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Comment by 29ssyg | Hacker News Reader

Why should I be outraged at this? How is this much worse than any other prison job?

It's not worse, but none of them pay anywhere near market wages, which offends some people. I have mixed feelings about all prison labor. I'd prefer we paid a more reasonable wage, but it's nowhere near the top of my list of things I'd change if I were to wake up king one day.

Considering that housing and food is "free", the Finnish prisoner pay of around 5 € per hour is actually quite close to market wage, if not even above...

(There's no legal minimum wage in the country, though collective agreements have legally binding minimum wage clauses in branches of business where they are applicable.)

Ah, that's orders of magnitude more than US prisoners are paid. Looks like average is below $1/hour.[0] Which is actually lower than I had imagined and makes me want to retract my previous comment about mixed feelings. :|

0 - https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

I think there's not much to be outraged about that a new type of prison labor will be added to the palette. But the marketing efforts of the company sound deceptive to me. They pretend to be delivering some sort of social moral value, but actually simply use prison labor to reduce costs.

exactly, the only outrage is them being paid and not using that money to help the victims of their actions

Depriving them of pay is not required. They are still humans themselves, and they're paying for their actions with prison term.

Societies that confuse prison with vengeance have more crime, and end up worse for victims themselves.

not true, even in feudal times there were less crimes because of harsher punishments, even in much harder times, i don't think that prisoners should be abused by the way while in jail also (and this happens mostly by other prisoners as well) that should be strictly prohibited

Sounds like you're pulling stuff from out of your ass, the truth here is corrective vs punitive, corrective leads to a lot less recidivism, unlike punitive. All you have to look at is recidivism rates in the US vs northern European countries that have corrective prison systems in place. Norway has a 20% recidivism rate compared to the US's 67.8% withing 3 years, and 76.6% within 5 years.

>not true, even in feudal times there were less crimes because of harsher punishments

In feudal times violent crimes, thefts, etc, and especially murders and rapes, were at rates way beyond today.

>Exactly, the only outrage is them being paid...

From the article:

>...though the CSA is responsible for figuring out how much of that goes to the prisoners...

Are you sure they're getting paid, right now?

>...not using that money to help the victims...

And, at what point, would this vengence form of justice stop? How much would be "adequate" for compensation to their victims? Are they still not penalised, even after they've "paid their debt to society"? ....because, last I recall hearing of the prison system in the United States, the punitive punishment doesn't really end - from being unable to vote to being unable to get a job because of a record to a number of other maliciously designed rules/laws intentionally meant/designed to further punish them, yeah?

i don't think the us system works well and is a model to look up to at all, its too soft on them and creates hardened criminals if anything, too few characters in the comments to explain to you but look at japanese system as an non perfect system that works much better but is quite harsh

The US system is too soft? Wow, that's not something I hear very often. The US has one of the most regressive, punitive, non-effective prison systems in the western world.

Exactly it’s too soft and allows for inmates to be harassed and assaulted by other inmates, creating prison gangs and things like that. So it hardens the criminals and creates even more problems.. I would prefer the system like the one in Japan, which again is not perfect at all but much better than US system though it’s criticized to be very harsh but has great results and Japan has amongst if not even the lowest crime rate in the world

Their victims may already have been awarded money, and if a prisoner makes money in prison it may end up being used towards paying that down, as any money they would have made.

Earning "okay" money for prison labor is also pretty normal Europe and can give prisoners something to fall back upon once they are released, as well as new skillsets.

If you didn't pay them, prisoners may also end up not working at all. Unlike in the US, slavery there is completely illegal even in prisons ("penal labor"). You can't force them to work by punishing them.

There is nothing to be outraged about, unless you're being blinded by a reprehensible and base thirst for third-party revenge.

Prison slavery is explicitly legal, in the US Constitution, and is widely practiced. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_St...

Payment for labor is important on pragmatic grounds alone given incentives. If given only negative enforcement then it is do enough to avoid it and more paid overseers. If there is some positive enforcement then incentives align enough to not just "pretend to work whenever they can get away with it" as optimal.

Not to mention the rehabilitative effects - you want convicts looking for delayed gratification and honest work instead of big scores.

Also, giving prisoners privileges such as television or the chance to earn a little money makes it easier to prevent misbehavior by threatening to remove those privileges. This has been shown to be as effective (in most cases) as harsher punishment, but without making the prisoners as angry and resentful.

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