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A right to remain silent. A right to a competent attorney regardless of ability to pay. A right to due process. A right to a timely trial by a jury of peers. A right to healthy food, shelter, healthcare, and other accommodations while incarcerated. I'm probably missing a few.
The right to a fair wage while imprisoned. Or else your justice system only serves to produce slaves.
Slavery is legal in prisons here in the U.S.
Yes, precisely.
written into the constitution
That's why the rights of people today shouldn't be dictated by a document written over a century ago. Idolizing a document over human rights is terrible.
Idolizing a document over human rights is terrible.
Well, to be clear, human rights, other than being a vague philosophical concept, are also a document. Much younger, and much more sensible and uncompromising, but still also a document.
Hopefully if new rights are deemed to be needed, they can be added.
I mean, if a document has specific rights written on it and society moves forward and has need for new rights to be added then we should be ready to rewrite and add rights as opposed to treating the document as divine and unchangeable.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
- George Santayana
That's the full quote that people like to reduce to the final sentence.
Documents are a species' way of remembering the past and establishing core ideals so that future generations don't have to reinvent those wheels.
Not to say any given document is without flaws or captures the right values, and as our societies grow and mature so too should the values that we align ourselves with.
Sadly. We should change that, but you-know-who would be against it, like they had been throughout the nation's history.
Should they then also pay rent in prison? :D (not serious)
Oh boy, let me tell you about pay-for-stay.
At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt - AP News (2022)
Essentially, that already happens. They get charged for rent. And food. And medical care. And whatever else can be charged.
Ok not funny anymore. What a dystopia! Thanks for the info.
I know you're not being serious, but for the sake of the argument, if we're going to force a person, against their will, to be in a certain place for a certain amount of time then we should have to cover all the basic needs that that person may have.
The right to vote, regardless of criminal convictions or incarceration.
Prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. It’s one of the most fundamental rights that criminals have and it must constantly be revisited to ensure we aren’t brushing aside the cruelty we’re simply accustomed to