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.
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.
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.
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.