Should Convicts Have to Earn Their Keep in Prison?

Wally

Choose Your Words Carefully...
As Fentanyl directly leads to death, it is a murder weapon.

And to distribute it for willful profit makes it 1st degree and all the more nefarious when it kills kids.

You want to eliminate it, deal with those who distribute it.

And there must be due process, as the villains will find ways to plant the stuff on unwilling transports.
 

Hsmommy

Active Member
As Fentanyl directly leads to death, it is a murder weapon.

And to distribute it for willful profit makes it 1st degree and all the more nefarious when it kills kids.

You want to eliminate it, deal with those who distribute it.

And there must be due process, as the villains will find ways to plant the stuff on unwilling transports.
On the flip side, fentanyl is also a method of suicide. It’s like a pharmaceutical Russian roulette.
 

Biblecat

New Member
Should Convicts Have to Earn Their Keep in Prison?
Why doing time shouldn’t absolve you of your fiscal responsibility.
By Jason D. Hill

The recent Red Scare by the Left in declaring that slavery is still legal in five of the United States needs some cautious reflection and analysis on at least one question it raises. Allegedly, the landmark 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified on December 16, 1865, saw the official abolishment of slavery. It is said, however, that it was allowed to continue as a punishment in prison against convicted felons.

Semantic interpretations of the 13th Amendment aside, and of how it has been and will continue to be applied, there is one moral question that frames the issue and gives it moral heft, so to speak: whether convicted felons ought to be paid for their labor while in prison. These felons include, but are not limited to, wider groups of individuals. They are rapists, murderers, armed robbers, pedophiles, carjackers, child-sex traffickers, and terrorists.

In being incarcerated, such individuals are not simply being punished for their crimes; they are also removed from society as they often pose incalculable harm to individuals and to public safety. They have violated the individual rights of others and have, in some respects, ejected themselves from the ambit of certain rights.

Society pays for their physical, psychological, and medical upkeep through taxation. Taxpayers pay a lot for private prisons. Various reports claim that in the 2018 fiscal year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spent over $800 million of taxpayer money on privately-owned or -operated detention facilities.

Someone breaks the law, commits a gratuitous crime against others, and has his or her upkeep maintained by law-abiding individuals. In essence, we are paying them not to commit crimes by keeping them off the streets.

But the responsibility should never have been shouldered by the taxpayer in the first place. Criminals should pay their way in prison for their upkeep. A case can be established that not paying them for their labor could be redolent of slave labor. A better solution would be to pay all prisoners a salary for work that they do, tax them on the income they earn, and charge them rent for their residency in prison.

The moral arc of the argument rests on the assumption that rights violation and the lawful penal administration of justice should never absolve one of fiscal responsibility for one’s life.

I do not believe that more people are incentivized to commit more crimes because prison costs them nothing financially. What seems more reasonable to assert is that, while in prison, one has a moral responsibility to be fiscally responsible for one’s physical and medical upkeep. One has to pay for it. The shift of fiscal responsibility ought never have been the prerogative of law-abiding citizens for whom the only justification now for assuming financial responsibility for another person’s life is that he or she broke the law and harmed another or others. The criterion is dubious. A criminal need only invoke the Harm Principle and he is exonerated from fiscal self-responsibility.

The case I make here has absolutely nothing to do with expediency of any sort. That is, it matters not one jot whether working and being paid a salary gives the prisoner a continued sense of purpose, raises self-esteem, or makes him more assimilable when and if he returns to civilian life. These are purely incidental advantages he may incur.

The morally salient factor here is that no person shall be absolved of the requirement to be financially responsible for his life—even if he is incarcerated. If created work that has market value is a condition for the financial upkeep of one’s life, then every prisoner has to be made to work—some at harder labor than others. By the latter I mean the following: depending on the nature of the crime and the degree of harm inflicted against another or others and, in keeping the punishment commensurate to the crime (as is reasonably possible), some prisoners will have more labor extracted from them and will, concomitantly, pay a higher cost in rent for their physical maintenance. This is because they may pose an additional threat to the general prison population, or they may require extra security monitoring.

A just and judicious prison reform initiative cannot aim at anything as ludicrous as the abolition of prisons. It can, however, examine the extent to which “victimless crimes” are even a proper category to begin with. Prison reform can address the punishments meted out for acts that violate laws which themselves might be unjust. I speak here of laws that are in violation of mores and cultural norms, but which do not violate anyone’s individual rights, nor can they ostensibly be shown to harm anyone.

Regardless of the manner in which real criminals are forced into exemption from assuming fiscal responsibility for their lives, the primary and fundamental issue is that prison is a form of involuntary servitude. Even if prisoners were not paid for their labor, so long as one could properly show that the proceeds from their labor were used to support them physically, one could regard moral objections to such unpaid labor as I have described it as an extension of the defense of welfarism. Indeed, if they are paid a wage for their labor one may recommend that their wages be garnished for child support, credit debt, and any outstanding fiscal responsibilities they have to others.

Tax-funded prisoner upkeep is an unfair burden to place on private citizens who should not have to double pay for their safety. Their taxes are already paying law enforcement agents who are responsible for enforcing the law. Why should citizens then have to pay for the welfare of the very agents who are threats to, menaces to, and violators of rights? If private citizens are working up to 60 hours a week to make ends meet by allocating their labor among three jobs, then why should incarcerated criminals not have to work as many hours as is necessary to exempt them from being a financial burden to society?

Slavery is never all right nor morally justifiable even against criminals; but neither is involuntary taxation legitimate when used to provide a way of life for most American prisoners who enjoy accoutrements and benefits of a middle-class existence that many a free person in an impoverished Third World country simply lacks.

The terminology surrounding the 13th Amendment may be rectified at the ballot box. The moral principle that makes it contentious is not that controversial. Criminals forfeit certain rights when they have wantonly violated the rights of others. A transfer of certain responsibilities one has for one’s life (responsibility for one’s fate, destiny, and fiscal upkeep) does not automatically happen when one is ethically removed from the public sphere which one has contaminated by harming others. One is still a participant in one’s self-preservation because there are other ways to bring the marketplace into the domain of the penal system. This will undoubtedly enrage and unhinge prison abolitionists.

Let’s clean up the language of the 13th Amendment if such a feat is required. Agreed. And then let us remind criminals entering the penal system: There are no free lunches. You will pay as you go.

https://www.raptureforums.com/polit...d-convicts-have-to-earn-their-keep-in-prison/
Will you be evicted if you can't afford to pay the prison bill?

How do you compel a prisoner to work for his keep if they refuse?
In Oregon, the convicts get credits for buying things and time taken off what they need to serve. I'm told they don't want this measure to pass.
 

ItIsFinished!

Blood bought child of the King of kings.
Well number one , not enough are put to death.
Number two, the ones that are sentenced to death , the states take way longer than need be to carry through. After they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt , it is time to go if that is the particular sentence. Give them a Bible and a chance to make peace with God.
I'm not saying or hoping they or anyone goes to Hell . We all NEED The Lord Jesus Christ and His grace and mercy. However we CANNOT coddle them and let their "stay" be to comfortable.
I see what some of these hardened criminals do.
Some absolutely need the death penalty.


And absolutely YES , ALL prisoners should work a 40 week in prison until their release .
I'm not being mean, I'm being Scriptural and logical.
 

Nemophilist

Well-Known Member
I live in Brevard County, Florida and our Sheriff put together a chain gang for prisoners. It is strictly voluntary and usually cuts their sentence in 1/2 for prisoners that complete the program and their recitivism rate is low. They perform duties such as picking up trash on the side of the road, landscaping, or loading sandbags for hurricanes.

The Sheriff also has another program for prisoners called "Paws and Stripes" program where inmates work at the animal shelters. Carefully selected Inmates are paired with shelter animals and they train and teach them dog obedience. It is an honor to be chosen for this program and they learn valuable dog training skills along with dog grooming.

I think it is important for prisoners to be able to give back to the community in some way.
Our county jail has a program with rescue dogs similar to what you described. Certain prisoners are assigned a rescue dog which they spend many hours caring for and training. Then when the dog is healthy and trained, it is offered for adoption to the public. The program is called Jail Dogs and is pretty successful.
 

usoutpost31

Well-Known Member
The more we learn about the death penalty process the less confidence there is in the fairness of it. Almost 200 death row inmates have been exonerated since the 1970s.

Wielding the threat of the death penalty also gives prosecutors too much power. They've gotten people to confess to murders they never committed because they were told they'd get the death penalty otherwise. Witnesses have lied on the stand and implicated innocent people because they, too, were facing similar threats from the police.

We ought to look at some of these issues before we become more vigorous in its application.
 

Andiamo

"Let's go!"
When I was younger I saved up some money to take a course to learn how to be a ticket agent at the airport. I was incensed when I read a newspaper article that described how they were giving that exact same training to prisoners in my state at the time. (So they can get a job when they get out)
 
The more we learn about the death penalty process the less confidence there is in the fairness of it. Almost 200 death row inmates have been exonerated since the 1970s.

Wielding the threat of the death penalty also gives prosecutors too much power. They've gotten people to confess to murders they never committed because they were told they'd get the death penalty otherwise. Witnesses have lied on the stand and implicated innocent people because they, too, were facing similar threats from the police.

We ought to look at some of these issues before we become more vigorous in its application.
Canada does not have the death penalty.

So in 52 years of the death penalty in the US 1% of those convicted of the death penalty were determined to be not guilty? I would say that was reflective of a well functioning judicial system.

I spent 28 years working in law enforcement in the US. Our judicial system has a few flaws, all judicial systems operated by mankind do. I can honestly say 99% of those on death row are there by overwhelming evidence and they deserve to be where they are.

There is a large portion of the prison population that should be on death row and isn’t due to technicalities.
 

usoutpost31

Well-Known Member
So in 52 years of the death penalty in the US 1% of those convicted of the death penalty were determined to be not guilty? I would say that was reflective of a well functioning judicial system.
Determining a % is difficult because many false convictions never come to light. The number of death row prisoners who are resentenced to life in prison likely include a number of people who are innocent, but also lose access to resources that could prove their innocence.

The National Academy of Sciences estimated 1 in 25 of those on death row are innocent, which considering the finality of the death penalty is a disturbingly high number.
 
Determining a % is difficult because many false convictions never come to light. The number of death row prisoners who are resentenced to life in prison likely include a number of people who are innocent, but also lose access to resources that could prove their innocence.

The National Academy of Sciences estimated 1 in 25 of those on death row are innocent, which considering the finality of the death penalty is a disturbingly high number.
Have you ever been the victim of a violent crime? Have you ever rode with a police officer? Have you ever sat in a trial for a violent crime? Have you been a victim of a drug related crime?

99% are where they are supposed to be, Thank God there are people to keep the rule of law. End of my discussion. Have a good day.

The death penalty is a biblically justified penalty for certain crimes.
 
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