this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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Let me rephrase: would the proposition, if it had passed, prohibited prisons from requiring prisoners to perform domestic duties within the prison?
See that's still too vague. Cleaning the bathroom is a domestic duty and yet is something a janitor does in this context. I would say that's probably the dividing line, if it's something you'd pay someone to do then they would be banned from requiring it.
I guess I'll put my personal opinion on the record here. I think that penal labour is generally an exploitative industry, if you want to call it that. And I do think that prisoners who perform work should be paid for that work. At the same time, I'm also sensitive to the fact that it costs a great deal of money to pay for room and board and security for prisoners, and that it's also fair that their labour be used to offset some of the cost of their own imprisonment rather than laying the burden entirely on the public purse.
So while I don't support solitary confinement as a punishment (for anything), I do think that prisoners should have to at a minimum cook and clean for themselves. If they don't want to cook, then nobody else should have to do it; they just won't have dinner that night if they don't cook and serve it themselves. If nobody wants to wash the dishes, then it's not the administration's problem if there aren't any clean plates to use for the next meal. If nobody wants to clean the shower, then it's not the administration's problem if grime starts to build up on it. The State should not force the prisoners to work, but it also shouldn't be the State's responsibility to provide janitors or cooks to look after them.
Which means I agree that "extra" work beyond what's necessary to maintain the basic needs of the prisoners should be paid and optional. "Optional" meaning there's no punishment if you choose not to do it, but if you don't, you won't have money to pay for services like postage stamps, extra phone calls, or the prison commissary. Even if prisoners are only paid half of minimum wage, that's still an improvement, because it recognises that their labour has value and this money can also be used to pay for fines and restitution. A pretty common problem among the newly-released is that they are saddled with an obscene amount of debt because the State makes them pay court costs, room and board, fines, parole monitoring fees, and restitution but only pays them fifty cents an hour for their work, meaning they leave prison thousands of dollars in debt with the threat of parole revocation if they can't pay. That just drives people to resort to crime in order to find the money.
You should understand that this represents a logistical problem for the prison. Now they have to ensure that prisoners are certified and trained to handle food, no small feat, and you also have to be conscious of the idea that prisoners could pretty easily stop doing dishes, making food, eating food, as a form of hunger strike, in order to protest the very fact that they're being made to make food, on top of the fact that they're being extricated from society, deprived of the right to be a productive member of society, deprived of the ability to socialize with other people that aren't criminals, deprived of free access to information, really, any freedom whatsoever.
That's along with the argument the other commenter brought up, about prisoners just organizing themselves into a de-facto government where the most shat on prisoners will have to do everything. If you decide to come up with a constant rotation, a chore wheel, then at a certain level this just devolves into massive levels of prison corruption, where a couple bribes to a couple prisoner guards can change around some labor forms and then suddenly, again, the most shat upon prisoners are doing all the labor.
You don't eliminate these inefficiencies at any point, either, these inefficiencies rear their heads more the more people you arrest and put into the prison, the more things you criminalize, the higher the recidivism rates. None of these issues resolve magically, they get worse.
This is effectively just the same as advocating for the status quo as it currently exists, with the only minor difference between, say, making license plates or fighting fires, being that instead, they're just doing domestic labor which is much closer to them in proximity, and easier for you to think of as their personal responsibility to handle. That doesn't matter so much, what matters in reality here are the numbers.
The idea is that you're trying to recoup the costs immediately through something like a labor camp, which is what this still is. That's sort of an option of last resort, or an option that is used, in most circumstances, as it is right now, for members of political opposition or other kinds of outright status-quo threats. You instead should make the calculation in the broad strokes, years down the line. Can these murderers, thieves, and perhaps even, gasp, loiterers, be taught to be functioning members of society? Can they give back more than they have taken from the taxpayer over the course of their life? More than just for the individuals, but can these prisoners do this on the whole?
That's the way you should be thinking about this, not "Can we save 15 bucks here and there by not paying someone to clean up or cook for the prisoners?". By framing it like that, you've bought into the argument that supports the status quo organization, here.
What I am trying to do here is not necessarily save $15 a day on labour costs, but also avoid creating a perverse incentive for people to get themselves imprisoned by committing crimes.
It's not to say that the average person would rather be in prison than free, but if room and board is provided at no cost and no labour is expected, for a great deal of people that's worth giving up their freedom for. Even if this line of thinking is not rational, people don't necessarily make the most rational decisions. Particularly stupid ones will just think "prison = free room and board and no work" and then dream up a plan to commit some petty crime to get themselves imprisoned.
Some people are crazy enough to do this already in the US because they want free healthcare (despite the fact that prison healthcare is not always free). They will grab a kitchen knife and rob a bank for $1 and then wait in the lobby for the police to arrest them. I don't think the fact that prison labour is now abolished hitting the news will do much to discourage even more people from trying it. This really is a case where the perception is stronger than the reality.
It costs the State a lot of money to arrest someone, put them on trial, pay the lawyers and judges, transportation and remand, and, of course pay for their costs of imprisonment. Even when the sobering reality has hit them that prison isn't as great as they thought it was, they've already committed the crime that led them there and cost the State tens of thousands of dollars in the process. I think an aspect that must not be forgotten is that even requiring nominal work from prisoners serves to discourage people from looking at a prison as free room and board.
Of course, this raises the related question that if people are considering getting themselves thrown in prison for the food and housing, that says a lot about the state of social services in that country and maybe something else needs fixing more badly.
Generally that's where I would peg that as a train of thought, yeah. I don't think you need an incentive to keep people from going to prison. People don't want to go to prison, generally, it's not a good thing even in, say, Finland, or whatever other example people want to use. People sticking up a bank for one dollar to get healthcare isn't a state of affairs that you have if you already have free healthcare. Trying to get arrested to avoid homelessness isn't a problem if you can already avoid homelessness through normal social institutions. In fact, I'd say that avoiding homelessness through conventional means is greatly idealm considering a shit ton of homeless people interface with the law, and are arrested and processed regularly, and lots of inmates are homeless immediately upon getting out. It's a whole system, not just in one part, which is what makes it so hard to get rid of or reform away, and perhaps even impossible.
Congratulations you just created a prisoner government that will require select prisoners to do all the work or be physically and sexually assaulted.
We put them there, it's our responsibility to take care of them. There's no getting around that.
I gave it some thought and I think that the other people here actually do make a compelling argument for why domestic labour should be paid and optional as well.
That being said, I'm sure it isn't controversial that free room and board for prisoners seems somewhat... unfair? On the part of the taxpayer, that is. Yes, it's true that the State is already depriving a person of their freedom, but the status of imprisonment is also not intended to be an equal trade. It is intended to separate a person from society for rehabilitation (by giving them the skills and resources they need to succeed and re-integrate after release), to prevent further offences from being committed during the term of imprisonment, to repair the damage caused by the offence, and to punish the offender.
While I agree that the US places too much emphasis on the aspect of punishment, that isn't to say that it should be eliminated. While it doesn't stop all criminals (obviously), it's still true that the fear of going to prison does stop a good number of rational-thinking people from committing minor crimes. The problem arises when the system relies on deterrence as the only way to prevent crime.
I think the punishment aspect is pretty intrinsic though. You don't get to enjoy normal things. You get stripped searched. You're separated from loved ones. You have no privacy. You can't go outside on a whim. And the food sucks. Being forced to work doesn't need to be in the list.
Some of these examples amount to de facto collective punishment by introducing a tragedy of the commons.
"The new arrival didn't clean up the ancient infested shower of disease, so she too consents to never getting a shower."
Paying some prisoner a pittance to clean the shower every week would be insignificant compared to the cost of containing them. And it reduces the incentive for a gang to privatize the showers.
Let's not experiment on clever new prison ideas. Let's just copy Finland.
I'm somewhat confident that the social punishment will be enough to prevent it from getting to that point, and there will still be housekeeping work assignments, just not "do it or we throw you in the hole for a week". More likely, refusal to do the housekeeping work will result in loss of the ability to perform paid work. In the worst-case scenario, if someone refuses to do it, administration can find a willing volunteer, pay them, and then charge whoever was supposed to do it for the cost of paying another prisoner to do it.
And there is also the possibility of offering a carrot as well. Well-behaved prisoners are more likely to earn parole or early release; that much is already true and known. But it could be supplemented with some minor incentives of insignificant cost, like saying that if the chores are all done then there will be popcorn and a movie at the end of the week or they'll put an Xbox in the day room for an afternoon, and anyone who decided to skip out can't participate.
At least from what I've heard about former prisoners posting online after their release, most are happy to work anyway, especially if there is a monetary incentive, since after a while the boredom of doing nothing all day will apparently get to you. It's not like they have a gaming PC to use if they're not working.
Regarding the problem of gangs, it seems to be the case that administration is always aware but chooses to tolerate them because it would require more manpower and... administrative integrity than is available to stop.
The Nordic model is definitely the most successful but there doesn't seem to be enough political appetite to get it implemented so it isn't a realistic suggestion.