Criminal justice and prisons

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

Why should they even be getting paid when it's already costing us tens of thousands of dollars per prisoner per year? They should work, but anything they earn should just be given right back to offset the cost of keeping some idiot behind bars. I fail to see any reasoning in suggesting that either they shouldn't work at all while incarcerated, or that they can but be at least getting minimum wage for it. Like...what? That's essentially paying a prisoner to be a prisoner. Lol.

The work itself should be reformed. Employment - even behind bars - can provide someone with a sense of purpose and responsibility which is a useful thing for prisoners. I have no idea what kind of labour they perform in Canadian jails and in prisons, but I'm sure it's very mundane. If you can provide inmates with a more meaningful labour it may benefit them. Better yet, offer them a way to learn new skills, maybe with a way that allows them to study things like various trades or something in social fields (drug rehabilitation counselling is often a common one ex-addicts go into). Develop better programs and reform the way a criminal record follows someone so that they don't feel trapped and compelled to reoffend once released.

But to suggest they should essentially be paid for being a criminal even though criminality costs our nation hundreds of millions of dollars a year is an insane idea. Try selling that to voters. They'd lose their minds. I don't know how people come up with these goofy ideas. People like to point to Scandinavia when it comes to what their idea of utopia looks like, but for crime you're better off looking at places like South Korea or Japan for solutions.

You put my thoughts way more elegantly than I did