'Work or go to jail': how LA courts force thousands to do unpaid labor

[mysteryowl]

Source: The Guardian

Exclusive: study finds county relies on laborers – largely people of color – threatened with debts and jail to do work that would otherwise be paid.

Los Angeles courts force roughly 100,000 people to do weeks and even months of “community service” each year, exposing some of them to exploitative and hazardous working conditions without enjoying basic labor rights and protections, according to a first-of-its-kind study.

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers analyzing court-mandated community service also found that government departments and not-for-profit organizations rely on workers threatened with debts and jail time to complete labor that would otherwise be paid – and that those impacted are overwhelmingly people of color.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/16/los-angeles-labor-community-service-courts-ucla

[Roy Rolling]

1. Complex Issue

Community service is a good way to pay fines if you can’t afford it. But like everything else, greedy businesspeople demand a cut so that the service amounts to slave wages for the offender, and a gigantic profit for the administrators/businesses involved.

[beachbumbob]

2. doing work, in a community service program is much better than being in jail, we are

not talking about people walking down the street being shanghaied to do labor. They committed some type of offense.

[oldsoftie]

3. Not 'unpaid labor", paying YOUR debt for whatever you did

[LogicFirst]

4. Bad headline

They are not "forced" to work. They take the work option. Their choice.

[cstanleytech]

5. If the work is being done to pay a debt for a fine for example how is this wrong?

Granted, if say its a debt of 200 and they are working them for say 40 total hours that's excessive as at $7.25 an hour they should have it paid off in about 28 hours but otherwise it seems ok.
As for the option for jail or provide community service again it seems like a reasonable alternative but it should not exceed no more than 12 hours each week either spread out over the entire week or over a 2 day period as they do need to make a living still.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

6. Several years ago the husband of an associate in L.A. was busted on his third DUI. He gladly took

the work option as opposed to doing time in county.