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Comment by RF_Savage | Hacker News Reader

Well, it was a convient carveout in post-civil war anti-slavery legistlation. One can wonder why that was done, but it still exists regardless of that.

That said, prison labor is quite common across the globe and considered rehabilitating.

But here in Finland the prisoners are paid minimum wage or more per law. This change happened in the last 15years or so and was mostly about it being considered unfair competition, which is an angle that might work in USA too.

Nobody should be forced to work for slave wages in slave conditions.

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> That said, prison labor is quite common across the globe and considered rehabilitating.

I cannot speak for Finland specifically, but in many places prisoners are taught and can earn qualifications while in prison. If they can leave prison with qualifications as a cook, car mechanic, car painter, carpenter, electrician, or even locksmith (yes, I've seen that, as ridiculous as it sounds), that might actually help them.

However in the US prisoners are often exploited to perform utterly menial tasks. Forget any formal training or earning qualifications. Even if they would perform the same task outside prison, they probably couldn't compete with $0.10/h prison labor. If that cheap human labor didn't exist, those tasks would likely just be automated.

So there's a bit of nuance there and I wouldn't consider all kinds of prison labor rehabilitating.

The philosophy in the US seems to be that you just have to change people: Instead of giving people opportunities to lead a normal life after prison, options are actually taken away from felons. Most other western countries recognize that many crimes are also a result of circumstances and lack of opportunities. The easiest way to get people to follow your rules is not punishment, it's making them want to do it because conformity is the path of least resistance.

> Most other western countries recognize that many crimes are also a result of circumstances and lack of opportunities.

In the USA that’s simply not true. There are boundless opportunities for every individual to take advantage of. There is a labor shortage at the moment. There are severe shortages of people that are craftsmen as well and tons of free training online.

No one is desperate due to the circumstances created by the USA. They make the conscious choice to become a criminal.

Criminals are not victims and the coddling, condescending attitudes to criminals is degrading to them if anything. They made the choice and should own it like you’d expect from any adult.

> No one is desperate due to the circumstances created by the USA. They make the conscious choice to become a criminal.

Man, if any quote could be used to show how HN should not be taken seriously on any topic that strays outside of the strict definition of STEM-related, this could be a contender.

I don't even know where to begin, but consider the fact that people are born into situations far more horrible than you may ever truly comprehend, where criminal acts and lifestyles are as normal to them as anything you would find normal to yourself growing up.

> I don't even know where to begin

Possibly because you don’t have a good point to make.

Most people that grow up in bad places or situations don’t become criminals. Criminal acts may occur more frequently in certain places but the vast majority of people from those places do not become criminals.

And what do you know about me growing up? I grew up around a lot of these types of “horrible situations” and most the kids turned out. Sone choose to commit crimes and sone died or were incarcerated because of those choices.

> Possibly because you don’t have a good point to make.

Consider the other possibilities. If someone confidently told you that our flat Earth is 6,000 years old, where would you begin? There's a lot to unpack, and you're not even certain if all the work will be worth doing or just a waste of time.

> Most people that grow up in bad places or situations don’t become criminals.

Most people who smoke don't get lung cancer. So by your logic have we proven that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer?

Poverty, in the US and globally, is correlated with higher crime rates. Isn't it such a strange coincidence that people who happen to be born into poverty also consistently happen to "choose" to commit more crimes, given that their environment has nothing to do with their choices? Shouldn't crime rates be equal across all socioeconomic classes?

> I grew up around a lot of these types of “horrible situations” and most the kids turned out.

Again, most people who do X don't end up Y is in no way a valid argument that X doesn't cause Y.

If that were true, wouldn’t crime rates be evenly distributed among income/circumstances?

You don’t find it convincing that poorer/less-educated places tend to have higher crime rates?

I’m not saying people aren’t culpable for their crimes, but surely it’s not as simple as people “consciously choosing” to become criminals.

> If that were true, wouldn’t crime rates be evenly distributed among income/circumstances?

Just because some people from lower income brackets choose to risk their livelihoods by doing crimes doesn’t mean there isn’t boundless opportunities.

If a person would rather gangbang or sling meth instead of doing something productive then that’s their choice.

There aren’t exactly a bunch of dudes desperate for cancer treatments they can’t afford so they turn to criminal enterprise to fund it. They choose the lifestyle.

Again though, if that were the case (that it's simply a choice and opportunity has nothing to do with it), we should see the same rate of people choosing crime among affluent people.

It's simply not true that people in lower income have the same opportunities. They don't have access to the same quality of education, people who care about their career prospects or the ability to afford higher education.

You’re changing the argument again. I never said the “same opportunities”. I simply said there are opportunities available in sufficient numbers that crime is no excuse.

Poor people aren’t as stupid as you think. Most don’t turn to crime.

To reverse your logic, affluent people should never commit crimes but yet sone do too. People make choices.

I think this was once called the soft bigotry of low expectations. You are a bigot by your logic. Looking down on poor people is offensive.

> To reverse your logic, affluent people should never commit crimes but yet sone do too. People make choices.

I'm not arguing that people make choices. Also, we are talking about the rate of criminal activity, not absolutes. Nothing in my argument says affluent people never commit crime, that is a straw man.

> Poor people aren’t as stupid as you think. Most don’t turn to crime.

I don't know how to be any clearer that I am talking about the _rate_ of criminal activity.

> I think this was once called the soft bigotry of low expectations. You are a bigot by your logic. Looking down on poor people is offensive.

I appreciate the ad hominem, but the one thing you won't answer is why then do poorer communities commit more crime on average? It seems pretty clear that less opportunity/resources makes it _more likely_ to turn to crime.

How do you explain the difference in rates if it's just choice?

> How do you explain the difference in rates if it's just choice?

Broken cultures and bad values. If it were really about money then violent crime that has nothing to do with money wouldn’t be higher as well.

Single motherhood is the leading cause and it’s endemic in poor communities. This value is not only tolerated but celebrated somehow by affluent liberals. It’s astonishing.

America is so incredibly boundless with opportunity that people wait years to move their lives here and others risk their life to come here illegally so they can take advantage of the opportunities and send money back home. Many of these people come from places that are actually poor (America doesn’t really have poverty compared to other places) and could probably be justified in stealing bread. But they don’t.

If that’s not clear evidence it’s a choice then I don’t know what is.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree then.

We don't get to choose where or to whom we are born. If you are then born into "bad cultures and values", as you say, that has a huge influence on your "choices". If you drop the same kid randomly into a more affluent family, I highly doubt he makes the same choices.

I just don't think that the cause can be simply boiled down to choices, when environment clearly has an outsized effect.

An affluent person can certainly sustain themselves more easily where bad values are concerned like single motherhood, etc. So much they can actually promote it as a value which eventually gets picked up by middle and lower classes and is destructive there.

Poor communities had as a value the 2-parent family and their crime rates were far lower than today. As our social values have changed our crime rates have generally increased. We like to point out that since the 90’s they’ve gone down but not overall the last 100 years.

One thing that always surprised me is that felons can't vote in America.

In the Netherlands only in a few political cases after WW2 did people lose their right to vote or enter parliament.

The ethnic makeup is allegedly the reason behind that.

> or even locksmith (yes, I've seen that, as ridiculous as it sounds), that might actually help them

As it happens, in the UK there's a chain of locksmiths (they do a few other things, but key cutting is their stock in trade) called Timpson that employs many ex-offenders:

https://www.timpson-group.co.uk/timpson-foundation/ex-offend...

> The philosophy in the US seems to be that you just have to change people

I'm not sure what you mean by this. To me it looks like prisons in US are a good business and good for business due to cheap slave labor. Many places have for profit prisons, high repeat offense rates and ridiculous incarceration rates.

This is all from an external point of view, I'm not from the US.

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