Penal labor is not slavery. The labor is used as a form of punishment for committing a crime. It's not even legal in some states, and barely practiced in others. Really not the most common thing.

And those incarcerated while awaiting trial do not qualify for penal labor at all. Only convicted criminals qualify, and only for some types of crime.

Committing murder is a choice. That you have to make some license plates as a portion of your punishment? So what? That's not slavery. Slavery is not a choice. Murder is though.

Penal labor is absolutely slavery, which is why the constitution makes an explicit exception for prisons when banning slavery.

It doesn't really matter to the larger argument, just gonna throw this nit pick out there.

the site took forever to load and it looked like a PowerPoint from 1998 lmao

lol, if you're making the 'well, ackshually' argument here, then none of what we're talking about here is "slavery" - as 'technically' it's not. but that's not how we used the term in this conversation. your criticism might be justified regarding our choice of words, but not concerning the substance.
just telling you now before you fully commit to shilling for america's disgusting and shameful for-profit prison system. third world countries are better than that, lol.

what a tier IV shithole...

Just some general comments on the issue:

- there is a difference between the prevalence of modern slavery and the general quality of worker rights and protections. Country A can be worse for the slave-like bottom 5% than country B while the other 95%, at the same time, have it much better in A than in B.
- a larger undocumented population almost surely means a larger dark figure of slavery.
- given the millions of incarcerated people in the U.S., the technical definition of whether their labor must be considered slavery or not does have a huge impact on the cross-country comparison of slavery.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 20 2020 05:05pm

Depends. What's the value of the food, lodging, clothes, utilities, etc. they benefit from? The rest of us have to pay the rent. Is it slavery to force convicted criminals to pay theirs? They chose to commit crimes. Are they supposed to be awarded a 4 star hotel stay for that?

I'd say not slavery. Unwilling labor, perhaps. But their own choice to do so. If they didn't want to be imprisoned, and didn't want to have to continue earning their keep even in prison, why'd they commit the crime?

i'm curious, how do you explain this? are americans just such shitty and criminal people by nature, or is there a massive flaw in the system?

If they are paying through forced labor then yes. Its just a type of slavery that is allowed in our system as it has an explicit exception in the constitution.

Also, the idea that they "chose to commit crimes" is overly simplistic and not productive. It would be good to rethink your position understanding that even in the strictest standard of evidence (the death penalty) there is a significant number of false convictions, and most crimes arent as severe as murder.

Where murder is concerned, the number of convictions post-1990 that have been proven false are very few indeed. A few crop up here and there, but they're far more rare.

The idea that, "Well, one prisoner in 1000 might actually be innocent, therefore we should treat them all to a 4 star hotel stay" is absurd.

A prisoner is not a slave, whether they work or not. A prisoner is a prisoner. The only question is whether they're forced to earn their keep or not. If they are, then the focus should be that their working conditions are in-line with any non-prisoner's working conditions. If they're not, it's not at question.

Frankly, I agree that forced labor shouldn't be a thing. Instead, I think prisoners should have a choice. Option 1: Pay for your stay. While your stay probably costs more than this, let's just say an even $1000/month incarcerated. So if you serve 10 years? You now owe $120,000. Payment terms to be determined by the state. Failure to live up to the terms = new crime committed, time to go rack up more debt. Option 2: Volunteer for labor while in the prison. Pay is $7.50/hour (federal minimum wage). Once you hit 134 hours for the month, you've paid that month off and actually get PAID that $7.50/hour for every additional hour worked. You can use that as a carryover for the next month, or as a "savings" for whenever you're released.

This would completely resolve the "oh but it's slavery!" nonsense. No it's not. Don't do the crime, don't have your rights taken away.

And fender with the meaningless graphic again.

Exoneration based on DNA evidence say that at least 1% of people are falsely convicted. That's a very significant number of people. The number of people on death row is estimated to be 4% false convictions. There aren't any estimates that I'm aware of that say its as low as 1 in 1000.

I never said anything about a 4 star hotel. Again, you're putting words in my mouth. It's a very bad habit of yours and makes it difficult to take your criticisms seriously.

Pay in many prisons is non existent, or cents per hour. I'm not aware of any prison paying anywhere close to minimum wage. Additionally, they are often charged for things like personal hygiene products and phone calls with family at absurd rates. Still, prisoners shouldn't be obligated to pay their stay. The idea that they should be put in debt for their prison stay is frankly disgusting, and a pretty perfect way to ensure they will never get back on their feet afterwards with that debt dragging their employment applications, credit applications, etc. down.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on May 20 2020 06:03pm