Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to be somewhat mean to telemarketers, until I learned that some of them are prison laborers - getting paid pennies per hour to work in a prison call center. That already feels morally un-great, and messing with them further no longer felt like something I could justify.
It's odd to me that people feel worse about unpleasant things happening specifically to convicted felons than to the general public. If you were being mean to a random jerk, and then he pointed out "By the way, I roughed up my wife last night" would you feel more bad about being mean? But you'd feel worse if it turned out he was doing time for that same crime? Note: I know that there could be people truly wrongfully…
The problem I have with this is that last time I checked, nearly all sentences for people going to prison are incarceration, not incarceration+forced labour. It's the same as people cheering up prison rape because "they deserve it" or "if they don't like it, they should just stop committing crimes". Again, no one is ever sentenced to prison+prison rape, and failing to protect prisoners from each other is a massive failure of the state.
And of course we have to acknowledge that having prison population working for close to nothing creates really perverse incentives, both on the side of the state as well as enterprises employing prisoners. In fact I'd argue that even if you feel that it's entirely fair and deserved you should still be against it to stop incentivising all the nasty shit happening around it. Prisoners should be sitting in prison, they shouldn't be working, or if they are it should be on public works not on anything that the state charges money for.