Is prison labor unethical?

I'm sure that's true for businesses that utilize slave labor. Which ones or those?

Read the article that boomerang cites.

I agree.

I read them both, and still am curious as to which businesses are using slave labor. Prisoners aren't slaves.

Their labor is tantamount to slave labor.

How so? They are paid wages for their labor that enables them to satisfy their debt to their victims. Without such wages they wouldn't be able to meet this obligation. In this way their labor serves both their victims and them.

The jobs they work at not only enable them to obtain skills that will help them obtain employment outside of prison, it provides them with the opportunity of experiencing the rewards of honest labor.

Would it be better that they sit idle in their cells or get into trouble in the prison yard?

By violating society's laws they have forfeited their freedom. That's the deal we all make with society. If the state has a right to incarcerate them and order their days, it has the right to include working a job as part of that order. As long as they receive remuneration for their labor it is not tantamount to slave labor.

they outsourced the management of a couple of kiddie jails to American companies

investigations are ongoing as things got pretty bad - which is saying a lot in the Cdn prison system

governments switched hands since the outsourcing - right now it doesn't look like more will go that way - the results have been less than satisfactory - more recidivism in the privately run facilities.

I'd never seen the Huff Post thing but the recidivism rates really caught my attention in the early reports on Penetanguishene.

Sorry but I'm more interested in evidence-based assessments than I am in your labels.

Then you shouldn't be looking to or linking clips of The Young Turks. By the way they are happy to label themselves whatever version of left-winger is popular right now. I think they prefer progressives.

Private enterprise, by no means, guarantees perfect or even effective operations, and the fact that there is so little competition in this area of the private sector is a reason why poor performance might be expected. This may, in fact, be a very good argument against the privatization of prisons.

The barriers for would-be competitors to enter this market are enormous, and no company is going to construct a prison facility without having some form of guarantee that they will get the government's business. Building the kind of relationships needed to obtain such guarantees is time consuming and expensive.

To the extent that private prisons do not operate properly or have results that are worse than public prisons (which is general a low bar to jump), public officials can be apportioned a fair share of the blame. The contracts between company and government should contain provisions that penalize the company financially if certain standards are not met. If they don't, whose fault is that, the company's?

Another good argument against private prisons, involving the size and scope of the endeavor, is that if effective incentives are not contained in the contracts and the company demonstrates no willingness or capability to improve, what course of action is available to the government? There is likely no array of competitors to jump in and take the place of a fired company, and unless the contract contains a provision that requires the company to sell its facilities to the government in the event of termination, it would be an impossible task for the government to come up with alternative facilities in anything like an acceptable period of time. Where the company is hired to manage a facility that is owned by the government, the problem is far less daunting but not one easily solved. Presumably part of the "savings" contemplated by hiring the company would come from a greatly reduced departmental bureaucracy, and that would need to be rebuilt.

So while I reject the notion that privatization of governmental functions is inherently a bad thing, if the elements that make the free market efficient and effective (competition being a big one) are not present, then it’s probably not a good idea for a government to go down that road. The question that needs to be answered though is why government officials find it so attractive. It could be nothing more than a desire to wipe their hands of a mess. It would be a lot easier to criticize private prisons if the government had been doing a great job before the companies got involved.

In regard to economics, businesses that employ regularly paid employees cannot compete with businesses that employ prison labor because it costs less to employ prison laborers. In one of the cited articles in boomerang's link, most of the wages these laborers earn are under minimum wage. It's not just businesses that are negatively impacted, however. In another instance reported in that article one farm corporation agreed to pay the prison laborers from a local prison in Washington state above the amount that they would have paid free laborers. In both instances most of those earnings go to the corporations that run the private prisons where the prison laborers come from or the state if the prisoners are from public prisons, which is good for the state and its communities civically, but not good for the businesses and free labor force that have to compete with prison labor. In that way, the economic effects are tantamount to those of slave labor.

I am moderately amused that you wish to provide advice as to what I should be looking to or linking clips of. Further kindly note that simply because I'm more interested in evidence-based assessments than I am in your labels does not mean I am unaware of your labels nor does it mean I take no interest in labels in general.

Also it would be a rather obvious logical fallacy on your part to presuppose that simply because you wish to label The Young Turks in a politically ideological manner, or that you claim that The Young Turks label themselves in a politically ideological manner that The Young Turks would then be exempt from evidence-based assessments and would thus only fall into the category of expounding on political ideologies.

As such, and as I have already responded in Post: # 5,700,569, "I'm sorry but I'm more interested in evidence-based assessments than I am in your labels".

If indeed you have evidence-based assessments to support whatever claims you wish to make specific to the topic at hand, that being the relative efficacy of prison privatization versus the alternatives, then by all means please do so.

I think arguing about "jobs being taken away" is an oxymoron. If I remember correctly, prisoners in California produce our license plates, and they're sold by the state to car buyers.

It's like so many argue about jobs being taken away by immigrants, but none have offered to work at all the restaurants and farms in this country to do the hard work required for low wages.

How any one succeeds economically is to put in the time and effort to get the right kind of education and hard work that will result in the kind of lifestyle one wishes to pursue.

Nobody takes away jobs. It's about efficiency, economics, and profits. That's the reality of life no matter where one lives.

Evidence based anything is anathema to Finn.

I've often found it an unsurprising but still disappointing truth that many people are heavily invested in beliefs that lack empirical research based on the scientific method.

That is so so true, Chumly. And so so sad.

I agree it is all about efficiency--ironically, one of the articles mentions an instance in which prison labor was less efficient than free labor in regard to apple harvesting--economics and profits. I didn't say jobs were being taken away, though.

The point I'm making is that prison labor negatively affects businesses that have to compete with those that employ prison labor and the free labor force that has to compete with prison labor. The economic effects are similar to that of slave labor.

Your mention of "apple harvesting" doesn't prove any point concerning economics.

As for 'free labor,' my wife volunteers at the hospital, her church, and the public library - all for free. She does what they require of her, and I'm sure some days at work are busier than others. In the long term, those places where she 'works for free' gets an economic benefit. So, what's your point?

Ummmm, maybe that a library, church and hospital aren't much in competition with Joe Blow businesses.