Criminal justice and prisons

[plam]

AP just published a piece about prison labor in the US:

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-pla...4eadf08c4e

I really don't know how you have prison labor without also actually having slavery. It is, however, true that the federal Conservatives abolished farming for prisoners in 2009, but also that there was a reestablishment of the Penitentiary Farm program in 2019, and that there was an outcry about the abolition at the time.

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

You're right, but i still think that humane penal labour can help offset costs. Eg. community service of some sort, shitty manual labour jobs nobody else wants to do(but with worker's rights and such) etc.

There is nothing humane about penal labour--prisoners are vulnerable people by definition, they are wards of the state. The state should not be forcing them to work to defray the costs of their confinement. If holding people is too expensive, the solution is to do less of it. It SHOULD be expensive because the monetary costs to the state are only a tiny fraction of the real cost. And again, unless we are talking about lifetime prisoners, the goal must be to limit recidivism. We do not achieve that by using forced labour to defray the cost of confining people...how does that make those people more likely to have a pro-social engagement with society. Think of it from their position, do you think being made to do "shitty manual labour jobs that nobody else wants to do" (but with some imaginary worker's right and such, except it's forced labour so what rights do you think they have?) will make them have more or less respect for society?

If you are concerned with the cost of prisons, then lets work to decrease the need for them by addressing crime and recidivism through social programs, not by trying to make it cheaper to hold people.

True, I do believe alot(or most) of inmates can and should be rehabilitated, and yes, we should definitly be trying to address the root problem of crime, but in the meantime...

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

We only need to look south of our border to see what kind of system prison labour enables. It's become a key component of the economy of several US industries and has led to things like judges being pressured to convict more suspects in order to keep up the numbers of the labour force.

Are those private prisons? Because those are horrible. I was thinking it be state-run prisons and the money goes straight back into the prison to help with the rehab programs

[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

[ludo643]

We only need to look south of our border to see what kind of system prison labour enables. It's become a key component of the economy of several US industries and has led to things like judges being pressured to convict more suspects in order to keep up the numbers of the labour force.

Are those private prisons? Because those are horrible. I was thinking it be state-run prisons and the money goes straight back into the prison to help with the rehab programs

Yeah, private prisons are where a lot of these issues come up. Because they’re for-profit, there’s this constant push to keep cells full to maintain a cheap labor force. That’s led to situations where people feel pressured to hand down more convictions just to keep numbers up. 

In a state-run system, the hope would be that any money earned could go back into funding rehab and other programs instead of being profit-driven

[Vojnik_Vahaj]

Are those private prisons? Because those are horrible. I was thinking it be state-run prisons and the money goes straight back into the prison to help with the rehab programs

Yeah, private prisons are where a lot of these issues come up. Because they’re for-profit, there’s this constant push to keep cells full to maintain a cheap labor force. That’s led to situations where people feel pressured to hand down more convictions just to keep numbers up. 

In a state-run system, the hope would be that any money earned could go back into funding rehab and other programs instead of being profit-driven

My thoughts exactly

[plam]

We had some other thread about involuntary mental health treatment, I think, or homelessness. Here is a piece in the Spinoff about homelessness in NZ. It mentions, also, that NY tried to involuntarily commit people in the 80s, and it failed badly.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/11-11-2...n-aotearoa

[ac3r]

If I recall, the discussion was about involuntary treatment for drug addicts rather than homelessness. The reasoning being that since we are allowed to involuntarily lock people up for self-harm and suicide risk, it should be equally as reasonable to make someone go into drug rehabilitation since their addiction puts their lives at risk in addition to the public health problems, criminality, decay of familial and social threads necessary for a functioning society and the insurmountable cost it places on every Canadian citizen.

Alas, as the saying goes, though: go woke, go broke. Addicts are dropping like flies, you can't own anything without bolting it down and we burn billions of dollars a year since people in government, NGOs and the people that support them think it's a better idea to maintain a laissez-faire free-for-all approach to this issue.

[tomh009]

You do realize that inpatient addiction care is expensive, right? Depending on the details, I expect that the government would need to spend at least $200-300K per bed for that, far more than the safe injection sites cost. Will the provincial government fund thousands of additional such treatment beds?

[ac3r]

Probably not, but they should. I don't see why addicts shouldn't deserve care as opposed to government sanctioned drug addiction. It costs society far more to allow people to use drugs than it does to let them use drugs and suffer further trauma and physical issues associated with addiction. Even if it cost substantially more to treat them, does our society not have a moral obligation to treat this problem rather than stick bandages on it?