I was so ready to just downvote for implying criminals don’t deserve rights and move on, but something about your argument does give me thought and I kinda wanna explore this more, especially since you’re working in this field yourself. Apologies if this is kinda ranty, I’m processing my thoughts and why the comment stuck with me as I go.
When people are put in jail, it costs money, like you said, it’s not free, so what do taxpayers expect to get out of that money? Depending on the answer to that question, yeah, it seems fair to think of manual labor as a way to offset the cost (though I doubt the taxpayer is seeing the benefits of those offset costs). I’d like to think in an ideal world however, what is being paid for is rehabilitation; turning criminals back into contributing members of society, in which case, their future productivity would ideally offset the costs to society of jailing them. I think there are enough stories of violent offenders who go on to be lawyers and such to show this is possible and what society should strive for, though I know it’s not easy and may not be possible in all cases. In this case, forced, manual labor would probably be counterproductive, but arguments could be made for voluntary or even paid labor that contributes to rehabilitation.
Outside of rehabilitation, there’s also the simple idea that jails are just paid to keep these people off the streets, in which case the consideration of cost is just, how badly do you not want these people in society? Following that idea, forced labor kind of makes sense, they’re just in jail to be off the streets, might as well make them useful while they’re removed from society, but then the argument is how much labor is ok?
Then again, if the idea is strictly punitive, any amount of forced labor becomes justified since the idea is that they are in there to suffer and serve penance. In this case I suppose the only consideration is whether the amount of penance in the form of labor fits the crime.
I’m just thinking out loud here, I don’t really know anything about this topic for certain. My background though is in special education, and I know from my early studies that whenever it’s tested, a lot of inmates turn out to have some sort of diagnosable learning difficulty, so I feel that the existence of jails to a large extent is a failure of society to support vulnerable people. At the same time, I do recognize that there are people who we really don’t want to be part of society and whom rehabilitation might not be possible, but then if I let my thoughts go down that direction the logical conclusion seems to be the death penalty? And that’s not something I’m really for, especially since there are already so many cases of wrongful death penalties.
tl;dr, I guess we really have to know what we want as the goals for jails as a society, communicate that clearly, and from there we can talk costs and the potential usefulness of forced labor.
Inmates DO have rights, most of the rights that you have, inmates have. It is namely the 2nd amendment that is taken away from specifically felons.
I do not nor have I ever supported the death penalty whatsoever, and that’s aside from exactly how inefficient the process is (the process leading up to death that is). I support rehabilitation, but rehabilitation outside of prison is for people addicted to crack, math, opiods, severely addictive substances like that. The rehabilitation for a murderer IS prison.
Work is not the only form of penance, as work in penance is just community labor. The penance is also paid in reflection and reconciliation.
I think the right to vote is also taken away in a lot of cases, right? But the part about rights wasn’t the main point I was trying to discuss.
I feel like reflection, reconciliation, rehabilitation, all those are processes that need to be facilitated to be effective, and at least from the outside, it doesn’t seem like that’s really happening in prisons. I’m not sure how prison can act as rehabilitation for murder in and of itself. I mean, in general, we know murder is bad, but there’s a lot that can be behind an individuals decision to kill someone and I’m not sure how being in jail by itself deals with that. I’m sure we’ve all heard the examples of say, someone killing the person who they found out was abusing their child, and generally people seem more sympathetic there, but in the end, it is murder. And yes, this is a fringe situation but for the sake of fleshing out ideas, does this person deserve to be put in jail and into forced labor? I feel like most people would say no, which means that even in the case of murder, there’s still some level of nuance as to what level of punishment is accepted by society.
Great! Which goes to show, murder is not always something society always wants to punish, so you can, in some cases, kill someone and walk free.
But that aside, we still have the question of should government money, people’s tax dollars, go to housing and feeding criminals “for-free”? Again, if the idea is that money is paying for the service of rehabilitation, then yeah, the cost from taxes make sense since it will reintroduce productive people back into society, and we should totally pay. If we can introduce labor that can somehow work towards rehabilitation/education while off-setting costs, great! But from what I’m hearing, especially with the recent stuff in Colorado about inmate labor, that’s not what’s happening.
I was so ready to just downvote for implying criminals don’t deserve rights and move on, but something about your argument does give me thought and I kinda wanna explore this more, especially since you’re working in this field yourself. Apologies if this is kinda ranty, I’m processing my thoughts and why the comment stuck with me as I go.
When people are put in jail, it costs money, like you said, it’s not free, so what do taxpayers expect to get out of that money? Depending on the answer to that question, yeah, it seems fair to think of manual labor as a way to offset the cost (though I doubt the taxpayer is seeing the benefits of those offset costs). I’d like to think in an ideal world however, what is being paid for is rehabilitation; turning criminals back into contributing members of society, in which case, their future productivity would ideally offset the costs to society of jailing them. I think there are enough stories of violent offenders who go on to be lawyers and such to show this is possible and what society should strive for, though I know it’s not easy and may not be possible in all cases. In this case, forced, manual labor would probably be counterproductive, but arguments could be made for voluntary or even paid labor that contributes to rehabilitation.
Outside of rehabilitation, there’s also the simple idea that jails are just paid to keep these people off the streets, in which case the consideration of cost is just, how badly do you not want these people in society? Following that idea, forced labor kind of makes sense, they’re just in jail to be off the streets, might as well make them useful while they’re removed from society, but then the argument is how much labor is ok?
Then again, if the idea is strictly punitive, any amount of forced labor becomes justified since the idea is that they are in there to suffer and serve penance. In this case I suppose the only consideration is whether the amount of penance in the form of labor fits the crime.
I’m just thinking out loud here, I don’t really know anything about this topic for certain. My background though is in special education, and I know from my early studies that whenever it’s tested, a lot of inmates turn out to have some sort of diagnosable learning difficulty, so I feel that the existence of jails to a large extent is a failure of society to support vulnerable people. At the same time, I do recognize that there are people who we really don’t want to be part of society and whom rehabilitation might not be possible, but then if I let my thoughts go down that direction the logical conclusion seems to be the death penalty? And that’s not something I’m really for, especially since there are already so many cases of wrongful death penalties.
tl;dr, I guess we really have to know what we want as the goals for jails as a society, communicate that clearly, and from there we can talk costs and the potential usefulness of forced labor.
Inmates DO have rights, most of the rights that you have, inmates have. It is namely the 2nd amendment that is taken away from specifically felons.
I do not nor have I ever supported the death penalty whatsoever, and that’s aside from exactly how inefficient the process is (the process leading up to death that is). I support rehabilitation, but rehabilitation outside of prison is for people addicted to crack, math, opiods, severely addictive substances like that. The rehabilitation for a murderer IS prison.
Work is not the only form of penance, as work in penance is just community labor. The penance is also paid in reflection and reconciliation.
I think the right to vote is also taken away in a lot of cases, right? But the part about rights wasn’t the main point I was trying to discuss.
I feel like reflection, reconciliation, rehabilitation, all those are processes that need to be facilitated to be effective, and at least from the outside, it doesn’t seem like that’s really happening in prisons. I’m not sure how prison can act as rehabilitation for murder in and of itself. I mean, in general, we know murder is bad, but there’s a lot that can be behind an individuals decision to kill someone and I’m not sure how being in jail by itself deals with that. I’m sure we’ve all heard the examples of say, someone killing the person who they found out was abusing their child, and generally people seem more sympathetic there, but in the end, it is murder. And yes, this is a fringe situation but for the sake of fleshing out ideas, does this person deserve to be put in jail and into forced labor? I feel like most people would say no, which means that even in the case of murder, there’s still some level of nuance as to what level of punishment is accepted by society.
The right to vote is usually taken away but like firearms, it depends.
The hypothetical circumstance you explained doesn’t play out like you typically think, they don’t always go to prison
Great! Which goes to show, murder is not always something society always wants to punish, so you can, in some cases, kill someone and walk free.
But that aside, we still have the question of should government money, people’s tax dollars, go to housing and feeding criminals “for-free”? Again, if the idea is that money is paying for the service of rehabilitation, then yeah, the cost from taxes make sense since it will reintroduce productive people back into society, and we should totally pay. If we can introduce labor that can somehow work towards rehabilitation/education while off-setting costs, great! But from what I’m hearing, especially with the recent stuff in Colorado about inmate labor, that’s not what’s happening.