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Fun fact: the 13th Amendment permits slavery as punishment for a crime. Yay, America!
Funner fact: in 2024, Californians actually voted for slavery! https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/11/california-election-result-proposition-6-fails/
Painful.
The California Attorney General’s Office writes ballot language and summaries, and the word “slavery” did not appear on the California ballot. Instead, the language read, “Eliminates Constitutional Provision Allowing Involuntary Servitude for Incarcerated Persons. Legislative Constitutional Amendment.”
“When I saw the words ‘involuntary servitude,’ I thought, ‘This might take some explaining for the voters,’” said Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California. “We know that when people are unsure or uncertain, the default is to vote ‘no.’”
IMHO if the system is fair and there was a real crime (Not people getting punished for some BS „crime“ or for just belonging to a minority, wrong skin color etc.) then let them work. But not for corpos/financial reasons: Let them do things that make everyday life of everybody outside a bit better. This way they can at least give something back to society.
Edit: Forgot to mention that I don’t think that something like this would work in the US.
Prison shouldn't be about punishment. It should be about protecting the general population from those who would do them harm. And prisoners should spend their time in prison in ways which could help to rehabilitate them, even if it makes us unhappy that a victim suffers while the victimizer gets therapy and an education.
I'm absolutely in favor of providing inmates with conditional employment and education opportunities. I've heard of several programs where inmates are allowed to continue their previous jobs under heavy supervision (mainly in court cam videos where living brain donors of the sovereign citizen persuasion voluntarily lose said privilege). The problems start when said labour becomes compulsory.
So long as they are paid the same wage as non-prisoners. Anything else is slavery.
Yes, being incarcerated and working while being paid $0.50 an hour is STILL slavery.
At that sort of wage, the prisoners are doing it more for the opportunity to get out than for the money.
I'm not excusing it one way or another. I worked for a school which operated inside of a juvenile prison for a while and they had these work release programs.
The place I worked was actually rehabilitative, though, and gave the kids at least almost all of their earned money, and helped them get things like food handlers cards and useful experience for when they were released.
If only we could (would) do something like that for adults.
The problem starts when inmate labor provides others with essentially free money. Which then leads to labor being compulsory.
if the system is fair and there was a real crime
If the system is fair, "real crime" drops precipitously and we baited into constantly ask the question "How do we make prison profitable?"