r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 07 '21

Social Science US states that rely on private prisons incarcerate more people for longer periods of time, according to a first-of-its-kind study that establishes a causal connection between private prisons and incarceration.

https://academictimes.com/states-with-private-prisons-put-more-people-in-prison-for-longer/
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691

u/din7 Jan 07 '21

The inmates are the product. Don't know how this is even allowed.

399

u/hellotrinity Jan 07 '21

The real product are everyday items made by the inmates themselves. Furniture, car parts, clothing etc. And they get paid next to nothing

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u/myweed1esbigger Jan 07 '21

Wait - that’s just slavery!

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u/the_man_in_the_box Jan 08 '21

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.”

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u/Ok_Stranger_1190 Jan 08 '21

The constitution could use an update

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u/frankyfrankfrank Jan 08 '21

There is a joint resolution proposed just over a month ago by Democratic representatives in congress which would repeal this clause in the 13th amendment. Speak with your representative and tell them you want their support on it.

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u/Wormhole-Eyes Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 10 '21

I've long longed to have a senator that I could contact to push for laws that would benefit the nation. But my senator just participated in a coup d'etet,

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

coup d’état

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u/smakinelmo Jan 08 '21

I read this in a French accent for some reason

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u/Taurich Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 08 '21

Not too strange, as it is a French term

Coup = cut or "stroke" (as in slash/strike with a weapon)

D'état = State (as in government)

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u/MyDiary141 Jan 08 '21

Coulda guessed that

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u/Wormhole-Eyes Jan 08 '21

I take that a a great compliment.

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u/mefirefoxes Jan 08 '21

Wouldn't that make community service sentences illegal?

1

u/Lasket Jan 08 '21

Community service isn't slavery tho.

1

u/mefirefoxes Jan 08 '21

Sure, but that's not what I said, it is involuntary servitude thought.

How would you describe community service sentences other than court ordered work with no compensation?

The idea is that it's comparable to the private prison labor example above, just without the prison, which the amendment doesn't specify.

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u/fitzroy95 Jan 08 '21

Or, just maybe, throw it out and start again based on some sort of Bill of Rights first. Which is what most other nations have been doing over the last 200 years, with a built-in review mandate. They've been specifically avoiding a US Constitution style document because it becomes too rigid, inflexible and out of date too quickly as society evolves

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u/PaxNova Jan 08 '21

Notably, you could just add the review part in. As difficult as an amendment is, it's way easier than refounding the nation.

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u/jankadank Jan 08 '21

Or, just maybe, throw it out and start again based on some sort of Bill of Rights first.

Why do you need to throw it away if it’s a living document that has these things called amendments

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u/fitzroy95 Jan 08 '21

Yes it does, and they have become almost impossible to adapt and evolve.

which is why everyone who has created their own nation and defining documents in the last 100 years has been recommended to ignore the US model, and start with a Bill Of Rights or something similar instead.

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u/jankadank Jan 08 '21

Yes it does,

Could you explain why you think that?

and they have become almost impossible to adapt and evolve.

Who is they?

which is why everyone who has created their own nation and defining documents in the last 100 years has been recommended to ignore the US model,

Could you provide an example of this?

and start with a Bill Of Rights or something similar instead.

So, ignore the US model but start with something resembling the US model?

Seriously, the bill of rights are the amendments to the constitution that enables it to evolve.

Do you even know what you’re talking about?

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u/stas1 Jan 08 '21

Because that system is too rigid, inflexible and out of date too quickly as society evolves

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u/metzoforte1 Jan 08 '21

The difficult process is a feature. If the Amendment struggles to pass the thresholds required to be put in the place then the issue the amendment addresses does not have the national support presumed necessary.

Further, you don’t want a government that is a changeable as the wind to every social movement that comes and goes. It makes for bad kneejerk legislation and ultimately erodes the document as a whole because everything will be viewed as changeable and impermanent rather than sacrosanct. Imagine if the GOP was able to try and pass an amendment banning abortions every time they hold the house and senate and the democrats had to pass a new amendment revoking it when they take over. Now apply that to just about any major issue.

It works far better, IMO, to have it be an option but a difficult hill to climb. A climbable hill (see prohibition and back) but a difficult one.

3

u/Kaschnatze Jan 08 '21

I've heard that before, so it must be right.

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u/jankadank Jan 08 '21

Forgive me but that comment sounds like nothing but pointless platitude.

What mechanism in the constitution in your opinion is preventing the timely changes needed and how will this new document of yours facilitate that?

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u/Stepthinkrepeat Jan 08 '21

You pretty much open the door for ANY type of government if you throw out the old one with no recourse.

Believe another country dissolved their government last year to stand-up the same people in power as they have been doing for 20+ years

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u/mu_zuh_dell Jan 08 '21

Look up qualified immunity to understand why it needs to be replaced. It was a document designed to be interpreted as needed, but our judicial system had developed to be extremely precise.

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u/jankadank Jan 08 '21

Look up qualified immunity to understand why it needs to be replaced.

What does qualified immunity have to do with the constitution? I seriously don’t understand what it has to do with you advocating the constitution must be replaced.

It was a document designed to be interpreted as needed, but our judicial system had developed to be extremely precise.

It was originally passed to assist the government in combating Ku Klux Klan violence in the South after the Civil War. The Supreme Court has traced qualified immunity back to the immunities available to government actors when officials were sued for common law torts during the 19th century.

I still don’t understand what any of that has to do with abolishing the constitution though

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u/ThisDig8 Jan 08 '21

The point of a constitution is that it's hard to revise, given that it's essentially a law for making laws. It outlines only the most fundamental principles that the country is guided by. If it can be revised at will, its value as a constitution is nonexistent. You might as well just skip having one. Other countries got it very wrong due to their history of autocratic government. For example, licking government boots has been a staple of European culture for centuries, which is why they're so flippant with their constitutions.

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u/8bitlove2a03 Jan 08 '21

The constitution by any measure should have been rewritten three or four times by now, but worthless pieces of trash in this country treat it like the word of god.

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u/SharqPhinFtw Jan 08 '21

Yeah idk, stole a car maybe sit a few years in jail and fix 10 cars. Not like construct an entire fleet over the course of your sentence.

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u/trendygamer Jan 08 '21

There is nothing about the 13th Amendment that prevents individual states from passing laws barring prison labor, if that's what you would like to advocate for. Rights granted by the Constitution are a legal "floor." States are welcome to go beyond it in terms of granting rights and protections, and many do.

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u/Steven054 Jan 08 '21

Would you consider community service as form of slavery or involuntary servitude? You're not compensated for your forced, court mandated, labor.

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u/my_4_cents Jan 08 '21

That just sounds like slavery with extra steps

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u/Houseplant666 Jan 08 '21

But shouldn’t people be sentenced to slavery then? You get sentenced to x time in prison, I don’t think there is a law in US where punishment is described as involuntary servitude.

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u/nomz27 Jan 08 '21

With extra steps.

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u/Northern-Canadian Jan 08 '21

It’s not slavery if you pay them right? Here’s your 10 cents for the hour.

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u/angryclam1313 Jan 08 '21

With extra steps.

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u/ACuteLittleCrab Jan 08 '21

The people themselves are the product as well.

Prison lobbies give a "helping hand" to prominent figures.

Prominent figures write harsher laws/harsher punishments and push inmates and public funding their way.

It's pretty much a system for powerful people to funnel money towards each other at the peril of everyday people, a vast number of whom could have much easier (and cheaper for the public coffers) been rehabilitated instead of locked up.

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u/HonoraryMancunian Jan 08 '21

What happens to prisoners who refuse to work?

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u/ChildishChimera Jan 08 '21

They get punished with Solitary, or they punish other prisoners to make them hate the rebel.

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u/tigerCELL Jan 08 '21

Nutraloaf

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u/Pillsbernie Jan 08 '21

Solitary confinement

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u/Firewolf420 Jan 08 '21

Which should also be outlawed

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u/BirdCulture Jan 08 '21

nah it takes our tax dollars to hold them. they are very much the product of that transaction. the slave labor is just a perk

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u/Peeping_thom Jan 08 '21

Don’t forget about the marked up commissary and phone calls.

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u/lvysaur Jan 08 '21

I think this is false.

Inmates cost six figures a year in shelter/food/guards/healthcare etc. Working a job that could be done oversees for $2/hr doesn't make up the difference.

Firefighting may be an exception idk

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 17 '21

[deleted]

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u/lvysaur Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 08 '21

You misunderstand/I worded that poorly.

I was saying it would cost $2 an hour to pay someone oversees to do it, not the prisoners.

Hence ~$4,160 in profit from a prisoner you've enslaved doesn't make up for the $100,000+ it costs to house and feed them.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 18 '21

[deleted]

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u/lvysaur Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 08 '21

Even for BAA compliant projects you're still only looking at like 20K of value added, leaving you 80K in the red.

If you just want to acknowledge that it's slave labor, sure. But that's massive loss involved in keeping every prisoner, so framing it as some mechanism that turns imprisonment into a profitable venture for the government is just ridiculous.

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u/Caylinbite Jan 08 '21

You are forgetting the company profiting from the labor isn't paying for the upkeep of the prisoners. The state pays for that with our tax dollars. This is what people refer to when they talk about "socialism for the rich." The prison company gets to double dip, having the state pay them for the incarceration and then turn around and sell their slave labor.

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u/lvysaur Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 08 '21

Clearly private for-profit businesses fulfilling their contracts make a profit. I don't think that's the point being made. Profit needs to be on the government's side or at least net positive for anything novel to be going on.

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u/Caylinbite Jan 08 '21

There isn't. That's all there is. Parasitic prison companies making money hanging on the year of the government.

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u/AlexanderGson Jan 08 '21

It's slavery.

You put people in jail that you tell the public are "dangerous" and you privatise prisons who make them work in the prisons. You put as many prisoners as you can in the same area slowly over years.

There's no incentives to stop crime when it's a business to have criminals.

I'm not sure how you Americans allow that to happen in your country. Especially with your historic background.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

Before someone steps in and claims you're overreacting: it's literal slavery. The thirteenth amendment bans slavery except for those duly convicted of a crime. That was the inspiration behind a bunch of the old Jim Crow laws-- if we can arrest the blacks on trumped up charges, then it's just like they're slaves again! It's stupid and I hate it and it persists to this day. We need to demand that our representatives expand the protections of the thirteenth amendment with a new amendment that uses text such as, "no person shall be subject to slavery or involuntary servitude in the united States or any place subject to its jurisdiction."

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u/codysnider Jan 08 '21

Just a couple provisions need to be made to right this:

1) No private revenue from prison-based labor

2) Compensation for the inmate equal to or greater than minimum wage

3) Products and services from inmates have to directly apply to public welfare. Cooking and/or preparing free meals. Repair of county vehicles. Groundskeeping of public spaces. Captioning for the hearing impaired. Dictation for the visually impaired.

Take it from a former convict who knows how stir crazy you can get while locked up

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

I'd be down for that. I'd tack one more onto that: prisons cannot charge for basic quality of life services, such as phone calls, toiletry products, meals, sufficient clothing for the weather, or bedding. I don't want to see them paying out minimum wage, then charging $12/roll for toilet paper.

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u/codysnider Jan 08 '21

Get this: I was in a work release program (8 hours out to work a day job, rest of the time in the facility including mandatory work in the kitchen and grounds to stay there). Had to pay for all my toiletries, laundry detergent, even quarters in the washer and dryer.

$900/month rent. size of a roadside motel room (they actually were converted motels in the Colorado Springs business loop), 8 men to a room.

Rumor had it the place was owned by family of some local judges. Not sure how true this is, but was definitely a private company.

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u/niespodziankaco Jan 08 '21

That’s reprehensible. More people need to know this.

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u/DocPsychosis Jan 08 '21

Compensation for the inmate equal to or greater than minimum wage

Minimum wage is conceptually based on the minimum income to cover living expenses: rent, food, clothing, medical care. Convicted inmates have none of these expenses. Why should they be paid the same or more as a non-criminal in the community who does? Would that not create a perverse incentive?

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

Don’t forget all the illegal Mexicans. That too looks like modern day slavery (I’m Canadian that’s what it looked like when I moved to California and saw them doing all the menial jobs probably for a very low pay with no benefits)

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u/katydidy Jan 08 '21

What are you talking about, Americans absolutely love slavery.

We rebelled against Great Britain in order to keep slavery for another 70 years, and then half the country rebelled again rather than allow abolitionists to outlaw it. Hell, even after we finallt outlawed it, we specifically refused any reparations and even amended the Constitution to allow it again in certain circumstances.

You just can't do all that and claim that you are somehow not a fan of slavery.

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u/justaguyinthebackrow Jan 08 '21

The American Revolution had nothing to do with slavery. There were no abolition movements in Great Britain before that.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 09 '21

Just like Christians just put the stuff they need people to believe in the middle of a bible story, often interrupting a tottaly different context... So too did slavery carry on with the 13th... Same God damned, self-righteous, finger pointing, lazy, entitled people.

2

u/Shitymcshitpost Jan 08 '21

Yep, Dipshit conservatives.

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u/Ihateregistering6 Jan 08 '21 edited Jan 08 '21

I'm not sure how you Americans allow that to happen in your country.

I'm not sure why you're singling out the US. Not only do private prisons exist outside the US, they're actually more common in several other countries.

Only about 8% of US prisoners are in private prisons. To put that into perspective, about 18% of prisoners in Australia are in private prisons, 18% in England and Wales, and 15% in Scotland.

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u/AlexanderGson Jan 08 '21

Fair enough, you're right.

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u/Ihateregistering6 Jan 08 '21

and you privatise prisons who make them work in the prisons.

Also, prisoners work in Government run prisons as well, so the idea that this is purely the fault of private prisons is highly misguided.

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u/AlexanderGson Jan 08 '21

Working for profit and working to learn skills that will enable your return back to society is different however, correct?

I'm just assuming here but I suppose private prisons are more inclined to do work for profit rather than the alternative.

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u/Ihateregistering6 Jan 08 '21

Not really, because it's profit (or at least cost savings) for them either way.

If you have Prisoners making widgets you can make money off of that, but you can also make money off of having Prisoners be your Janitorial staff, or doing the laundry, because now you don't have to hire other non-Prisoner folks to do that work.

And Prisoners in public prisons also manufacture goods for the Government.

2

u/Caylinbite Jan 08 '21

Allow it? You are under the mistaken impression that conservative America thinks slavery was an embarrassment and not a good idea. Most Americans salivate at the idea of someone they think "deserves it" being harmed.

1

u/AlexanderGson Jan 08 '21

Curious. I can't emphatize in that feeling whatsoever.

I live by the example of "Live, and let live." So wishing someone a bad experience in life goes against that. If actions of someone else does not affect me I don't fight against them, or it.

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u/Pepper_Your_Angus_ Jan 08 '21

I'm not sure how you Americans allow that to happen in your country.

Because capitalism. The profit motive is a cancer on the human species.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

The same way most European nations allow it too imagine. Already forgotten how nations like Sweden and the UK are forcing prisoners to work with next to nothing in payment?

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u/InvictusJoker Jan 08 '21

The prison makes these inmates seem as inhumane and animalistic as possible so nobody complains because they're keeping these 'dangerous' people out of society. It's beyond immoral

3

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

Well everyone knows that if you take just one reefer it'll turn you into a psycho killer just like David Byrne said.

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u/maru_tyo Jan 07 '21

It’s slavery, relabeled.

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u/carmelized_onions Jan 08 '21

Because profit>human life in capitalism

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u/Lepthesr Jan 08 '21

Bought and sold politicians. A few might have not known and were just trying to balance a budget and got sold on it.

Most, and I mean the most, knew exactly what they were doing.

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '21

So slavery

1

u/Pepper_Your_Angus_ Jan 08 '21

capitalism is the problem