it's comforting that I live in the liberal stronghold of california oh sorry what's that? we couldn't get a majority population to outlaw slavery? and our politicians didn't do it for us? well nevertheless
@rebeccawatson I wish I could quote from the case directly. But the story was basically; a person detained by law sued the department of correction in Sweden because they believed they were unfairly asked to work, the court argued that due to the fact that society outside of the prison also placed a strong burden of work on the individual they could not rule in favour of the detained.
All to say I think at least some find it unfair that prisoners shouldn't ba asked to work.
@ekg @rebeccawatson Even if you accept that, they should be paid for that work, same as anyone else.
@chiraag @rebeccawatson I mean, I would rather have a debate about work in general. But working conditions should absolutely be unaffected by criminal penalties, why I would strongly argue for conditional release for work.
America is way to harsh in it's criminal penalties, and I would even argue that "penalties" is the wrong framing. Reintroducing former prisoners to society is made very difficult when they have no real work experience from their time behind bars.
@MisuseCase @chiraag @rebeccawatson I honestly thought that mostly was a thing in the south. All I really know about prison labor in California is that one episode of Last Week Tonight about firefighters.
Prison labour in Sweden is also under paid, and most famously IKEA used prison labour in the DDR. Sweden is most definitely not sin free.
@ekg @chiraag @rebeccawatson It’s not just in the South it’s all over America. Although our modern prison labor regime did start from chattel slavery.
@MisuseCase @ekg @chiraag @rebeccawatson California is usually a step ahead of us here in Oregon, but not always.
Senator Merkley has a petition to gather support to change it nationally. Probably be at least four years before it goes anywhere, but still… https://www.jeffmerkley.com/petition/thirteenth-amendment/e/
@ekg @chiraag @rebeccawatson Part of what we have going on in the U.S. is sweeping criminalization of people so that they can be incarcerated and forced to do, essentially, slave labor. They get paid much less than people who aren’t incarcerated and they can’t really agitate for better working conditions. So I understand where you’re coming from but there are totally different dynamics in the U.S.