This is btw also common practice in Germany and France. Prisoners who want access to sports, more than 1 shower a week, a TV/radio, etc ... are only able to do so when taking part in prison work.
Edit: And whether one is allowed to work, and how soon, also depends on whether one gets along with the guards. Work also decides if one can afford to fuel a nicotine or caffeine addiction - if not you have to go beg the Russians, Albanians or whoever runs that racket etc to add it to your tab that you can later pay off with interest ...
Edit-2: what most don't seem to grasp is that a large percentage point of those inside are usually on the streets in cold countries and rather get locked up than freeze to death. Another sizable percentage are refugees escaping conflict zones and that fell through the cracks of a system that should have given them ptsd treatment. Not everyone inside is there because they deserve doing time.
However if prisoners would like to be part of voluntary labor units that do outdoor work like tree plants, reservoir digs, and other public good/infrastructure building that would be useful and not competitive to private firms.
I’m not sure i care at all about “prison jobs” that require them to clean dishes, prepare their own food, or wash their own clothes. That is a boohoo complaint to me.
Good luck with that. Legal slavery is literally codified into our bill of rights.
Of course, the fifth amendment can be construed to take away any right as long as there's due process (which is why the state can take away 2nd amendment rights from felons)
"...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..."
I guess the fact that it hasn’t been amended shows everyone how expendable they truly are.
However, in my opinion the conditions in American prisons are awful to bordering inhumane. America's penal system is grossly underfunded rendering most rehabilitation efforts meaningless. When the system is properly funded and managed I think labor will see a very meaningful component of that.
If forced labor is just part of the sentence, we can still argue over whether that is unjust punishment or not just like we do with the death penalty. But otherwise that's just how it is. Whereas "paying" inmates tens of cents an hour (3% of minimum wage) is a slap in the face from pretending it's some kind of voluntary transaction.
From a pure problem-solving standpoint, we could and probably should raise that rate by a few dollars to be put in a trust disbursed upon release to give inmates a better chance at landing some accommodation and runway to find a proper job, such that “sell drugs” doesn’t become an immediate obvious option.
Generously, the poor rate of pay seems almost the same situation as the lagging minimum wage rate. It may have once been enough (a long long time ago.) I recall reading Alcatraz inmate autobiographies as a child and recall them leaving a 10 year bank robbery sentence with enough money to find an apartment and a down payment on transportation.
Perhaps a better implementation would be $0.25 per hour goes into a canteen fund for goodies and another $4.25 per hour goes into your release trust fund? Still below minimum wage to appease any notion of inmates getting one over on hard work at the bottom rung but a rate that would possible give a chance for a successful restart.
Of course given fair wages, there would be outcry from the unincarcerated as to why they can't do those jobs for the state.
The goal of the prison system should be rehabilitation. Punishment doesn’t mean anything if you’ve got nothing waiting for you on the outside.
But that wasn’t your point in 1 or the rest so I’m pretty sure you think other way around, no?
Perhaps the market is behaving irrationally by not valuing convicted felons appropriately. The places that seem to be successful look like they usually make hiring criminals part of their brand like Dave's Killer Bread.
Why does the government continue to punish someone after they’ve served their sentence allowing employers to pry into their background?
There is another more meta aspect to it when considering a facility location. Many times the facility is a small town and then becomes the biggest local employer. Not just for guards but also lawyers, state attorneys, social-workers, judges etc. If that facility closes down it means these people would have to relocate. This is very hard to decouple and untangle.
Societies laws are not particularly difficult to follow even if you disagree with them, if someone I work has chosen not to follow those laws to a degree that they have been imprisoned by a jury of their peer's I think it is as relevant as their previous roles + educational attainment.
I'm reminded of this video: https://youtu.be/cX-r5ulpoQQ