National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions • Hacker News Board

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#371

Post by atlantic » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #298

ada1981 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that this is a voulenteer program and that for every day you work you get 1 day off your sentence. So you can effectively halve your time in prison. This actually seems like a pretty good deal, what would you pay to get a day off your sentence? That said, I think the Prision system is fucked, has horrible incentives, private companies abuse bought prison labor, etc. etc. But I actually felt like thi…

My gut reaction to this is pretty negative. It feels instinctively wrong to tie prison time to pay - it should be tied to rehabilitation. And asking someone to risk their lives so they can gamble on reduced prison time just seems... I dunno, isn't that the thing that's usually done by villains in the story books? I mean, maybe I'm naive about it, but I have a fairly strong cultural background telling me that using pe…

> It feels instinctively wrong to tie prison time to pay - it should be tied to rehabilitation.

You seem to be reasoning under the assumption that prison exists for rehabilitation. It doesn't. Incarceration serves to punish. And forced labour is an additional punishment.

Therefore substituting prison time with extra work seems a fair trade-off, and one well aligned with the intended goals of the prison system.

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#372

Post by atlantic » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #297

ada1981 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that this is a voulenteer program and that for every day you work you get 1 day off your sentence. So you can effectively halve your time in prison. This actually seems like a pretty good deal, what would you pay to get a day off your sentence? That said, I think the Prision system is fucked, has horrible incentives, private companies abuse bought prison labor, etc. etc. But I actually felt like thi…

"It’s worth noting that this is a voulenteer program and that for every day you work you get 1 day off your sentence" That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is for every day you don't work you have to spend a day in jail. That sound more like coercion than volunteering to me.

> Another way to look at it is for every day you don't work you have to spend a day in jail.

No. This is false.

When you land in prison, the duration of your sentence is fixed. You can't increase it, except by committing additional crimes while behind bars. But you can mitigate it by working as a volunteer.

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#373

Post by Chris2048 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

sgift wrote: post #346

refurb wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leave it to HN to ignore someone with far more experience/knowledge than them and counter with “I read X somewhere, so you’re wrong.”

Leave it to the typical HN comment on things like that to equate heaps of evidence with "I read X somewhere" and praise some anon anecdote over solid data.

What "heaps of evidence"? What data? None where linked, just assumed.

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#374

Post by Chris2048 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

sgift wrote: post #347

twblalock wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inmate who posted his story seems to think the "suck" has value.

We have no way to check if they were actually an inmate or just a sock puppet for their political position. Even then, they never experienced the alternative, so they don't have any more information than we do. A classic "alternative history" problem.

We haven't experienced an alternate-history version of America without slavery, so does that mean we don't have any information on whether it was bad or not?

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#375

Post by api_or_ipa » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

WtfRuSerious wrote: post #206

api_or_ipa wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're totally right. What better way to show inmates the virtue of living an upright life than to treat them just like real people. If you pay them 85c/hr they'll resent The Man even harder and see a life of crime as the only way they'll ever succeed. Pay them for their hardwork and they'll learn they can succeed in life by hardwork, determination and honesty, all virtues that prison _should_ be about instilling.

I'm going to use a alt account for this ( for obvious reasons )... I disagree with this sentiment, I was ( some 20 years ago ) incarcerated for drug dealing. I broke the law ( much more than I was caught and prosecuted for btw... ) and I deserved what I got, probably more. For the record, being in prison sucks... it's SUPPOSED to suck, it's supposed to make you regret what you did to get put in there and actively loo…

The issue is not that I want to make prison suck any less. I believe it sucks and that's done by design. What I care about is instilling the skills, attitude and experience that will allow seamless re-introduction back into society. Teaching inmates how to handle money, understand finances and giving them something to buy a car, rent an apartment, a uniform for work and tuition for education isn't going to make their prison stint any less awful, but it will reduce recidivism, increase participation in the legal economy and make these inmates _people_ in the real sense of the term.

The issue is that if you fuck up and go to jail, your life is effectively over.

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#376

Post by danShumway » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 5:17 PM UTC

atlantic wrote: post #371

danShumway wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut reaction to this is pretty negative. It feels instinctively wrong to tie prison time to pay - it should be tied to rehabilitation. And asking someone to risk their lives so they can gamble on reduced prison time just seems... I dunno, isn't that the thing that's usually done by villains in the story books? I mean, maybe I'm naive about it, but I have a fairly strong cultural background telling me that using pe…

> It feels instinctively wrong to tie prison time to pay - it should be tied to rehabilitation. You seem to be reasoning under the assumption that prison exists for rehabilitation. It doesn't. Incarceration serves to punish. And forced labour is an additional punishment. Therefore substituting prison time with extra work seems a fair trade-off, and one well aligned with the intended goals of the prison system.

It's a pretty big complete coincidence that all of these additional punishments happen to be a major source of revenue for prisons, states, and private businesses.

The most likely reason we're offering to knock off prison time is because we really stinking need firefighters. It's not a punishment, we're exchanging prison time for a service that we want very much. If there wasn't a forest fire, we wouldn't be offering it.

If punishment was actually the purpose of these programs, we would be a lot more creative and a lot more specific in how we reduced prison sentences: "Okay, here's a bottle of sterilized urine. Drink it, and we'll knock a day off." But in practice, you don't see stuff like that. Forced labor is nearly always phrased by its proponents as something that's good for the prisoner's character, and as an effective way to repay a social debt. Look over the comments on this very article and you'll find more than a few people saying that getting to work outside is a privilege for prisoners and they should be happy just with that as a reward.

The rephrasing of work as a direct punishment (especially when it's tied to money) manages to somehow makes the entire situation feel even worse to me. At least when it was transactional you could talk about it as being something that's good for both parties. I don't think that argument holds up, it's at least a reasonable starting point.

But it seems obvious to me that the state shouldn't have a financial incentive to punish people. If punishment is our goal, the way we're going about it is super corrupt.

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#377

Post by uxp100 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #360

uxp100 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your definition of labor refers only to, for lack of a better term, "work" done in a business relationship? Then I don't think it really applies to this situation, since just as familial relations are superseding "business" relations in your example, certainly the prison relations change the nature of the business relations drastically. But I think this is certainly labor, but the distinction between labor and cho…

I think it all comes down to how the words are typically used in everyday speech. Labor is typically associated with economic gain (or general economic activity) (or pregnancy) while chores generally aren't. I know I often hear people use the word chore when talking about errands or tasks they must perform for which they won't be compensated directly by another party (like taking out the trash as a chore). I think we…

Yeah. It also like, putting away clothes was a childhood chore, but using a tractor to mow a field was also a childhood chore. I guess. It was something that had to be done anyway.

Its really just an ever so tempting argument of semantics that is at this point distracting me from the real plight of prison laborers. But that's how the internet goes.

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#378

Post by jakelazaroff » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #368

GW150914 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we had access to some kind of worldwide network which would allows us t- -found it. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen... 46% drug offenses, 6.8% immigration and we’re already past the 50% mark. That as they say, is a majority. Edit: Looking at all populations state, federal, local yields: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html Note: But the offense data oversimplifies how…

Why does this data disagree hugely with that? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/releasing-drug-offender...

It doesn't; it just lumps the federal and state incarceration rates together to draw its conclusion. From the FiveThirtyEight article:

> According to the Bureau of Prisons, there are 207,847 people incarcerated in federal prisons. Roughly half (48.6 percent) are in for drug offenses.

Additionally, the words "Bureau of Prisons" are actually a link to the same site GW150914 is citing (https://bop.gov/about/statistics/).

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#379

Post by ada1981 » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

arthur_pryor wrote: post #343

danShumway wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut reaction to this is pretty negative. It feels instinctively wrong to tie prison time to pay - it should be tied to rehabilitation. And asking someone to risk their lives so they can gamble on reduced prison time just seems... I dunno, isn't that the thing that's usually done by villains in the story books? I mean, maybe I'm naive about it, but I have a fairly strong cultural background telling me that using pe…

> Rehabilitation isn't transactional, and a debt to society isn't something that can be repaid with cash. well said. concise and correct, IMO.

This is true. However in this case, they aren’t cashing in dollars for time off.

It’s not like a billionaire (quibble about billionaires being in jail) can load up a commissary card and buy time off.

On the contrary, the billionaire would have to work the same hours as the guy who robbed the booze store and get 1 day off for every one worked.

I’m much more troubled by having private companies buying cheap prison labor to make goods or do customer service.

It’s interesting to note as well that I think I share the same underlying thesis that prisons are fucked, with terrible incentives and I am in favor of revamping the entire system — however this one program does not bother me the same way it does others.

If I was to guess, I’d imagine I have much more progressive views about prison reform than most opposed to this program. This is fascinating to me.

For example, I’ve been speaking with VCs about doing a “prison startup” with the right incentives - including things like cooperative ownership by the prisoners themselves.

In my view crime is a context not a characterstic of an individual.

Re: National prison strike launches over underpaid labor and prison conditions

#380

Post by rule_follower » Wed, Aug 22, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #351

rule_follower wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were the one who mentioned financial incentives/conflicts vis-a-vis private prisons.

Upvoted that one though - this begs the question: should you construct an argument only by its premise, or should you try to reach the person? I think [s]he assumed that you are not a prison abolitionist and tried to find an argument that might sway you. Is it better or worse to argue like that?

There was no prior mention of the person being a prison abolitionist. There was mention of concern about private prisons. I don't know how I am to intuit what a person is truly concerned about vs. what they state they are concerned about.