One thing that stopped me from seeking the vanity plate - I learned that at least in Texas all plates are made by minimally paid prisoners. So any desire to finance that system beyond what's absolute possible minimum (i.e. regular plates) evaporated.
In New York it's the same, they make the license plates and also school furniture, and maybe other things too. I was scared for a moment when I was told by USPS Informed Delivery that I have incoming mail from Auburn Correctional Facility - but it was a license plate.
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> Yes, it’s borderline slave labor
I'm sorry, how is it "borderline" slave labour and not straight up forced labour? These people are imprisoned, and I'm assuming forced to do this work, or what happens if they say no? It's quite literally known as "penal labour" and I thought most of the world figured out that we're not supposed to treat people like that anymore.
> These people are imprisoned, and I'm assuming forced to do this work
This is an incorrect assumption, at least in my state. It’s a job that they can apply for and opt in to do.
The debate is about their hourly wage.
There is a possibility of forced penal labor, as I understand it, but it’s mostly things like being forced to do cleaning duties, road cleanup, etc.
In many states it's, at the very least, coerced.
Having a prison job often comes with deals of better behavior and a shorter sentence (!!!). When you're being told that just working for 2 dollars an hour might lower your sentence from 20 years to 15, do you really have a choice?
For example, in Georgia, prisoners often work outside of the prison for well below minimum wage in order to earn "good time". This means they might get more visits to their family. It also increases their chances of parole. However, the labor is coerced as well. Showing up late or not coming in results in in-prison punishments. So, many prisoners work in cotton fields or McDonald's on the promise of an easier life, while most of their wages are siphoned away and businesses get to pay very little.
This is a mockery of the term "slavery". It is no more slavery to be coerced to work for a shorter sentence than it is slavery to be coerced to follow the law to avoid prison.
"Behave a certain way and you will be imprisoned for less/no amount of time" is not slavery unless the law is slavery. The full term imprisonment is just, and being able to shorten it is a privilege.
> The full term imprisonment is just
This is a contested assumption. Prisons and penal systems in US as I understand it are for profit.
Prisoners are charged rent. The hourly wages have no minimum wage and are usually cents on the dollar. Definitely not enough to pay their rent for their cell.
It's slavery. The South fought hard to include the "except as punishment for crime" clause in the 13th amendment. The US has never fully abolished slavery.
'The South fought hard to include the "except as punishment for crime" clause in the 13th amendment.'
I don't think that's historically accurate. The 13th amendment was passed in the Senate on April 8, 1864 and HoR on January 31, 1865.
At the time, the senate and congressional seats from the 10 southern states were vacant.
So the only fighting the south was doing was in the civil war, which didn't end until May 26, 1865.
The text itself is identical to the text in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery (but allowed for the return of fugitive slaves) in what would later be Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.
Say what? Prisoners pay rent?
Yup!
> Fees for room and board—yes, literally for a thin mattress or even a plastic “boat” bed in a hallway, a toilet that may not flush, and scant, awful tasting food—are typically charged at a “per diem rate for the length of incarceration.” It is not uncommon for these fees to reach $20 to $80 a day for the entire period of incarceration.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...
Holy hell I've read it's bad but this is horrible but very on brand for the capital of capitalism.
Prisoners cannot consent to many things, including labour.
It’s slave labour, whether you like it or not.
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Even our legal system recognizes it as slave labor. The thirteenth amendment specifically says: "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."
yes but except as a punishment for crime whereof has been refined with further case law I believe. You can be forced to do small jobs, clean up. You can be assigned Road Crew and pickup trash. You can do small jobs that the system won't hire and pay for, they'll use you. So long as you aren't a risk of flight, to the officers, or to society if you have to interact with the public.
Beats sitting in a cinderblock white-painted cell with a metal cot and 4" mattress.
Yes, you don't need to be convicted to be forced into labor under the 13th. Pretrial detainees can be forced to do "housekeeping chores" and not violate the constitution.
This shows that the government (all branches) has always ignored the Constitution. It clearly says in the 13th that it requires the person to be "duly convicted".
There was a lawsuit, and the US Supreme Court interpreted the 13th amendment and carved out an exception, because of course they did.
That actually is a good point, in the US justice system, you’re guilty until proven innocent (for most people).
Just the fact that you have a case has ruined lives.
I would certainly prefer to jerk off in my cell over working for pennies on the dollar.
But it doesn't matter, really. Either we have rights as humans or we don't. Qualifying them erodes protections for us all.
> Beats sitting in a cinderblock white-painted cell with a metal cot and 4" mattress.
Does it, though? One might prefer that over slave labor.
They can say no. These Prisons incentivize inmates to opt in by claiming that prisoners develop employable marketable skills and that the work leaves a a good mark on their record. It can also pay out cents to a few dollars an hour (or nothing at all)
It’s not quite slave labor but it probably should be compensated better at the minimum.
Never heard about it myself before, and went to Wikipedia of course, and found this:
> Prison labor in the US is mostly optional. Although inmates are paid for their labor in most states, they usually receive less than $1 per hour. As of 2017, 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. Incarcerated individuals who are required to work typically receive minimal to no job training resulting in situations where their health and safety could potentially be compromised. Prison workers in the US are generally exempt from workers' rights and occupational safety protections, including when seriously injured or killed. Often times, inmates that are often overworked through penal labor do not receive any proper education or opportunities of "rehabilitation" to maximize profits off the cheap labor produced. Many incarcerated workers also struggle to purchase basic necessities as prices of goods continue to soar, meanwhile prison wages continue to stay the same. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
It sounds like it isn't optional everywhere, the pay is beyond inhuman, they don't always get any benefits at all, no training, don't safety and are overworked.
Overall, sounds like a nice idea on paper, but combine it with private companies actually running these prisons and probably making profits on having more f̵o̵r̵c̵e̵d̵ labour available to them and you basically re-invented slavery again, just with a nicer name.
> It sounds like it isn't optional everywhere, the pay is beyond inhuman, they don't always get any benefits at all, no training, don't safety and are overworked.
Most of these are true, but I would push back on the pay angle. If a person is in jail, they are a ward of the state and have no expenses at all. There is no sense in paying them a "living wage" because they don't have to live off it. In any case, most stereotypical prison jobs would not cover the cost of incarcerating the employee.
A common way this works these days in more progressive states is that prisoners who can hold down a remote job are allowed to keep their income, minus paying a tithe for their incarceration:
https://www.mainepublic.org/2025-08-29/in-maine-prisoners-ar...
> Overall, sounds like a nice idea on paper, but combine it with private companies actually running these prisons and probably making profits on having more f̵o̵r̵c̵e̵d̵ labour available to them and you basically re-invented slavery again, just with a nicer name.
Only about 10% of prisoners are in private prisons. The vast majority of them are in some kind of government prison. The US definitely puts too many people in prison, but that's for cultural reasons and not because of some nefarious plan to get cheap labor.
>If a person is in jail, they are a ward of the state and have no expenses at all. There is no sense in paying them a "living wage" because they don't have to live off it. In any case, most stereotypical prison jobs would not cover the cost of incarcerating the employee.
only the last sentence here is true.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...
many prisoners receive a bill for their incarceration and will come out of prison with debt, even if they're working while in prison.
it varies prison to prison, but even basic toiletries may not be provided. the most commonly purchased items at commissary are food.
> The US definitely puts too many people in prison, but that's for cultural reasons and not because of some nefarious plan to get cheap labor.
the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery contains a single exception: prisoners.
the largest maximum security prison in the united states is a slave plantation, operated continuously since the 1830s. they still farm cotton.
They don’t understand that not only tax payer funds go to these systems but the systems turn around and create victims of those in their care.
Paying to stay in jail should be done on an availability of funds, like bonds are (mostly), else it costs the tax payers. The shell companies that operate these prisons shouldn’t be allowed to charge inmates per diems if they are receiving tax payers dollars for them.
People think it’s all murders and rapists when that’s only 5% of the population at most. Most are in there for petty crime, drug charges, 3 strike rules, administrative chains, or mental health issues.
Yet for 27¢/day, will pick cotton for a local textile.
> many prisoners receive a bill for their incarceration and will come out of prison with debt, even if they're working while in prison.
This is true. I 100% agree with you that this is awful and should not be allowed.
> the largest maximum security prison in the united states is a slave plantation, operated continuously since the 1830s. they still farm cotton.
Fair, but only 12% of prisoners are even maximum security to begin with, and you don't end up there for slinging a little bit of pot.
On that note, I also think we send far too many people to jail and should rewrite the laws to fix that.
Yes, this is something people miss about prison. Many criminals are forced to repeat crime because prison is designed to economically ruin people. It's also designed to emotionally, physically, and mentally ruin people.
Point blank, the system is not meant to prevent or discourage crime, it's meant to enact torture for people we feel deserve it. Whether that helps our society does not matter at all - nobody cares if a rapist leaves prison just to rape again, so long as they are sufficiently punished for it. The punishment is more important than real, tangible outcomes, because ultimately we've built it so the punishment is what makes us feel good and safe.
All true, but on the flip side they get free room and board...
Joking aside, read the 13th amendment https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/ and pay close attention to the bit that reads, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. In the United States, involuntary labor, slavery, and locking someone in a cell are all equally not allowed. And all equally allowed - as punishment for crimes of which you have been convicted.
If you think that this is ripe for abuse, you'd be exactly right. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_leasing. We got rid of chattel slavery - and immediately accomplished the same effect with the black codes and convict leasing. As the name suggests, this was overwhelmingly directed at the same black people who had just theoretically been emancipated.
It's not free everywhere. Many institutions in the USA charge you for your stay. You can stay in jail for a year and have the case dismissed and still be on the hook for thousands of dollars in rent.
True. If you win your case, the taxpayer no longer pays. Lots of places have those pay to stay laws.
But if your case has not been officially lost, you can't be set to forced labor either.
(Of course our BS system in many places still charges exonerees after the fact despite the fact that it was a wrongful conviction.)
Sadly, you can even be set to forced labor even if you're unconvicted, based on SCOTUS case law. A jail can legally force you to perform "housekeeping chores" to maintain the facility.
Where? I've never heard of that
It's called pay-to-stay. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-to-stay_%28imprisonment%29 for more.
This happened in Oregon to my kind of brother in law. (Married to half sister of my half siblings - what do you call that?)
He's Native American, so the local police thought that they could target him with a BS charge. They lost. The private jail that he'd been kept in, now that they weren't getting paid by the state, sued him for the cost of keeping him. Incidentally the counter sheriff is on the board of directors for the private prison in question.
Can you spell conflict of interest? Of course you can! Can you spell corruption? That too, wow!
Can anyone do a danged thing about it? Of course not! As long as they are only targeting people that nobody likes, like Native Americans, their victims won't get the time of day in our wonderful United States of America.
(I really wish I was making this up.)
And that's Oregon... there are worse places, too.
Oregon has a huge political tension. Portland is solidly blue. The rest of the state is solidly red. In the 1920s, Oregon was one of the centers of Klan activity. Today it is a stronghold for the Proud Boys.
The Grand Ronde reservation is in rural Oregon, mostly in Polk County. This is where the event that I referenced took place. It is very strongly conservative, with a long racist history.
Well, the governor of Oregon was a Klansman in the 1920s.
Smells a little bit like the Kids for Cash¹ corruption scandal from a few years ago. Just last year, President Biden commuted the sentence of one of the corrupt judges who had been convicted for sending kids to a private detention center in exchange for kick-backs from the owner of the facility. For some reason presidents love to pardon despicable evil people, way more often than they ever seem to pardon people who genuinely deserve mercy. Trump is the worst offender of all in this regard, it seems like he's selling pardons to anyone who will pay the price²³.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
2. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/L8oj3-vdJ-8
3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2023/05/16/giulian...
They certainly can say no in a lot of states, but that is often very much against the best interests of the prisoner because almost all work programs shorten your sentence.
I knew one guy who was doing a 30 day jail sentence for some misdemeanor and was told they would reduce it to 14 days if he worked in the kitchen. He took the job and lost most of his thumb in a very unsafe meat slicer. This put his 17 year career with UPS in jeopardy since the nerve damage made it hard for him to handle things.
This is very unrelated in most ways, but when I was 9 I managed to take a hatchet and remove about 1/4" off my left thumb (via cutting bailing twine against a tree, and apparently terrible, terrible aim).
I'm far older than 9 now, and the tip of my left thumb still gets very cold in the winter and if I directly bump it into something, it hurts a whole heck of a lot.
Rant is because while that moment sucked pretty hard (I immediately put my thumb in my mouth, eating the bit of thumb apparently..) it didn't take very long for me to realize that any lower and it would have certainly been a life changing event.
Bad aim, but in the best way possible.
I can only imagine the difference. Has to be harsh.
> and not straight up forced labour?
Well you’re making the assumption that prisoners are forced to do this work rather than opting to in order to make a little money for snacks and/or make a case for good behavior when they come before the parole board.
It's still slave labor if the most basic of comforts and privileges are locked away from you if you don't participate.
Plus you don't really have choice in the labor you perform, no choice in where you perform it, no choice in when, you aren't really paid, you can only spend money in the commissary (at insanely inflated prices).
Sure it's not a slave on a cotton field getting whipped for not meeting quota, but it really isn't far from that.
> make a case for good behavior when they come before the parole board
It can be a bit more explicit than that: in Colorado, inmates can earn 10–12 days per month of "earned time." Earned time shortens the time until eligibility for parole. Section D in the linked document (from the linked department policies page section 625-02) gives examples of behavior that can add up to earned time. For instance, a day of work at a disaster site is worth a day of earned time (D.4.a.1)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q6IXf-yWnbA3Ujjejola7fiwijv...
https://cdoc.colorado.gov/about/department-policies
Selling prisoners as underpaid slave labor means everyone else now has to compete against companies using that slave labor. It's essentially cutting us twice. We both pay to house and feed the employees/contractors of the company benefiting who then undercuts us by not bothering to pay them.
Prisons should not be allowed to be a profit center. The ramifications of doing so create gross incentives.
>Prisons should not be allowed to be a profit center.
That ship sailed post American Civil-War. We've made it part of our culture. Every prison charges their inmates to be there. Per Diems. It used to be tax payers but... they found out they could double dip.
This is the kind of thing it's relatively viable to address legislatively, and which would be well within the overton window if it were given more attention.
> To the readers out there. Do not be put off by where it was made, how it was made. It was made.
And if it never sells, the profit margins for the slave drivers decreases.
I mean, I really, this post is trying to justify slave labor. Is that not... A little bizarre to find yourself doing that?
I'm not justifying slave labor. I'm pointing out that they should be paid more. They'll gladly make the plates and be happy doing it. Getting outside means the world to them. Don't hate them for making the plates, hate the system for putting them into slave labor, but at the same time show some compassion for those who are trying to live and be, normal productive members of society (even if it is at shotgun point).
My point is, it's not the employee and where that employee makes the product, it's the company that abuses that employee to make the product for you.
So no, not justifying slave labor, but I am justifying using prison labor (at minimum wage) to give them a chance at rehabilitation and/or restitution.
Not to nitpick, but you're saying they presumably appreciate the opportunity to go outside for a while and such. Leaving aside they could be granted that just fine without the slavery, aren't most prison jobs worked inside the prison? The only exceptions I can think of are agricultural work or road crews.
Also these are people found guilty of a felony and it costs us non prisoners tax money to keep them housed and fed. Is it unfair if we extract under paid or unpaid labor from them? Is it also unfair to ask drivers convicted of DWD to do free community labor?
Yes, it's unfair to force a human being into labor. Paid or unpaid. It should be voluntary. Community Service as a punishment is different. That's a do labor or else do time so you're trading labor for hours/time. Paid in trust. I have issue with do time and do labor as a form of punishment without reward.
Most inmates are incarcerated due to circumstance. They lacked the ability to better their lives and required monies to live, so they resorted to crime. Given a chance, many inmates get degrees behind bars, learn skills, write books, practice art.
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> One thing that stopped me from seeking the vanity plate
I'm sure it differs between countries but in the UK vanity plates have become reasonably contentious.
As a gross generalisation they're fine if the car is worth hundreds of thousands or the plate itself is worth hundreds of thousands.
The UK plate "F1" last sold for just under £1m (about US$1.3m) over 10 years ago and it's rumoured that there are offers for ten times that from someone who wants to buy it now.
It comes down to a classic British issue of "class", which is inherently difficult to explain.
If you have the money to have, say, a Ferrari 250 GTO then you can do what the hell you like with it, including getting a vanity plate for it. You are rich enough that you don't care what anyone else thinks about you. Anyone seeing you and that car will know you are rich.
If you have the money to spend close to £1m on a plate like "X1" and decide to put it on beat up 15 year old 1.2 litre Ford Focus then, again, it shows you have stupid amounts of money and some delicious irony in putting it on an old beater of a car.
But if don't have a supercar and you get a relatively cheap vanity plate like "RMZ 1327" and stick it on a Range Rover Evoque that's only a couple of years old then it just shows that you're trying too hard and just aspire to be seen as rich. You don't have enough money for a really nice car, or a really exclusive vanity plate.
I guess the other way of looking at it is that people who don't have the money to get a vanity plate aspire to being able to do so as it would mean they have more money than they have now. Once they get to having that amount of money most realise that the money is best spent elsewhere (or not spent at all). Once they have so much money that having a vanity plate is inconsequential to their finances they may as well do it. So it's natural that some people want to pretend they've reached the "rich" state by buying a vanity plate preemptively - the problem is that this is so easy to spot it just looks gauche.
All of this obviously doesn't apply to countries where vanity plates aren't traded for stupid amounts like famous pieces of art.
Loved your description of the class system. There's a general theme of old money wealthy people not caring about vanity purchases because they don't know how much stuff costs nor if that is a too much money or not.
It's interesting to see how luxury brands have different segments of clothes that range from no logos at all to a huge alligator the size of your chest, depending on whether you need to announce to the world that you made it or if you just want to have access to good quality clothes.
Yes, the classic description for a member of the British Upper Class is someone who looks down on people who have to buy their own furniture.
(One classification of "upper class" is someone who has never had to buy their own furniture because they inherit it and pretty much everything else they need.)
> It comes down to a classic British issue of "class", which is inherently difficult to explain.
The Frost Report sketch explains it quite well:
https://youtu.be/9XmB59Ax4cE
In CA and AZ vanity plates are first come, first served. You cannot sell them either. You either keep them on a car, or you can keep on paying to keep it out of circulation forever. But once you give it up it goes back to the pool, and someone can get it.
Also, my vanity plate is $0 more than a normal plate. Why wouldn't I?
I guess you're in AZ? In CA, the absurd yearly cost is enough to keep me from bothering with anything more than the basic olates.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-education-and-safety/ed...
No price difference for the yellow on black plate when you want personalized.
Yeah, but the plate itself was $100/year last time I looked, which is outrageous. (It looks like it's $50/year now. I swear that's lower than it used to be)
This. When I moved from Ontario, Canada (where they charge a yearly fee for them), to CA, I was all excited to get a vanity plate - until I saw they also charge a yearly fee..
In the most ironic twist of all - Ontario did away with license plate renewals a few years ago, and now, I would actually consider a vanity plate..
I've always wondered if a regular plate was better for avoiding speeding tickets - a vanity plate is much easier to validate, IMHO.
I had a friend who used to work as a QA for an ANPR parking system. He said that they had to investigate an issue where the car with 11111 kept appearing in the system as unpaid, but at different places across the network at the same time.
The issue turned out to be drain covers in the field of the view of the cameras, which the system was detecting belonged to car 11111.
> I learned that at least in Texas all plates are made by minimally paid prisoners
Lol, wasn't slavery outlawed in the US, or were some states still allowed to keep it? That's absolutely bananas if true.
To be clear, the prisoners aren’t literally forced to do this work. It’s a job they can choose to apply for and do while in prison. (EDIT: In my state, it might be different in other states)
The contention is about how much they’re paid per hour.
>To be clear, the prisoners aren’t literally forced to do this work. It’s a job they can choose to apply for and do while in prison.
Sorry, do you have a source for that? The requirement to work is a major point of contention, and a very quick check with this[1] directly contradicts your claim in the federal system: "Sentenced inmates are required to work if they are medically able. Institution work assignments include employment in areas like food service or the warehouse, or work as an inmate orderly, plumber, painter, or groundskeeper. Inmates earn 12¢ to 40¢ per hour for these work assignments."
[1] https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/work_programs.j...
Those programs you’re referring to in your quote are work within the prison itself:
> Institution work assignments include employment in areas like food service or the warehouse, or work as an inmate orderly, plumber, painter, or groundskeeper.
Meaning some prisoners work in the kitchen preparing food for other inmates, others are on clean up duty, and so on. You could argue that nobody in prison should have to participate in anything inside their community and that’s a valid debate to be had.
In my state, the jobs that provide things outside of prison are applied for.
Apologies for the misinterpretation. I thought you were speaking of all prison jobs, though I don't think it makes much of a difference. From an ACLU report[1] on prison labor in the US which covers both labor for prison upkeep and labor for producing goods to be sold or providing services for companies or governments:
> They work as cooks, dishwashers, janitors, groundskeepers, barbers, painters, or plumbers; in laundries, kitchens, factories, and hospitals. They provide vital public services such as repairing roads, fighting wildfires, or clearing debris after hurricanes. They washed hospital laundry and worked in mortuary services at the height of the pandemic. They manufacture products like office furniture, mattresses, license plates, dentures, glasses, traffic signs, athletic equipment, and uniforms. They cultivate and harvest crops, work as welders and carpenters, and work in meat and poultry processing plants.
> From the moment they enter the prison gates, they lose the right to refuse to work. [...] More than 76 percent of incarcerated workers report that they are required to work or face additional punishment such as solitary confinement, denial of opportunities to reduce their sentence, and loss of family visitation, or the inability to pay for basic life necessities like bath soap. They have no right to choose what type of work they do and are subject to arbitrary, discriminatory, and punitive decisions by the prison administrators who select their work assignments.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/2022-06... (relevant quotes are found on page 5)
> To be clear, the prisoners aren’t literally forced to do this work.
Not 100% true it seems, but happy for someone else to correct me.
> Prison labor in the US is mostly optional - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
It's technically optional in most institutions, but not practically optional. For instance, a lot of labor can reduce your sentence, can give you better housing and can enable you to afford things on commissary you might need (e.g. phone time, hygiene products etc).
Ok so optional then
Sounds like optional to me. With benefits for exercising the option.
> The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
No, Thirteenth Amendment permits it as punishment for a crime.
This a good reminder to all Americans to read the Constitution. The amount of bizarre understandings (not necessarily this one) that I see is very high.
Since you didn't know about for-profit prisons, here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison
I'm very well aware of private prisons, but I didn't know they also exploited essentially f̵o̵r̵c̵e̵d̵free labour, that one was new to me. Apparently in the constitution and everything. Remind me again why some people believe America to be "the land of the free"?
Not sure why you are bringing up private prisons. Private prisons are a tiny percentage of federal prisons and prison labor is used throughout the USA.
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.
For anyone unaware, that is nearly[1] the entirety of the text of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution from 1865. This exception is rather (in)famous. I remember being quizzed on it in an elementary or middle school history or social studies class.
[1] the only excluded bit is the followup "Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Without this, the power to enforce the 13th Amendment would be left up to the states due to the 10th Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."), which would have slightly useless given the whole war that had just been fought over some states wanting to keep slavery.
they shouldnt be paid at all. they're in prison for a reason. they have a debt to society. a great many of those people didnt do 'one bad thing' then got caught. it was just the last bad thing they were caught for. any many of them did 'the bad thing', then continued doing other bad things up until the point they were put in prison.
> they're in prison for a reason.
Often that reason is "too poor to afford proper representation" or "looked vaguely like the actual criminal" or "took a plea bargain because the justice system was threatening them with an immorally-long wait for a trial and a likely worse outcome".
Often that reason is "committed a horrific violent crime"
Weed, though. In some states, now legal.
Non-violent marijuana users haven't ever materialized as a large cohort of the prison population. Sorry, I too used to believe that prisons were overflowing with them
I mean if this was the 90s, yes it was true but you are also correct that it's very rare for anyone to be in prison for just marijuana alone in the US. Even in states where it's "illegal."
Not really? I mean, when you compare the number of people who have committed a "horrific violent" crime to the total number of people caught up in the US prison system, I expect it's not "often".
The numbers are fuzzy but they indicate that at least a simple majority of (and possibly up to an extreme majority) of prisoners have committed violent crimes.
That really depends on what you classify as “violent”. There are a lot of crimes labeled “violent” that don’t include direct physical harm to another person. Eg burglary is labeled as “violent” many places when the actual act was “smashed a window, grabbed a TV and ran away”. Drug manufacturing is also typically considered “violent” even without any kind of assault/murder/turf war/etc.
The numbers I saw said 47% of inmates had a violent crime under federal or state classifications.
Often it is.
Often it is not.
Often, they too are a victim of our judicial system, and we can't just ignore them due to the peers we locked them in with.
That doesn't justify ignoring our established punishments. Good luck with a system that sets everyone free just in case.
They're literally guilty and in the prison for the crime of being unable to afford a lawyer.
That's the fact. You can't argue jail time is automatically fair only because it has been added in the sentencing.
Its legal, and that's it. Civil forfeiture is also legal. Slavery was legal (and is still legal in us prisons).
Doesn't make it justified.
Being paid for labor while imprisoned is not anywhere close to being set free.
Where in the world did I imply that?
> Where in the world did I imply that?
You didn't, but I'm taking your stance to its logical conclusion.
GP: > they shouldnt be paid at all. they're in prison for a reason. they have a debt to society.
Your response: > Often that reason is "too poor to afford proper representation" or "looked vaguely like the actual criminal" or "took a plea bargain because the justice system was threatening them with an immorally-long wait for a trial and a likely worse outcome".
Be that as it may, this is our system. Through a series of laws we have defined due process for our people, and people who end up in prison are a result of this due process. Like it or not this is the best we were able to do.
If we are going to say prisoners should be given more privileges because some prisoners do not deserve to be in there, then why are we holding them in a prison to begin with? Being confined to prison is a thousand times more punitive than not receiving pay for making a license plate.
A better reason for arguing that prisoners should be paid for their work is because it is more humane. That's a better argument than some people are in prison unjustly.
I'm actually in favor of prison reforms. Prisons' number one goal should be to reduce recidivism. I see that as the entire point of the prison system: reducing crime. If a person leaves prison and re-offends, we have failed to do our job.
I don't agree with your "slave labor is ok if the slave committed a crime" position, and find it morally indefensible.
Stepping aside the fact that I think most everyone here is playing fast-and-loose with the “slave” terminology here… Why do you feel prisoners doing low wage labor to be wrong?
Practically everyone in human history since the dawn of time has had to go out and produce something of value. Why, all of a sudden, should a murderer or rapist get to sit on their ass and consume what we all produce? I find nothing questionable about a humble job for them at all.
Working should be a free choice (we can discuss about how much freedom exists for many people), and should always be paid. There is nothing wrong if a prisoner chooses to enagage in (fairly paid) labor. But if they are not free to do so, then they are slaves, not workers.
Prisoners already lack freedom in many aspects. "Sitting on their asses" like if they were sipping cocktails on a beach is a bit a misrepresentation don't you think? I wouldn't exchange the possibility to move and do what I want for possibly any amount of money, nor for being able to "sit on my ass" in that sense. Would you?
Besides the moral arguments - which I will say, they are so obvious that it feels incredible even having to discuss why enslaving prisoners is wrong - you can make economic arguments. For example, that having cheap or borderline unpaid labor compresses the salary in that market, or that this system creates a dysfunctional incentive to increase prison population for private profits.
Maybe that's why the US is one of the countries with the highest incarcerated population in the world. The highest among western and larger countries.
I understand though there is a cultural barrier. I am from Europe and in most countries here prison has a rehabilitation purpose, which is what most benefits society, and prisons are not private entities.
You're instantly jumping to the worst of the worst types of prisoners: murderers and rapists. Prisons also include people who commit non-violent crimes like drug possession, burglary, cybercrime, etc. Why should those people be forced to work the same "humble jobs" in prison?
I do find that questionable.
I don't think you know what humble job means, and meant to say humiliating pay.
Two answers:
1. Why should they be restricted to ludicrously low wages? If they're producing something of value, they should be compensated. Not only is it morally wrong to, you know, enslave people, on a more practical level it would be very helpful for people who are leaving prison after serving their sentence to actually have some money saved up, so they have better opportunities, to avoid recidivism.
2. The reason they can sit on their ass and consume what they produce is that they effectively become wards of the state. They're still human beings, and if we have decided to incarcerate them, we become responsible for them, and they still have rights as human beings.
A humble job is fine; I'm not saying they should be sitting in an aeron chair bullshitting on Slack for 8 hours a day. But slavery for pennies on the hour is wrong.
Punishment is only one reason of inprisonment, another is correction. Majority of prisoners do not serve lifetime sentence, at some point they wikl return to society and ideally you don't want them to get right back to what they have been doing before because they have no other options or they don't know nothing better.
Ah yes. American Prisons prioritizing punishment over resocialising is the reason why criminals so often continue to hurt society after they have been released.
Then we have people who demand to double down on the punishment and wonder why these people never stop breaking the law.
Americans are a marvelous bunch. Thanks Dog I live in a first world country.
In many cases, their earnings are confiscated as part of restitution.
Imprisoning people for years seems like a much worse thing to do to people than underpaying them for work they do while locked up.
Is it that the latter can be called "slavery" that makes people upset?
There are a lot of incentives to lock people up. Cheap labor is one of them. We should support incentives such as "keeping society safe", but incentives such as "profits and cheap labor" are incentives that may actually incentivize locking up innocent people.
So it's not about which one is worse, it's about not supporting something that could lead to corruption or an unfair system.
“The morally correct thing is to pay them even less.”