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Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

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Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#51

Post by VB6_Foreverr »

ez77 wrote: post #47
Mz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An online friendship of mine ended in part because of the other person's habit of pouncing on any excuse to bad-mouth the US and it's government and culture like it is The Evil Empire. So count me among the tired.

As a foreigner who studied in the US, I used to find myself attacking some US actions with some American friends, while attacking senseless knee-jerk anti-Americanism back in my country... A sad, and also tiring state of affairs, without much (even partial) support on either place.

I may give out about something in my country and say how it's so much better in that other country but if someone from there is here and does the same I feel like saying it's a wonder they didn't stay there so if it's so bloody good.

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#52

Post by ez77 »

VB6_Foreverr wrote: post #51
ez77 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a foreigner who studied in the US, I used to find myself attacking some US actions with some American friends, while attacking senseless knee-jerk anti-Americanism back in my country... A sad, and also tiring state of affairs, without much (even partial) support on either place.

I may give out about something in my country and say how it's so much better in that other country but if someone from there is here and does the same I feel like saying it's a wonder they didn't stay there so if it's so bloody good.

So it is quite possible that you may indeed agree with that foreigner on the issue being discussed and yet wonder why s/he didn't stay home... So much for open, frank dialogues!

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#53

Post by M1573RMU74710N »

rdtsc wrote: post #21
ck2 wrote: post #3

How about the hundreds of thousands of prisoners in the US forced to work for pennies per hour? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_compl... If they refuse, they are written up as uncooperative and it could affect privileges, parole, etc. Makes many millions in profit for the states and federal government, even some judges own stock. Ironically it's the only labor in the US that can compete with of…

> If they refuse, they are written up as uncooperative and it could affect privileges, parole, etc. Very interesting, I did not know about that aspect and in the back of my mind always wondered why do all these prisoners even work when it pays that little. Why not just do nothing? Somehow I thought it was because of boredom and just something to do, be a part of something, but I guess a system that punishes the slave…

>Somehow I thought it was because of boredom and just something to do,

That's definitely part of it too. I hear (and I would guess everyone can imagine) that prison is excruciatingly boring. So having something to do can help a lot, also working a job can be part vocational training for when one get's out of prison.

Another factor is that when you're in prison, the littlest things become of utmost importance. Life or death (literally) battles are fought over Twinkies and Doritos...so if you have a chance to earn a little money to get yourself some cigarettes or cup o' noodles it's very tempting to take it.

That's the "carrot" that accompanies the "stick".

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#54

Post by rdtsc »

barrkel wrote: post #39
ugh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accidentally sounded tough on crime. Who would have thought! I want good conditions and adequate payment, no jobs that keep prisoners where they are. Well, scratch that, I want what works. I care about reducing the crime rate and keeping prisons quite empty, not punishment. I don’t know what role forced prison labor plays there and would be willing to accept it, should it be beneficial. I just don’t know. There isn…

Prison: rehabilitation, punishment, deterrent, segregation. Punishment is largely about the victims, justice being seen to be done, etc.; it shouldn't affect crime rates in ways that don't also come under rehabilitation or deterrence. Segregation (keeping dangerous people apart from the main population) is not relevant to our discussion here, I think. Is slave labour rehabilitating? More or less rehabilitating than p…

> Deterrence, I'm more skeptical of. I don't think prison time has a lot of net impact on crime.

This is usually measured by looking at the rates of recidivism. I don't have the data but I think it is pretty high. Or in other words, if prisons were such a good deterrent, they would have the strongest effect on those who have actually been there before, so if that doesn't work, then the deterrence in general is not a strong factor.

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#55

Post by rdtsc »

_delirium wrote: post #16
DarkShikari wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of money gets spent every year on inmates in the U.S. Yes, which goes directly to private companies that profit off it, creating an economic incentive to arrest as many people as possible and sentence them for as long as possible -- and to eschew any potential course of action that would reduce the number of criminals, such as rehabilitation. The US prison system is basically designed from the ground up to turn…

And when it's not private companies, at publicly-operated prisons the money goes into the pockets of prison guards, who are well paid, and whose unions are some of the biggest organizations lobbying for more crimes and longer sentences (California's three-strikes law was strongly pushed by its prison-guard union). Maybe I'm missing it, but I'm surprised that prison-guard unions aren't more front-and-center in the con…

> I'm surprised that prison-guard unions aren't more front-and-center

If they are smart they won't be, they would hide beyond a couple of layers of lobbyists and front groups, as it would be pretty clear what their motivations would be -- "We need more people in jail" is a little tough political sell. Definitely not in the same league as "we need better educated children" What the prison industry should do is lobby for "tougher" laws, then they can hide behind the "tough on crime" crowd. That works well usually.

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#56

Post by btilly »

rdtsc wrote: post #54
barrkel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison: rehabilitation, punishment, deterrent, segregation. Punishment is largely about the victims, justice being seen to be done, etc.; it shouldn't affect crime rates in ways that don't also come under rehabilitation or deterrence. Segregation (keeping dangerous people apart from the main population) is not relevant to our discussion here, I think. Is slave labour rehabilitating? More or less rehabilitating than p…

> Deterrence, I'm more skeptical of. I don't think prison time has a lot of net impact on crime. This is usually measured by looking at the rates of recidivism. I don't have the data but I think it is pretty high. Or in other words, if prisons were such a good deterrent, they would have the strongest effect on those who have actually been there before, so if that doesn't work, then the deterrence in general is not a…

There is a lot of research indicating that criminal behavior is strongly tied to inability to be deterred by far distant punishment. Therefore the high recidivism rate could happen because criminals are a preselected group of people people who are hard to deter through punishment.

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#57

Post by teyc »

vyrotek wrote: post #32
w1ntermute wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arizona still has real chain gangs It's only in one county (Maricopa), and it's voluntary.

I grew up in Maricopa County (Peoria). I think Joe Arpaio had the right idea.

I've seen a show about him. He is famous even in Australia. Is there any pressure on prisoners to volunteer into the chain gang?

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#58

Post by someperson »

ez77 wrote: post #46
hugh3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anyone else tired of the fact that on the internet you can't say "Hey, look at this sucky thing in Random Country X" without having someone pipe up and say "Yeah, but what about this vaguely-similar thing in the USA? Huh? Huh?"

How are the Chinese and American situations vaguely similar? Just because one involves computers and the other doesn't? If these counterexamples are not made up, what would it take for you to go from being tired to seriously revising your beliefs on the US system?

I think you two actually agree, the grandparent is saying he is tired of seeing that for many morally questionable practices happening in the world, there is sadly similar conduct sometimes happening in the US and he would rather this wasn't the case.

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#59

Post by rmc »

dstein wrote: post #6

I would've thought something like Mechanical Turk would be more valuable. Mining WoW gold sounds like something that could be fuuly automated. Why not have them do things that require human insight instead?

Blizzard (the company that owns & operates WoW) doesn't want people to automatically do gold mining, so they try to stop it. A lot of 'gold mining' is "move you character around, click on this pig 10 times to kill it, collect the little bit of money/goods it drops". In order to automate it well you'd have to solve a lot of computer vision problems. Probably cheaper to just use cheap labour.

Re: Inmates forced to farm gold online in Chinese prisons

#60

Post by ugh »

barrkel wrote: post #39
ugh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accidentally sounded tough on crime. Who would have thought! I want good conditions and adequate payment, no jobs that keep prisoners where they are. Well, scratch that, I want what works. I care about reducing the crime rate and keeping prisons quite empty, not punishment. I don’t know what role forced prison labor plays there and would be willing to accept it, should it be beneficial. I just don’t know. There isn…

Prison: rehabilitation, punishment, deterrent, segregation. Punishment is largely about the victims, justice being seen to be done, etc.; it shouldn't affect crime rates in ways that don't also come under rehabilitation or deterrence. Segregation (keeping dangerous people apart from the main population) is not relevant to our discussion here, I think. Is slave labour rehabilitating? More or less rehabilitating than p…

That’s actually my view, too.
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