So all we need to do is find a way to put people in prison!
Win-win!
Important to add, once freed they will be ineligible to take a job as a firefighter in California.
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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That's the first sensible advocacy point I've seen sense I started reading these threads. It really doesn't make sense to assign prisoners to jobs they're legally barred from.
From what I've heard this is actually an excellent job for many of them. It's good pay (for prison labor) doing valuable work with a lot of dignity. And it's work for their community that's valuable on the outside. It should always be truly voluntary else it be horrifying, but if they can't do it once they get out it's not job training and it's not reducing recidivism. These prisoners are doing heroic work, let them be heroic once freed.
All prison jobs should pay actual wages and be voluntary though. While the firefighting job is voluntary, many prison jobs are not. Including jobs making products for private companies.
Fine by me - I've hired ex-cons to do work on my house and would hire them again. But there's a lot of vindictiveness about people's past deeds. An excellent computer programmer I worked with got fired when her background check turned up a prostitution arrest from when she had been a homeless 18-year-old. Then at age 32, after turning her life around, she found herself being abruptly escorted from the building by two security guards. The problem was that we worked in a school district headquarters - nowhere near away students, but rules are rules and bureaucrats gonna crat, right? I would have had her give talks in front of high school kids. But it isn't just misdirected authority - ordinary people social media will equally crucify somebody for Liking the wrong tweet. Maybe flinging shit is just a primate instinct, I dunno.
Slavery live and alive
I don't think we have chain gang type prison programs in Canada. It's so archaic. Making license plates to have an occupation might be reasonable, but this chain gang shit is inhumane.
So you and people who get free room and board should get equal pay, or they're slaves, but you're not. Got it.
Really living up to that name lovablesidekick
Thanks, I'm actually very cuddly!
In most states it's not free. You have to pay room and board after you get out. Or they send you back, even if you served your full assigned time. The fees are legislated as part of your sentence and you're not clear of the system until you've paid it for imprisoning you.
My issue really isn't how fair it is or isn't, and you can always bring up the most unfavorable laws as if they're a universal standard. My issue is simply with calling prison labor "slavery", which not only is inaccurate but cheapens the experience of people who have endured actual slavery.
What are you thinking slavery actually was? American slavery ended up being the worst kind. But there were all kinds of other slaves throughout history. At the end of the day, forced labor is slavery. Even if it has an end date.
How about everyone should be able to live somewhere without having to pay for it.
I totally agree with that and I believe the end of the scarcity economy is definitely on the horizon, but let's discuss current issues within the current real world if that's okay.
Ah yes, California's penal legion of ~~slaves~~ "indentured servants" that we uh... voted to keep around in the last election.
Man, CA politics are fucking bizarre. Sometimes the slam dunk no-brainer propositions fail and there never seems to be a really good reason why.
Money, and liberals.
California is liberal. Not left. Every once in a while some leftist proposition comes up that threatens money, and money always wins.
When they say liberals are wolves in sheep's clothing, this is kinda what they're talking about. They care, they really care about their fellow man, as far as their comfortable standard of living allows.
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Isn't there an amendment about this? We had that whole interval railway war over capitalism under the guise of fighting for that amendment?
The 13th amendment
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction"
Oh I see, so Southern plantation owners just have to run individual prisons with open air detention centers for incarcerated individuals of color that happen to be lined with cotton plants and coincidentally they can sell that cotton for profit.
They did exactly that. Right up until the 1940's when FDR's Department of Justice went after them.
They're still doing it, like there are still prison plantations in Louisiana where they send black people for having half a joint on them.
The thing about peonage is they kept people forever. That was the big problem. Putting a definitive end date on a sentence made it magically better. I agree that forced labor is slavery, I'm just referencing the dying gasp of the actual plantation system. While we should eliminate prison slave labor, it's also nowhere near what the peonage system was.
You joke, but ... well, it is not a joke.
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