General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Is forced prison labor 'slavery' under color of the law? [View all]Aerows
(39,961 posts)Considering that if they don't work, they lose privileges, get moved to disciplinary housing (not sure what that means) and serve more time.
http://www.alternet.org/world/151732/21st-century_slaves%3A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor/?page=entire
That article discusses it. On top of it all, for every worker, these private prisons get tax credits.
The US has 25% of the ENTIRE WORLD's prison population, yet we are only 5% of the population. That should tell you something. This is also why they don't want to legalize marijuana and other drugs - they would lose that valuable pool of labor, prison companies would make less money, and of course the DEA would lose funding.
So yeah, there are probably plenty of manufacturing jobs out there, it's just instead of them being done by American workers at minimum wage and up, they are done by people for 15 or 20 cents an hour, and those people don't get benefits of any kind. Could you imagine if suddenly there was a demand for 1 million manufacturing jobs to be filled by non incarcerated people? The economy would be a whole lot better for the people, but the corporations would have to actually pay people.