Labor, slave? indentured? coerced?

[DanaC]

It may be a choice - but it's a Hobson's choice. Particularly when you consider what prison actually means (see prison thread and the stuff about endemic levels of rape in prisons). And particularly when you consider the private and therefore profit making nature of much of the prison system (remember a few years ago the scandal about young offenders being imprisoned for not very much as a way to boost the profits of the company involved? Someone help me there, i can't recall the details). Add in too, the arbitrary high fines imposed on people who cannot afford either the fine, or a lawyer to fight the fine and then end up in prison...

If there are financial incentives to locking people up - and once locked up they are available as a pool of cheap labour for the state in which they are imprisoned, then the system is dangerously skewed towards exploitation.

They should pay these people a proper wage - held in lieu until their sentence is complete perhaps - but a wage that matches what they would be paid if they were not incarcerated. Alternatively - the state could offer this job, at minimum wage to unemployed jobseekers.

Not only are they exploiting the prisoners (some of whom may genuinely want to do this - so it ain't black and white really) but they are denying proper paid work to the unemployed.