I was relieved — it was made in Green Bay, Wisconsin, not by slave labor from MINNCOR, the Minnesota Department of Corrections. It seems that $700,000 worth of dorm and office furniture for the University of Minnesota is purchased from MINNCOR, but the money is not going to the inmates/workers.
While most inmates languish making less than $1 an hour, public records indicate that Minnesota Department of Corrections executives, including those at MINNCOR, made over $100,000 per year in fiscal year 2015-16. MINNCOR CEO David Milton made $58 an hour, approximately $120,000 per year starting in February 2016. Despite numerous lengthy, in-person conversations Milton declined to speak on the record for this article. Milton and his executive team lease inmate labor to private companies, government entities and nonprofits and manage the prison canteen system – the internal grocery and convenience store for inmates. MINNCOR’s overall sales revenue has expanded to $44 million for 2015 alone, with profits going to the DOC general fund and MINNCOR’s budget.
They’re paid a pittance, and the only place they have to spend that pittance is the company store.
That same year, the state’s disparate canteen systems were consolidated under MINNCOR. 2003 was also the first time that MINNCOR was profitable. Annual profits for 2003 totaled $100,000, jumping to $2.5 million in 2004. Writing in the Stillwater’s prison-produced and award-winning newspaper, Prison Mirror, investigative journalist and inmate Matt Gretz explained that when MINNCOR consolidated the canteen the expectation from inmates was that bulk purchases would cause prices to go down. Instead, canteen prices increased.
Centralization allowed the state to dip more easily into MINNCOR profits as budget cuts abound – putting more pressure on MINNCOR to generate profits. According to annual reports in 2008, canteen sales were 18 percent of MINNCOR’s revenue. By 2014 canteen sales amounted to $10.9 million, almost 25 percent of overall sales revenue for MINNCOR. This means that the single largest portion of money that MINNCOR earns comes from taxing the low wages that the organization pays inmates. After MINNCOR deducts up to 80 percent of an inmate worker’s pay for everything from the cost of confinement to victim restitution and medical co-pays, the little that is left of an inmate’s paycheck often goes to the canteen.
Like I said…slaves.
I wouldn’t boycott MINNCOR, though, since we shouldn’t punish the inmates, but I would think it only fair to arrest and imprison MINNCOR executives for corruption, and put them to work making chairs. I’d buy those.
“Victim restitution,” from prisoner salaries. I’m 55 and this may be the first time I’ve heard of such a thing. Are there people that were mugged, burgled, injured, who get checks awarded from prisoners? Is that a thing?
Or is it some tacked-on fee for prisoner slave labor that goes almost exclusively to lawyers, with the tiny remainder donated to defense funds, or something?
Running a large government department on $120k a year seems reasonable to me.
Running a corrections department for profit is unconscionable. The US is incredibly messed up.
Inmates pay taxes (income on prison income and any outside income they might be making, sales tax on things they buy in prison, etc)…what about the idea of taxation without representation? Minnesota has one of the lowest per capita prison population, but we have a high probation rate, which is an industry in itself (in Minnesota you can’t vote if you are on probation). If people in prison and on probation could vote that might change a few things. Although when people call during election season trying to get my vote I won’t be able to blow them off as quickly by saying “I can’t vote…I’m on probation.” …then I might have to say that I actually live in Wisconsin.
I don’t really understand what gives you that idea…. CEO of MINNCOR sounds “important” or something, like it ought to come with a big wig, perhaps a few extra smiles and handshakes now and then, and of course admittance into the good old boys’ network?
But never mind all of that stuff for a minute — there are lots of people who do important things (actually, genuinely, undoubtedly important things) who don’t make tons of money, and this happens to be about money. What does a person in such a position actually do, in order to warrant making an amount like that? Why exactly should they be paid more than a cook at McDonald’s? From there, we can gradually work our way up to $120k a year and all of the other occupations that this particular one outranks, but that’s at least a place to start.
And if it’s so damned important, why not as much as an NFL player or an actor in an action movie? Why do they make so much fucking money? Is there any particular sort of thought process that we should be going through, when deciding a reasonable amount that people ought to make, for doing this or that or the other thing? Or is there not? I don’t know…. I suspect this kind of sentiment is just an elliptical way for people to express politely that they don’t care and want to talk about something else, not that they can think of a good reason and thus it seems reasonable.
You mean “labor camp,” which is not what a corrections department is. Indeed, doing that for fun, or for any other reason besides making profit, is also unconscionable.
I don’t think prisons should be run for profit. I do think people who have hurt others (which is how many people end up in prison in the first place) should work to compensate their victims. And since I have to work for a living, I’m not sure why someone convicted of a violent felony shouldn’t have to. But only under a system in which their earnings really do benefit their victims and not big corporations.
So how about this: John Q Felon is convicted of a violent crime. During the day, he goes to work at a useful trade (making chairs sounds fine to me) and is paid the same as what a chairmaker at a factory who isn’t a prisoner would be paid. Of his salary, 20% goes to taxes, 40% to victim restitution, 20% to pay for his room and board, and 20% into a fund so he’ll have a financial cushion when he gets out of prison. That makes far more sense to me than the current system.
Personally, I’d like to see a mandatory minimum wage system, where criminals are still entitled to their minimum wage minus the expenses to keep them contained/alive and the restitution to the victim.
Couple that with a non-profit prison system and a focus on rehabilitation and safety rather than retribution and “fuck it lets let the criminals rape and kill each other to death” as a feature, and I think you’re getting pretty damn ideal given the imperfect medium we’re working with.
True, but you missed something. At $1/hr, we’re talking some $40/wk tops. That’s actually not enough: many necessities must be bought from the commissary, not just snackies and luxuries. Phone calls also come out of the commissary account. And the commissary and phone prices are excessively marked up: local calls run as high as $0.25/min or more in some of these places, and long-distance may be $0.50-1.00/min. So two minutes on the phone to home eats one hour’s pay.
On top of that there are other costs, which are paid for with commissary goods. When inmates clean your rooms, or cut your hair, or wash your clothes, they expect a tip. If you don’t tip them (with postage stamps, tuna, or cans of mackerel), you start getting very clumsy in the bathrooms and stairways. The ones who work in the kitchen generally steal vegetables and sell them back to you, so if you don’t want a salad of nothing but iceberg lettuce, you need to pay separately for onion, tomato, and whatever else, at about one mac each. (A can of mackerel costs $1, so that’s an hour’s pay per food item.)
In order to survive, these people need regular deposits into their commissary account from outside. Most of that money also falls straight to the bottom line thanks to the markup.
Your constitution is very explicit about only banning slavery outside of prison.
thirdmill
Forced labour is forced labour.
This is NOT an approach to justice that has healing and rehabilitation as a goal. It is also completely useless for many things (how much is your bleeding nose worth?).
Giliell, at some level, all labor is forced labor. Nobody holds a gun to my head and forces me to go to work every day, but if I stop, I’ll run out of money, my house will be foreclosed upon, and I won’t be able to buy groceries. There are a great many things I do that I would not do if I were independently wealthy, and going to work is one of them. Even under pure socialism, there would still be jobs that needed to be done or the system would collapse.
And maybe rehabilitation includes taking responsibility for one’s actions. I don’t know how much a bleeding nose is worth, but I do know that children who have to clean up the messes that they make, tend to learn earlier in life not to make messes. It doesn’t always work that way, but it’s more likely.
Bit of a false equivalency between “Labor is literally necessary for things to get made” and “It’s alright to force people to work for access to necessities that could be procured without their labor”.
Which, by the way, is kind of one of the main thrusts of socialism, so arm shrugging and going “Eh our current system holds necessities behind a paywall, so therefore it’s morally acceptable to treat prisoners as Pullman slaves” is a pretty bad argument.
Porivil, necessities cannot be procured without *somebody’s* labor. And the Pullman slaves hadn’t committed crimes and therefore didn’t have victims to be making restitution to. And in this context, requiring people to make restitution to their victims is therapeutic in that it teaches people that if they make a mess, it’s their responsibility to clean it up.
@11
Right, and we can procure a lot of necessities with very few people’s labor, and distribute those necessities without requiring individual payments.
Slavery is a moral wrong regardless of who you enslave. If you think otherwise, your objection is that the wrong people were enslaved, not that slavery is something bad in and of itself.
The victims can be restituted by pulling money from a mandatory minimum wage, no slavery required.
Just because something can be rehabilitative (which I very much doubt in this case) doesn’t make it morally acceptable or particularly effective compared to other means.
Do prisoners officially get compensated for their labor, or is it framed as “unpaid work” and “pocket money”? How about prisoners who refuse to work, or who study instead of working? How about those who are too sick or misbehaved to be worth dragging into the workroom?
I recall there was some US case where a woman studied writing in prison, then published her assignment works quite profitably after release. The prison then successfully sued for that money. This would seem to imply some legal principle that the prisoners’ compensation is not related to the value of whatever they produce; instead they’re compensated (or not) for just spending time on something that’s hopefully either productive or rehabilitating. (This is the case in my country)
thirdmill
Therefore what?
Right, and therefore literally holding a gun to an inmate’S head is not a big difference.
Wait, what?
Did you just compare adult people who (presumably, we all know how the US system locks up black men for less than nothing) committed a crime with children who still have to learn the annoying cause and effect thing?
Also, we know that locking people in prisons doesn’t stop them from committing crimes because you haven’t changed shit about the reasons why they committed crimes, so why do you think that “making them clean up their mess” is working?
Porivil, I doubt very much that you consistently hold the position that all forced labor is slavery and is always wrong under all circumstances. Should fathers be required to pay child support? A lot of them certainly think that’s slavery. Should wealthy people who came by their wealth honestly (and there are a few) have to pay taxes? Some people would claim that’s slavery too. How about if the person whose nose I bloodied files a civil lawsuit against me and a jury orders me to pay damages; can civil courts enforce their judgments by compelling payment? The fact is, there is a whole host of circumstances under which people are required to contribute whether they want to or not. So you’re going to have to come up with a principled explanation for how child support and taxation and civil judgments are exceptions to your rule that forced labor is slavery and is always wrong. Or why people who haven’t committed crimes have to work for a living whereas criminals do not.
And I think there’s a fairly bright line distinction between those who are required to make restitution because they committed crimes and the rest of us. It’s one thing to round up a bunch of people in Africa who were minding their own business, transporting them to North America, and telling them they are now slaves. It’s another thing entirely to tell someone, You did this damage, you pay for it. I don’t see how you can compare the two.
@15
Believe what you will, I suppose.
In the current system, yes. Ideally, there would be no need to, because the necessities and costs associated with child care would be covered by the state.
I also disagree with their assessment of what constitutes slavery.
I deny that there is such thing as an ethical wealthy person, and I also disagree with their assessment of what constitutes slavery.
In the current system? I’m not a legal scholar, but sure, that sounds like something they’d allow.
Ideally? Nope. The medical and psychological help required for the victim could be covered by the state.
Indeed, and I disagree that “people have to give a portion of their money” is the sole necessary condition of slavery.
See above.
I don’t think anyone should have to work to afford (note the choice of words here) necessities, criminal or otherwise.
Forced labor on pain of death is forced labor on pain of death, regardless of who you’re whipping.
And I disagree with you that requiring prisoners to work to make restitution to their victims is slavery. I also disagree that it’s the state’s obligation to clean up messes made by individuals if the individual is able to do it themselves. So I guess we just disagree.
@17
I suppose so.
Not amicably, mind you – I think that you’re a slavery defending asshole, and will do anything in my power to oppose “rehabilitative slavery” like what you propose.
That said, you’re free to think what you’d like till the cows come home.
PS, one of the main functions of a state is to promote the wellbeing of its citizens so, well, yes, “cleaning up messes” is one of its obligations.
Hold on — this bullshit is supposed to be about child support, among other things perhaps? A child is a mess to be cleaned up? And one particular person ought to do this job of “cleaning the mess” (whatever that means, and assuming they’re capable), while the society that child lives in has no responsibilities toward them? If we don’t have responsibilities toward each other, whether or not you and I happen to be the ones who made a mess of some sort, then you don’t have a legitimate state at all, because that’s simply why there are states and what they do for the people who create them. Take your pick, but you’d end up with anarchy, or perhaps a dictatorship if someone manages to call their criminal enterprise a “state.” But if you’re taking that line, then at best this “state” has nothing worthwhile to do for people anymore, which means (if one is still around at all) it will be up to some manner of non-worthwhile things that said people don’t want.
But CR, there’s nothing wrong with repeating Ancap talking points in defense of literal slavery! What’s the state ever done for me huh?
-goes skidding off an unkept roads that no private citizen fixed into a car crash I’ll have to pay for out of pocket where I’ll die from drinking water that hasnt been ran through a purification plant powered by a municipal power grid-
CR, I did not say a child was a mess to be cleaned up; I used child support as an example of a situation in which people can be forced to pay for stuff they don’t want to pay for. The messes I’m referring to are those left by criminals. So please don’t put words in my mouth.
Porivil, the problem with you saying I’m defending slavery is the same as the problem with a pro-lifer who says that abortion is murdering babies: You’ve adopted a definition that supports the conclusion you want, but which people on the other side don’t accept as a legitimate definition. And since we’re being candid with one another, I think the extremist position you’ve taken helps elect Republicans. The vast majority of moderate voters do not see a restitution requirement as being slavery, in fact they’re offended at the comparison, and they say to themselves, “Oh, the left is completely nuts, I’m voting Republican.” Which is not the same as saying that you, personally, are responsible for Trump; just that those kinds of extremist positions make it harder and harder to persuade moderate voters to vote progressive.
@22
I’m not interested in winning over regressives and conservatives, and I’m not willing to cosign people to “rehabilitative slavery” for temporary political gain.
The fact that there are multiple successful and well off real life states that don’t have such a system should tell you all you need to know about such a barbaric idea.
consciousness razor@4:
Then fight for wage increases across the economy. $120k is an upper-middle-class salary. Lots of people should be making that much. Running the women’s shelter should pay that much as well.
The hyper-rich get the masses annoyed at the engineers and the middle managers to distract from who’s robbing who.
There are multiple successful states that don’t have a great many things — different states have different ideas about what is and is not good policy — but you’re back to assuming everyone agrees with your subjective definitions of barbaric and slavery. You’re entitled to your opinion about such definitions, but don’t try passing them off as objective truth because they are just your opinions.
You are also entitled to your opinion about voters who don’t share your definitions, but they are necessary to winning elections. If you’re happy being in the political wilderness, then I’m happy for you.
Gee, without any reference to states or links to actual empirical reference, why is anything you have said not just your opinion?
Show honesty and integrity? What separates opinion from fact? Third party empirical evidence…..Links help your case.
@25
Right, and in this case, the states that don’t have state-supported slave labor as a part of their system are objectively more moral than those that do on the matter.
Retreating into linguistic nihilism is a nice way to obfuscate your terrible position.
Forced prison labor fits the common definition of slave labor (“Labor that is coerced and inadequately rewarded, or the people who perform such labor.”) as well as the common definition of barbarism (“extreme cruelty”).
So, y’know. Yeah. It’s barbaric slavery.
“Slavery is okay” is not a particularly moderate belief by any reasonably definition of the political axes. If you’d like to assert otherwise, give me some tasty data on this supposed mass support for slavery.
I’d be welling to bed that demographic-wise you’re taking pages out of the politically irrelevant 4chan pepekek playbook on this one and massively overestimating the amount of people who share your ridiculous, barbaric beliefs.
In California prisoners (men and women) make up a fairly hefty percentage of those on the fire lines at up to $2/day plus $1/hour when actually on the fire lines (when not on the fire lines they are usually doing conservation work like maintaining trails). I’m not sure their families get compensated if they are killed when fighting a fire (rare but not unknown). However they also get accelerated time off for good behavior (2 days off for each day of good behavior instead of 1 day off) and the food is relatively better (or at least more).
BTW when the article says less than $1/hour this can be a lot less. In California this can be as low as 8 cents/hour (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/incarcerated-women-risk-their-lives-fighting-california-fires-its-part-of-a-long-history-of-prison-labor)
Nerd, with respect to what states do and don’t do, I don’t need to cite links because my argument is “Even if Porivil’s argument is true (which I’m not conceding), so what?” I’m essentially asking P to show how P’s original statement is relevant to the discussion.
P, since you’re just repeating your opinion that it’s barbaric, at this point I’m tempted to say that the law of diminishing returns has kicked in and I’m now going on to other things. You are entitled to your opinion that it’s barbaric, but it carries no more weight than someone else’s contrary opinion that allowing criminals to hurt someone without having to make restitution is barbaric. If someone doesn’t want to have to make restitution to victims, they shouldn’t create victims in the first place.
Making restitutions through slave labor is what is barbaric, you fuckwit. I already proposed a way of restituting the victim that didn’t involve enslaving criminals.
It’s not slave labor if the person volunteered for it by committing a crime. It’s analogous to “you break it, you buy it.” By committing the crime, the person assumed responsibility for any consequences. The criminal chose to create the victim by committing the crime. Why should the state be responsible for the misdeeds of individuals who are able to take financial responsibility themselves?
Suppose someone breaks into my house, steals my coin collection, and sells it to buy drugs. Are you seriously suggesting the state should write me a check for the value of what was stolen, without seeking reimbursement from the guy who did it?
Like I said, at this point we’re just going round and round because we have completely different premises. Go ahead and have the last word. You think I’m an asshole, I think you’re out of your mind, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
thirdmill @31:
Criminals don’t commit crimes thinking they’ll go to jail for them, so they aren’t for anything.
@31
No, I think he should have to pay out of pocket for it, and have his wages garnished at a livable rate. You don’t have the right to a speedy repayment or to enslave criminals.
Also lol, I’m not agreeing to disagree for shit. Implicit consent to being inslaved is bullshit and you position is objectively immoral. There’s no weaseling your way out of it, and claiming that slavery is okay when it happens to bad people doesn’t carry a single bit of weight.
I’d be willing to bet you don’t apply “you break it, you bought it” to other social issues (accidental pregnancy, the war on drugs, sexual harassment).
But hey, why not? If you choose to wear sexy clothes, you obviously volunteer for catcalls and traincar groping, right?
It’s literally in the effin 13th amendment on which that system is based.
Don’t bother Giliell, he’s already retreated by linguistic nihilism. Despite it clearly fitting every common definition of slave labor, he’ll just go “Neener neener words dont have inherent meanings and I disagree.”
Also note the continued inability to support the claim that support for prison slave labor is common or politically moderate.
Giliell, the 13th Amendment explicitly makes an exception for people convicted of crime:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
As to whether a criminal volunteers by committing a crime, I would support making it clear by passing a law that says anyone who commits a crime shall be deemed to have agreed to forced labor to compensate the victim.
Note the continued inability to explain why slavery is moral when applied to prisoners.
Protip, you can’t cite the 13th ammendment in response to this matter and then claim forced prison labor isnt slavery.
There’s no inability; it’s just that I’ve already given my explanation, you don’t find my explanation persuasive, so I’m not going to repeat myself. I find it immoral that someone can steal from someone else and *not* have to pay it back, and your earlier suggestion that we garnish wages only applies to the small percentage of criminals that have jobs.
And words do have inherent meaning, just not the meaning you’ve assigned this particular word. Think of it this way: Normally, knocking someone out with a drug and then cutting them open is aggravated battery, but when a surgeon does it, it’s not defined as battery. Normally, throwing a rock through someone else’s window and then entering the house is breaking and entering, but if a firefighter does it to save a child from a burning house, in that case, it’s also not defined as breaking and entering. Sometimes definitions are situational. And in this case, requiring criminals to make restitution to their victims *is not defined* as slavery, even though under normal conditions making someone work for no or low pay is. Restitution is a special circumstance, just as saving burning children and performing surgery are special circumstances, that create an exception to the general rule. And candidly, I think your attempt to stretch the definition of slavery to include mandatory restitution is just as laughable as an attempt to prosecute a firefighter for saving a child would be. On this issue, your position is just nuts. Continue to think I’m an asshole if it makes you feel better.
@40
Your explanation did not justify slavery as being moral. Hence, inability to justify slavery. GG.
Christ, you’re thick. It applies to everyone in a system with a mandatory minimum wage, which was part of my proposal.
The entire field of linguistics disagrees with you. Words have usages, but those usages aren’t inherent. Words are just strings of letters and sounds we use to queue up an idea. There is no law like connection between those sounds/letters and the ideas they represent.
It is when a surgeon does it without the patient’s consent, or the consent of an appointed other person. We call those people serial killers.
No you’re actually plainly wrong here, the definition of breaking and entering necessarily includes an intent to commit burglary.
Not in these cases.
Unlike your other examples, forced prison labor actually fits the definition of slave labor.
So like, false analogy, idiot.
I have no problem with mandatory restitution, as long as you don’t procure the money through slave labor. There are ways to make money for restitution without turning prisoners into slaves. You’re going out of your way to choose the unjustifiably immoral means to make that money.
Believe me, it brings me no joy to know someone as idiotic as you is allowed access to a computer.
P, in your comment no. 36, you accused me of linguistic nihilism because you claimed I don’t believe words have inherent meanings. Now, when I say words do have inherent meanings, your latest comment takes me to task for that. Which is it?
And that’s why I’m now bowing out of this discussion for good. Not only is your argument stupid, but you seem incapable of following someone else’s argument, and you think that your subjective definition of morality is somehow objective and cast in stone. Have a nice day.
And one last thing: Criminals who don’t want to work to pay victims can very easily avoid having to do so by not committing crimes, in which case no victims will be created. It would be nice if you were as concerned about the victim of a crime as you are about ensuring that the person who made the victim doesn’t have to pay for it.