.

Completely coincidentally, the US has the highest incarceration rates on any
halfway civilized nation on the planet by a large margin.

Free markets for the win.

~~~
vkou
When you work for no pay in a communist prison camp, we call it a slave labour
camp. And why wouldn't we? There are no slaves in America.

When you work for next to no pay in an American prison (And are then billed
for room and board when you are released...) Well, that's something else.

How many millions of lives has this institution of liberal democracy
destroyed?

~~~
kbenson
> How many millions of lives has this institution of liberal democracy
> destroyed?

How is this an institution "of" liberal democracy? I can either interpret that
as liberal democracy as destroying lives, or that working while incarcerated
is a feature of liberal democracy. I don't think either are true.

~~~
vkou
Liberal democracies get extremely holier-then-thou about slavery - state-
sponsored or otherwise. Yet, they have no natural means of preventing it from
happening inside them!

My point is that we turn a blind eye to it happening at home. People working
in the GULAG were also paying their 'debt to society'. Not all of them were
political prisoners, either.

~~~
kbenson
So is the "institution" the different perception of local incarceration vs
incarceration in other countries, or the incarceration itself?

~~~
vkou
It's a difference in perception - cognitive dissonance. There are obviously
differences in the incarceration (Our prisons ruin many lives - but Soviet
ones ended them. Depending on the year, mortality rates were between 1 and 20%
- the highest were during the war.)

~~~
kbenson
Ah. The original comment seemed to imply it was the prisons that were a
feature of liberal democracies, which seemed a weird leap to take. I agree
with you in general. The penal system is just one of many systems that's
overly politicized in a national context. It's part of the general problem of
the U.S. not being very good at relative comparisons with other countries
without reverting to a nationalistic dick-measuring contest.

It's the nasty downside to American Exceptionalism. On one end, it spurs
people to attempt to be better because they expect they _should_ be better, on
the other it causes people to infer differences between our attributes and
those of others that we don't particularly like, even when in practice those
differences don't amount to all that much.

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dingbat
to me one of the most interesting things about this issue is how it trended
recently because someone actually read and thought for a moment about what
Hillary Clinton wrote about in her best-selling book "It Takes a Village",
about how they used prison labor during her time in the Arkansas governors
mansion:

[http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-prison-labor-
african...](http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-prison-labor-african-
americans-arkansas-622209)

the fact that this was only widely noticed 20 years after publication is
amazing

~~~
vkou
This really needs more recognition. The fact that this practice is so normal
is appalling.

~~~
linkregister
I agree.

I think this story is an enormous opportunity to get bipartisan opinion
against abuse of prison labor. What better way to get popular support against
AG Session's incarceration increase than to tie it to a deeply unpopular
politician with his constituency?

~~~
dingbat
i see you deleted your previous comment saying that the way this 20-year-old
passage has suddenly been noticed is "banal" and passage itself is not
newsworthy, because HRC was not newsworthy anymore until she ran for
president.

the point of my observation is that this passage only became a widespread
topic AFTER the recent election, after a sharp-eyed and thoughtful reader
commented on it via Twitter and it went viral last week.

~~~
linkregister
Yeah, I deleted it. I was agreeing with you. The comment was focusing on the
circumstances, when the value is recognizing the opportunity.

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weberc2
It's not obvious to me that prison labor is immoral or equivalent to slavery.
As long as the working conditions are humane and the garnished wages are
principally used to subsidize the cost of their incarceration, I see no issue.
Personally, I think prison policy improvements should start with common ground
(e.g., guards shouldn't beat prisoners, prisoners should get prompt medical
attention, etc) before we start worrying about issues that boil down to
prisoner comfort.

~~~
maxerickson
Regardless of what you want to call it, it is forced labor, which is still a
definition of slavery, even if it is a more expansive one.

~~~
weberc2
Fine, call it what you like, my point is that it's not the moral equivalent of
conventional slavery.

~~~
vkou
It's not chattel slavery, but 'conventional slavery' doesn't have to be
chattel slavery to be slavery.

Across history, there have been many forms of slavery that were not chattel
slavery. This is one of them. They have all been morally repugnant.

~~~
weberc2
Prison work has never been widely regarded as morally repugnant (don't
conflate with debtors' prisons, which are fundamentally different), so this
necessarily is not one of your aforementioned forms of slavery.

At the end of the day, incarceration costs money, and the people responsible
for the incarceration would ideally foot the bill. Obviously the incarcerated
rarely have such means, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to pay
a little bit more than the average law-abiding citizen. I don't have a strong
opinion about how they repay their debts--whether it's garnished wages while
in prison or after their release, but it should be one or the other. Actions
have consequences, and a fundamental purpose of prison is to remind people of
that. Moreover, work is a rehabilitating endeavor--it build skills,
confidence, and character. It's mutually beneficial.

------
maxerickson
At a minimum, the businesses should be paying the state the prevailing wage
for the jobs being done (the business owner should not be a beneficiary of
below market labor).

Even better if the prisoners keep a substantial portion of that.

~~~
jstelly
A bunch of this is for the "transitional work program" which sounds more like
a way for prisoners to get out of prison more smoothly:
[http://www.doc.louisiana.gov/transitional-work-
program](http://www.doc.louisiana.gov/transitional-work-program)

I don't know anything in particular about the program, but why do you think
the business should pay the prevailing wage? How many prisoners would get
hired with that requirement vs. without it? As a business owner why would I
prefer to hire a prisoner instead of someone not in prison? Or am I thinking
about it the wrong way? It sounds like hiring a prisoner benefits the prison
system and the prisoner (and also the business as long as there is an
incentive of some kind).

~~~
maxerickson
Because it puts the business owner ahead of their competitors and neighbors
(they are gaining from the favor of the state).

You make a fair point of incentives to hire prisoners rather than others
though.

~~~
jstelly
There are going to be costs, but maybe this is actually a relatively low-cost
option for helping to get prisoners back out into the world (and not back into
prison). It is certainly cheaper than keeping them in prison. It says on that
page that 10-20 percent of prisoners stay with their employer after being
released. That seems low to me, but I haven't studied other solutions to this
problem for comparison.

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CobrastanJorji
It's an interesting breakdown by job. Most of it's just "general labor," but
I'd love to hear the story about the person doing forced prison labor as a
caterer, or even better, the person doing forced prison labor as an offshore
oil platform engineer.

~~~
maxerickson
A lot of "interesting" jobs are for the state itself:

[http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/prison_inmate...](http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/prison_inmates_politicians_min.html)

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greyfox
I just reviewed the wages vs min wage and i dont see how this can be true,
unless these are trusted prisoners who work off-prison jobs.

Prison jobs are notoriously low paying such as cook or dishwasher which ranges
from $0.10-0.15/hr.

I interviewed several prisoners at a state prison in utah (draper perhaps?)
back in 2005 and got the scoop and it was very belittling to see that
prisoners were paid that low.

i just dont see how it could've jumped so high in only ten years.

From the info i gathered this is not a utah phenomenon either the prisoners
are paid extremeley low wages in other parts of the states as well.

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gmiller123456
For those calling this "slavery" thinking that inherently makes it illegal, I
quote the 13th Amendment: "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."

Not saying I agree with the practice. But just getting other people to agree
that it's slavery won't change anything.

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pavement
Is this part of the same complex that runs prisons for profits, or a mixture
of government operations and private companies?

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6stringmerc
It's definitely an improvement compared to the State of Louisiana selling
children born to female prison inmates to bidders / Slave Owners on the steps
of a Courthouse before the Civil War. Yes, this actually happened. About 10
times over the course of a few years. Source: I knew the guy who did the
research and published the findings.

~~~
hrehhf
> Source: I knew the guy who did the research and published the findings.

That's not really a source. If this was published, then tell us where! The
published findings would be the source.

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geogra4
slavery

