I mean I’d rather they were getting free education and preparing themselves for reintegration into society, but it’s not a perfect world. Prisons in the US are oriented towards punishment and labor can be a part of that. They should be oriented towards rehabilitation.
> I mean I’d rather they were...
> They should be oriented towards rehabilitation.
You said it yourself. It's a bad thing because they should be oriented towards rehabilitation.
These systems steal life and the opportunity to have a life beyond prison walls. Like you also said yourself, the world isn't perfect. As such, people aren't either – we make mistakes. Sometimes we make mistakes due to influences more powerful than ourselves. Slavery doesn't seem like a sound correction to this reality.
I do believe we need consequences to help us feel guilt and the overall gravity of our errors in order to begin to recognize what went wrong and what we need to do differently. But exploitation of another human being doesn't teach them to be more human, but rather, it will tend to dehumanize them. This is why this system perpetuates problems more than it corrects them.
Slavery is bad and people have rights.
> They should be oriented towards rehabilitation.
Exactly.
This is both extremely dehumanizing and also not true.
Forced prison work isn't paying anything back to society. It's lining the pockets of people who are profiting from forced labor.
I imagine the underpaid labor goes to reducing that cost either directly or indirectly (if it did not, why would it be allowed.)
