Holman prison officers stage fresh strike as violent conditions worsen

Northern Light said:

Problem is that so many prisons are privately run now that inmates are basically slaves to corporations. Their labors are not exactly paying back the government or the general public. And in some states there is so much overcrowding in prisons that some states are releasing prisoners, like what California had to do. So let's be real, inmate forced labor is not about their rehabilitation it's about corporate profits. If prisons were still largely state owned I might have a different view of it.

I support the strikes 100%. Surely some inmates are going to get violent over it but most aren't. In most states it's a hunger strike. It's already attracting international attention and once prisoners start to drop like flies there will be an outcry.

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Right and to me this only proves that even before for-profit prisons, 'justice' in america was by and large not about justice at all. It was not about deterrence or rehab either. Something has to be ****ed before it can become even more ****ed. Here we sit with corporate pigs trying to bribe judges and politicians to ruin lives, but it is just built on top of very common problems - innocent (or guilty of victimless crime) people taking plea deals to avoid much greater sentences, utter disregard for civil liberty as compared to corporate interests, appointed lawyers who fall asleep, laws way too broadly defined and too slowly altered as technology changes (ex: teenagers being charged as 'sex offenders' for taking a nude pic of themselves)

Common Sense 1 said:

Why do they have a lack of choice? because they were sentenced to prison for some type of criminal activity. It's got nothing to do with slavery.

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the 13th amendment even says that slavery is outlawed "except as punishment for crimes committed" so i guess take it up with Lincoln et al. You act like this is some new concept. And obviously the definition of 'criminal activity' is whatever the politicians decide after being lobbied by for-profit prisons. This is where Arizona's "show me your papers" law for Hispanics came from, but to you it's just another criminal activity and they should be thrown into a cage and shackled as they pick cotton all day and that is not slavery at all, no

This has garnered the most attention since the uprising in Attica (which started with a strike in a shop there). If prison labor had anything to do with rehabilitation they would gladly do the work. Instead they go on hunger strike and slit their achilles

It's so obvious this isn't about justice or rehab. It's about enriching corporate assholes, very clearly. You just hate prisoners and dismiss them as evil so you can't see that. Prison labor was illegal for quite a long time, as unions knew it would take the jobs of Americans who were not in prison (duh). Then lobbyists started to pressure congress, and around 1970 congress even created additional incentives for businesses to use already cheap prison labor instead of hire more qualified, honest, and reliable free workers

Currently this forced labor generates sales of $480 million a year and you're gonna sit there and say there's no place for corruption, it's simply justice at work