I don't know enough about the US system to comment on that.
However in Germany a large part of prison work is around qualification. The inmates can learn a job and once released have a useable qualification for finding a job. Most prisons in that way are self supporting. Meaning food is made by inmates who are cooks or are learning to be a chef. Repairs for heating or doors or furniture are made by inmates etc. Only a small part of the work is for external customers and even a smaller part is for the prison's online Shop like https://www.haftsache.de/
And yes salaries are low, but they get free food and accomodation and aren't there for fun but punishment ...
One common US prison job is seasonal firefighter, for forest fire season in California. The irony is that as soon as prisoners are released, being convicted felons, they can never work as firefighters. US prison labor is about money while incarcerated, never about life after release.
>Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill allowing inmate firefighters to have their records expunged, clearing the path for them to be eligible for firefighting jobs upon release.
There are a couple reasons not to treat the problem as solved:
First,
> Law enforcement groups and prosecutors opposed the bill saying the former inmates pose a danger to the public.
The culture that creates these restrictions is still there, it's still the predominant view from law enforcement and prosecutors that prison labor should be punitive, not rehabilitative. None of the people who created and supported that system are gone, and they still have an outsized degree of control over how that system works.
Second,
> The bill, sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, lets prisoners who received "valuable training and [placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters to defend the life and property of Californians" to petition the courts to dismiss their convictions after completing their sentences.
A right to petition is not a guarantee that your petition will succeed.
Third,
When you dig into the details, the bill only allows removing the specific convictions that the prisoner was serving time for while they were a firefighter. If they had previous convictions or served time in the past, they'll still be restricted from getting EMT certification.
Fourth,
When you dig into the details, this bill actually doesn't get rid of restrictions on felons. It provides prisoners with a very narrow path to remove their felon status. That's not really the same thing as getting rid of the restrictions, and it's only available to prisoners who have "[placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters".
Think of it this way: if it's illegal for women to vote, and instead of letting women vote I instead say, "here's a pathway to get the courts to declare you a man", then I haven't really gotten rid of the restriction on voting, and it would be inaccurate to say that my system provided women with the right to vote.
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It's good that prisoners have at least some recourse that they can use to try and benefit from the life threatening work they did in prison, but it's a far cry from solving the overall problem, and it arguably doesn't even fully solve this specific problem.
The vast majority of these programs are complete garbage. Yeah, it helps a few people, but they tend to come with tons of catches. Almost all crimes should be expungable, or it should be illegal to use the information for jobs/housing (may be trickier, which is why states are going with expungement). There's obvious exceptions, but there's no reason for someone to get denied a desk job, service job, trade/manual labor, due to getting caught with coke or DUIs... I don't care if they have five of them. Sometime within 1-10 years this information should not be used.
I'm currently going through the process of trying to get my own record expunged, the entire thing is a complete joke.
The amount of forms that need to be filled out is obscene. Determining which forms need to be filled out is a nightmarish exercise all to its own. Many of them need to be submitted in person. Email and online submission forms apparently don't exist. Each step has an absurdly short deadline for the the petitioner, and multiple month turnaround times for the state.
Then comes the fees. I had to pay out several thousand between attorney fees, application fees, filing fees.... Then come additional charges for each certified copy that you need, as you need to send one copy to any facility that would have any record for you. In my case, that came out to be 13 different facilities. Thankfully I've managed to get a decently paying job, but for most of those trying to get their life back in order, this is a complete non-starter.
I'm still in the process of trying to do this, and have been working on it for months now. It was made apparent to me that the process is designed extremely asymmetrically, and is just another form of exerting control.
Edit: This process will likely vary from state to state, but that's just what I've experienced.
Yeah, I don't want to say what state I'm in, but recent attempts to reform have been stymied by the fucking democrats. Politicians are utterly gutless to do anything remotely progressive (and the thing that was shut down was NOT very progressive)
It's just an acknowledgment of the fact that the system has zero trust in itself. The prison is supposed to produce a functioning member of society. Instead, it can swallow a minor offender and spit out a dangerous criminal.
The US prison system is not designed to reform anyone. Its goal is purely punitive.
The financial incentives are set up to produce as many dangerous criminals as possible. Without repeat offenders, many private prisons would have to close.
The solution is simple: The US should actually ban slavery and should also ban private prisons.
It should replace private prisons with ones that are rewarded when their former prisoners become productive members of society.
There should also be a cap on the ratio of prison spending to education, mental health, and community service programs.
For what it's worth, In my understanding the prisons themselves aren't necessarily private. At the federal level, most are not, but everything is run by for-profit contracting firms.
Private prisons incarcerate 8% of the total US prison population. I strongly suspect if they were banned, little would change for the average inmate.
The rest of the inmates are in prisons that are state-owned and thus inherently nonprofit, and the guards & other staff are either state or federal workers. Contractors do things like provide commissary goods or run the inmate telephone system, but the guard in the tower at your local prison is a state employee.
Hey, so IMO private prisons are a distraction and tiny part of the problem. The prison industrial complex is more substantial (but still just a piece). It's not just the prisons, but the contractors and LEO/justice personnel involved in putting bodies into the system and making sure as many lives are ruined as possible.
This is ignoring the not-so-historical use of prisons as a way to disenfranchise ones political rivals be they black, communist, socialist, antiwar, or whatever.
Not sure what you’re getting at here. An uncharitable reading would be that you’re implying that Normway keeps political dissidents prisoner, but I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to claim something so absurd.
Ys. The use of the courts and prisons as tools to quell dissent and maintain power for a minority prohibits efforts to reform prisons. To effect meaningful prison reform we must address the use of courts as weapons to silence political rivals. We should also be taking a hard look at selective enforcement, and lack of law enforcement action against criminal acts perpetrated by wealthy people. Steps like drug decriminalization, free career training/college programs for everyone, and quality rehabilitation are necessary to these ends but do nothing to right the generational injustices afflicted on the families caught up in the prison system.
Because its a risky job with a high esprit-de-corp. Similar to allowing criminals to be soldiers, think of the damage it does to the esteem of folks already in that position to be told "you are in the same class as these dregs".
Why would your morale drop if you would work with someone who spent some time in prison 5 or 10 years ago? I don't see why it should.
And why are they "dregs"? The entire attitude towards crime and punishment in the US is seriously FUBAR IMHO; people seem to think everyone who spent any time in prison as some psychopath ready to loot, plunder, rape, and murder at the drop of a hat. In reality, it's not like that at all. People are regularly shackled during trails like they're some Hannibal Lector with superpowers. Police will chase people even for fairly minor offences putting everyone's life at risk, as if they're chasing Ted Bundy. AFAIK it's the only country that routinely does drug tests on employees as if every drug user is a rabid maniac and a danger to the company.
The US puts more people in prison than China. Before the internment camps in Xinjang really took off it was more even in absolute numbers, and now even with the internment it's still significantly higher per capita. If you're locking up more people than a country which literally locks up people based purely on their ethnicity then you're doing something wrong. Very wrong.
People have been talking about the police a lot in the last year. But that's not really the core problem, it's just a consequence of the toxic and dehumanizing attitude much of the country seems to have.
The best salesperson I've ever worked with was a convicted felon. That "dreg" could outsell every single person at the company. The damage he did to my self-esteem was that I sucked at sales and needed to do better. Thankfully, he outclassed me as a salesperson and gave me insight of what it takes to close a deal.
In my area (Tampa, Florida) firefighter jobs are very desirable and there's a lot of competition for them. They're difficult to land. They're very stable, they give you enough free time that many firefighters have second professions/businesses, some days you don't have to work.
The role of firefighters has also expanded well beyond fighting fires - they also act as medical first responders, and it's required here that firefighters get EMT certified in their first two years on the job, or else they get fired.
So it's... kind of a position with a lot of public trust. I'm not saying I agree with this, but I imagine it would be very bad for a city's leadership if their firefighters went to someone's home for a medical issue and then robbed them.
I don't think GP's point was that firefighting should be a career open to felons, but rather that the fact that it's not, combines with the fact that prisoners are often doing firefighter work, means that clearly it's not about giving them an avenue for getting qualifications and get a job when they're released.
Structure fires in modern buildings are actually kind of rare such that even in cities it wouldn’t be financially viable to keep a full staff of firefighters paid and equipped. This is (one) reason that fire crews are sent on medical calls. Yes - they might get there first which saves lives, but it also creates an additional justification to keep them paid. The majority of calls for city firefighters are medical, not fire related.
Modern firefighting has little to do with fire. Trucks are far more likely to respond to traffic accidents or general medical emergencies than to structure fires.
The numbers shift from one area to another. I have family who are volunteers in a very small highway town. For them it is 80% road accidents and 10% old people falling. Better/closer ambulance support would mean fewer firefighters responding to slip-and-break-hip emergencies, but that is the reality of their local. In farm country it is more machinery-related accidents, things that probably don't happen much in a city.
Barns tend to comprise a large percentage of structure fires. Also, it seems many newer apartment buildings have caught fire in recent times. The older buildings were pretty much concrete or block. They build the newer stuff kinda flimsy in my opinion.
Because they have enough volunteers not to need to pay people.
Really we simply doing pay based on risks. It’s far more dangerous to be a long distance trucker than a police officer, but truckers don’t get respect, pensions, or high pay.
Well, a lot of rural departments are having trouble getting enough new volunteers to replace older ones.
I mean, just look at our type of jobs in IT. I can't just tell my employer that I'm leaving for a call. It seems it was the small community businesses that were the most understanding when you had to leave for that type of service.
Okay, it's not true... now.... but it's super fucked up that it was still true literally less than a year ago. So as an indicator that our systems incentives are completely messed up. It's still valid. The system hasn't changed in a year... just our need for firefighters.
It's still true. "Allowing ex-inmates to petition courts to expunge their records so they can get jobs as firefighters" is not the same as "allowing ex-inmates to get jobs as firefighters".
>Are they there for punishment or for rehabilitation?
A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state.
Correlation vs. causation and all that, but given the likely lack of results from either punishment or rehabilitation, perhaps that is what happened here.
"A third possibility is 'removal'. The idea is that a potential criminal is under the control of the state."
The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime.
Combine this with society mandating severely curtailed opportunities to participate in non-criminal work and you get a perfect storm where prisons churn out more hardened criminals, which leads to more crime, which leads to more prisoners.
>The problem with this approach is that its counterproductive, as many prisons act as graduate schools in crime.
As are the streets.
In this model of 'removal', I'd say that the main point of a prison is to take a more crime prone demographic (by that I mean age, gender, ethnicity, location, wealth...the whole ball of wax) off the street until they are older and less likely to do things that the straights don't like.
In the long run, I would expect for universal surveillance (and the increased ability to parse data we are seeing) to be the main driving force in social control rather than mere warehousing.
Why can't we have a system that provides both removal and rehabilitation?
If I were designing a prison system, it would be a mini-society. Only a minimal set of rules would be specified and enforced by those outside the prison. The rest would be voted on and enforced by the prisoners themselves.
They do that in Honduras, Bolivia, and other developing nations. I've seen footage of one such prison where the inmates voted to exile the prisoners with AIDS to the dump, where they were forced to scavenge for food to survive.
Well, punitive generally means make them suffer, which likely counteracts progress towards rehabilitation.
If you can accept "comprehending and accepting your crimes and their consequences, and having a genuine desire to return to society as a member of it looking to make a positive contribution" as punishement then they are compatible.
But you want to transition somebody psychologically from being in the out-group "criminals" to re-joining the in-group of law-abiding citizens, and most purely punitive measures actively make a person feel further pushed into the out-group.
You want strong incentives and support towards positive re-integration. I always thought that repeat offences ought to be the most damning statistic for prisons, and their performance and budget should mostly be influenced by success on that metric.
Profit from holding prisoners and their labour are basically negative incentives to improve the repeat offending rates.
I mean, that’s one hypothesis among many. An alternate hypothesis is that prison should be uncomfortable and unpleasant as a deterrent. I think it’s overly simplistic to say that punishment is about suffering—parents might punish a child for bad behavior, but the goal isn’t to make them suffer (and indeed being grounded is hardly “suffering”) but rather to teach them good behavior. So we can at least say that in some cases punishment is compatible with rehabilitation. Notably, there can be a kind of dignity in discipline, and I think there’s a subtle distinction between that kind of dignified correction and cruelty.
I can imagine a prison system with a redemptive quality where prisoners feel they’ve labored to redeem themselves to society (this requires society to esteem them accordingly to some degree) and learned a valuable trade in the process.
I think liberals (myself included) would do better to cast that vision for prison reform, rather than the current messaging which IMO comes across as hyperbolic (e.g., “literal slavery”) and naive (prison should be a comfortable place and the rest will work itself out).
I'm not sure they've shown that prison is ineffective as a deterrent, but I've heard of studies which indicate that returns on increasingly punitive measures diminish. "Prison is a not an effective deterrent" means that no one factors it into their calculus about whether or not to commit a crime, and that seems very hard to believe.
To be quite clear, I don't believe that prison's sole value is a deterrent. I think there's an element of justice (criminals should have to pay for their crimes), an element of deterrence (prison should make criminals think twice--this feels intertwined with 'justice' and yet distinct), an element of rehabilitation (to the extent that we can rehabilitate prisoners, we should), but mostly I think there is significant social value in protecting innocent people by keeping harmful people away from innocent people.
Even if the deterrent effect is nil and even if you don't believe in justice (or for many of my fellow liberals, you reserve 'justice' for crimes that offend you, such as white collar crimes), I would still keep prisons around for the protection of the innocent. That said, I have an optimistic view on the potential for prisons.
Rehabilitation implies getting help from people who can rehabilitate. While there is charity and volunteering to some extent, the needs of rehabilitation throughout society (not just in prison) is so great that the amount of work people are willing to give for free is not enough.
For the freely given work, it becomes a question of who deserves it. Giving it to a prisoner who is supposed to be punished instead of a law abiding individual stuck at a dead end job appears to be rewarding the individual with bad behavior. The same reasoning also applies when there isn't enough free labor for rehabilitation and money is spent buying more labor.
If at any point the rehabilitation offered within prisons is better than that offered for free outside of prisons then it becomes a reward. Rewards are generally viewed as incompatible with punishment and seen as cancelling out, when they are of similar scales.
Being rehabilitated in a place where you have no freedom is generally not a reward. Working on yourself is hard and often painful. By this logic, getting clean is a reward to substance abuse disorder so we shouldn’t offer programs to substance abuse disorder sufferers to get them clean. But we know that not offering these programs practically guarantees continued suffering.
Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie. There most certainly is enough social programs to go around, but our elected officials in America want to bolster the ultra wealthy and the mega corps instead. This is an artificial scarcity mindset that tries to make us pull each other down.
>By this logic, getting clean is a reward to substance abuse disorder so we shouldn’t offer programs to substance abuse disorder sufferers to get them clean.
Is your help getting clean only offered to substance abusers that assaulted another person? If so, you might see why someone who is addicted, wants but can't afford help, and who hasn't assaulted someone might not appreciate the help only going to those who have assaulted another.
If the help is offered to everyone who needs it, then the logic wouldn't apply.
>Additionally, the notion that there isn’t enough social programs to go around is a lie.
Where did I suggest such? I pointed out that there isn't enough purely from volunteering, meaning you'll have to spend money. I specifically pointed out that money could be spend buying more.
>and money is spent buying more labor.
Right there. My argument is that the money spent on buying more help follows the same issue. Spending money to help someone who committed a crime that you wouldn't spend to help them if they hadn't is not a widely agreeable position.
>Spending money to help someone who committed a crime that you wouldn't spend to help them if they hadn't is not a widely agreeable position.
It seems to me that doing so is a great idea. Firstly, given that these folks have (presumably so, but many folks plead guilty to crimes they have not committed, which is a travesty, but beyond the scope of this comment) committed a crime is pretty clear proof that they are having issues integrating into society.
Secondly, except for those who commit violent crimes (a minority of inmates), most folks will be released at some point.
Once those folks are released, they are now responsible for taking care of themselves economically and living in society. If we continue doing what we do now, by not giving them tools and skills to reintegrate into society and stigmatizing them for life, we severely limit their ability to live as productive members of society.
This has a negative effect on society (in that these folks are being actively discriminated against and shut out from many decent jobs) and limits the productivity and economic output of these people in performing jobs compatible with society.
Those are huge negatives for all of us. We're reducing economic output, creating pariahs and increasing the possibility of recidivism, which costs society more when those folks re-offend and are then re-incarcerated.
As such, I posit that rehabilitation along with reducing/removing the stigma of a felony conviction would increase both economic output and societal well-being.
And IMHO those benefits far outweigh how much you (or anyone else) wants to stick it to those dirty criminals.
>And IMHO those benefits far outweigh how much you (or anyone else) wants to stick it to those dirty criminals.
To clarify, I'm explaining why it would be unpopular. I'm not saying I personally agree with it. Please try to not conflate the argument with the person.
Many people aren't great at seeing long term or higher order effects. I'm explaining the immediate visibility problem, where someone is told that more help is provided for criminals than non-criminals. That the long term effects are worth it doesn't work well to convince people whose views are short term. We can see many government problems resulting from prioritizing short term reasoning.
Take the war on drugs. People see drugs, think "I should ban it so my kids won't be hooked on drugs." They don't think of the long term effects of a war on drug, and as a result we have our modern day war on drugs with all the harm it has brought us.
I'm sure this is true in the US, but this is a problem with the US prison system and the extremely strange system of using volunteers. In many places (Scandinavia, Germany, etc.) the people who help rehabilitate are hired by the state and the main reason for prison is rehabilitation first, punishment second.
To clarify, I was giving an example of both volunteering and hiring. Hiring someone doesn't change the economics of it, maybe even making it worse because you now have the state spending someone on a law breaker. Does it spend as much money to hire help for those who don't break the law who could benefit from the services offered?
The real main difference is when people stop viewing prison as being for punishment, but that goes back to the original question of why is rehabilitation incompatible with punishment. If prison is seen as being for rehabilitation and containment for safety while rehabilitating then the comparison is different (though ideally the services offered shouldn't be better than those offered to people who follow the law).
I believe the biggest differentiators are inherited from the fact that many countries who aim for rehabilitation first are also countries with free access to the kind of help many people incarcerated might need: free access to a psychiatrist or doctor, anger management therapy, educational help, etc. So not only are most of the money already earmarked for this but the extra it does costs to offer the help to inmates that aren't allowed to leave the prison to access these services are likely less than the cost of a punishment-first system. The lower recidivism rate added with the fact that these systems also rarely label people as former inmates, which often would block access to well-paid jobs that pay more taxes, must be a lot cheaper but... I can't be arsed to look it up.
As an example from around here (Denmark) if someone want to hire a person they do not by default know that this is a former inmate and they will only have access to this information if the job somehow is related to the crime committed in the past. You could ask the job applicant to bring a form from the police but if the sentence is unrelated to the job (or a set amount of years have gone past if it is a lesser crime) the form will be completely blank. Only related crimes will be shown.
All in all I believe that such a system is also punishment (few like to be locked up) but this rehalibation-first-system will punish everyone else less in the long run.
No, they are saying that fruit picking is not a job that requires training or qualifications. So prison work picking fruit does not help prepare the inmate for life after release.
Are you saying that people in prison lack training or qualifications?
Picking fruit is a valid occupation and one that is not limited by post-incarceration rules like not being a stockbroker after committing securities fraud or not being a childcare worker after pedophilia. While many agriculture jobs provide on the job rather than classroom training, there are skills to be acquired that can enhance productivity and value.
I’m not saying that people in prison lack training or qualifications. That assumption would actually probably hold true, on average, but I have not studied that and that was not my point.
My point was that fruit picking, in contrast to many other potential professional activities, is not something that is likely to help an inmate build a post-release career.
When you apply for a job as a fruit picker, the employer is not going to reject those candidates who lack former experience.
Not really, it's a seasonal job (at least in Germany, but are there climates where plants bear fruit year round?) that doesn't pay enough through the season to sustain you through the entire year.
Germany is about 35% reincarceration rate after 3 years, and US is about 29%,
Although there are strong caveats, and like for like data doesn't exist. After 5 years US rate goes up a lot, my link doesn't have that for Germany.
> Recidivism rates vary significantly around the world, and many countries have insufficient data. Rates of criminal recidivism around the world are reported to be as high as 50% and have not declined in recent years. It is challenging to compare recidivism between countries because definitions of recidivism outcomes vary from re-arrest to reoffending to reimprisonment. Within these definitions, countries differ in their inclusion of misdemeanors, fines, traffic offenses, and other crimes. Additionally, follow-up times (period after release from incarceration) are inconsistent between and within jurisdictions and vary between six months and five years.
Seems like a pointless statistic, as solely arresting dangerous criminals instead of scores of harmless people would likely lead to a higher recidivism rate afterwards.
100% agreed, and I shared the above only partly to provide an answer, but mostly to flag some major caveats.
Another great example: "The U.S. incarceration rate is 693 per 100,000 residents —compared to 76 per 100,000 in Germany, and 69 per 100,000 in the Netherlands."
There is some real academic research on the topic, but as far as international comparison goes, it's not a solved issue. For example, this paper basically concludes that countries should update their reporting:
Let's compare "lifelong sentence" in Germany you have a high chance to get out after 15 years. (There is a mechanism for true lifelong, but that's then more of a psychiatric treatment than jail)
Point is: Comparing some statistic without context is not easy
I think this is the key: We need to skill/educate these folks. I know that sounds counter-intuitive because they are supposed to be punished. But if we don’t, they will come right back. And every prisoner is a burden on the tax payer. Also, if you’ve paid your debt to society, it should be paid in full - wiped from your record. That only seems fair.
However in Germany a large part of prison work is around qualification. The inmates can learn a job and once released have a useable qualification for finding a job. Most prisons in that way are self supporting. Meaning food is made by inmates who are cooks or are learning to be a chef. Repairs for heating or doors or furniture are made by inmates etc. Only a small part of the work is for external customers and even a smaller part is for the prison's online Shop like https://www.haftsache.de/
And yes salaries are low, but they get free food and accomodation and aren't there for fun but punishment ...