It opens the way for exploitation and insinuates that all crimes are equal.
its not like they get longer sentences. and idc if a prisoner is exploited to pay back their debt to society
The problem is that it incentivizes the government to imprison more people and that it punishes all criminals equally when crime and punishment is anything but.
not necessarily. do you think they are currently punished the same? even if we implement forced labor, there are still these differences:
1) security level/comfort of the prison (i.e. low security, max security) 2) sentence length 3) the work itself they would be doing. i.e. a thief could do data entry, while a rapist would be doing manual labor or something
at the moment, private for-profit prisons are far more incentivized to receive prisoners than the government ever would be
Fair enough, but I still think it's a poor choice. Firstly, it creates some legal problems. Let's say someone is doing hard labor in a slave prison and breaks their back; who is going to pay for their care the rest of their life? Hell, even data entry has risks.
I already don't agree with private-for-profit prisons, but you still didn't address the fact that the slave-labour system would encourage the government to convict more people instead of protecting their rights.
All in all, though, people aren't property and I find it morally objectionable to build any sytem on the premise that they are.
those are things we already have to consider. although unlikely, a prisoner could trip while getting out of bed after being woken up by a guard, and hit their head and get brain damage or die or something. so long as the proper OHS procedures are implemented, manual labor would be safe enough for a prisoner.
the government isnt a business. corruption is another argument altogether and shouldnt be a factor here. ---
