> They're a fun read.
Strong agree.
I'm actually amazed at the statistic that only 3% return to prison. There are actually very little resources for those getting released, and if your entire family and friends are gone, you have no support network to fall back on. Perhaps getting out above retirement age gives you access to more charities and a small state pension that will allow you to find a place to live and buy food.
One of the saddest cases I know of is a man who did 50 straight years then needed money when he got out, so his daughter persuaded him to go shoplifting with her and he got arrested immediately and sent back for another three years.
Surely there would be an indictment alleging what he did?
It's not like they'll have a retirement fund.
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.”It was used en masse with turn of the century vagrancy laws to arrest Black people who didn't have enough cash on hand, then send them to other states to work and/or die in coal mines as essentially slave labor.
Even happened to children who committed minor crimes.
The 13th Amendment provides incentive to incarcerate, and with private prison industries existing period, that incentive probably should not exist at all.
Permitted, not "enshrined". It doesn't mandate it, it allows it. And despite being allowed, all US convicts are paid wages. No one is sentenced to labor, hard or otherwise.
It isn't. It's just often preferable to sitting in a cell 23 hours per day.
>The "wages" are typically something like 25 cents per hour,
Why should a felon be permitted to earn whatever it is that you think they should be paid (the wages of a free man)? They are being punished. One of the aspects of the punishment is that they can't go out and get a good-paying job.
> and sentences can be extended if you refuse to work
This is a blatant lie. Sentences can't be extended without additional convictions. While it's not impossible to be charged with crimes committed in prison (murders occur there often enough), no one's being convicted of "refusing to work in prison".
I know that this blew up a few years on reddit, but maybe you should learn about it from more reputable sources.
https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/work_programs.j...
I suppose you could consider 15 cents an hour “paid wages”, but to me that’s just a bad veneer for what our system truly is.
I am neither of those things. And Google will only bring up half-assed activist blogs. Go find a Westlaw or LexisNexis terminal, search there instead. No one's being sentenced to labor in US civilian courts (can't say for courts martial, maybe some jackasses committing crimes while in the army are sentenced to labor).
>I suppose you could consider 15 cents an hour “paid wages”,
If it is money, and the amount is above zero, then it is not my consideration that it's "paid wages", it is empirical fact. Words have objective meanings, except for leftists.
I am of the opinion that incarceration should be "for the benefit of society"; that the person should be behind bars because because they are a threat to society. If they're done with thing because, they may do it again. And that incarceration should be working helping that person become one that would _not_ repeat that crime. Life sentences should only ever be the case for someone that will always be a threat to society.
I get that people want closure/revenge, and understand that. I'm sure I would feel the same in many cases. But ... it just doesn't help anything. And sure there's an argument for it being preventative (don't do the crime or you'll do the time), but lots of studies have shown that's has little validity.
> None of us want to be defined solely by the person we were in our youth, or by the worst thing we ever did. The men serving life without parole feel the same way.
Fair, but if it's likely that you're the type of person that _will_ do catastrophic harm to society again if you get out, then there's a fair argument that you should not be out.
How do you know whether a murderer won't be a repeat murderer?
DivingForGold•2d ago
hrimfaxi•1h ago