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Comment by nichohel | Hacker News Reader

The "had to essentially work for the school doing e.g. grounds keeping and other tasks" seems problematic.

Why? Genuinely asking. That seems like a proportional punishment to me, and certainly better than “detention” or whatever.

Forced labor of any sort just seems tricky especially when there is a racial disparity among those so penalized. Prison work programs also seem like a good idea ("teach a trade" etc.) but then they are couched as essentially slave labor and they sound less good.

I’m not sure why there’s a racial component to this. I’m merely talking about a proportional response to disrupting class. Is your view that this punishment would be unfairly leveraged against certain races?

I’m also unconvinced that prison work is bad. Should they just hang out and do nothing? When tied to a shortened sentence, prison work seems just fine.

I think prison labor's impact on the larger labor economy should also be considered, as should the financial incentives for longer prison terms it may create. I doubt either of these are insurmountable problems, but are arguably problems with the current implementation of the system.

In the case of public schools using child labor for discipline one possible problem is that the children, if they were actually effective laborers, might tempt a school district to suspend more children to get more work done around the school, and possibly even reduce the number of maintenance workers they hire. You'd want such a system strictly regulated and audited to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen.

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