[Zak]

A quick search reveals that all of the inmates doing that job are volunteers.

They get to spend time outside prison and interact with people who aren't prisoners or guards. I could imagine volunteering for that if I was a prisoner. That doesn't make using prisoners as cheap labor OK, especially for dangerous jobs, but it doesn't surprise me at all that prisoners would rather do that than sit in a cell.

[coldtea]

>A quick search reveals that all of the inmates doing that job are volunteers.

It's easy to make volunteers out of people if:

1) Their living conditions are so bad in your hellish prisons that that most alternatives seem like heaven.

2) you control their living conditions and can make their life hell if you want to "motivate" them to volunteer.

3) A crappy legal system hands them some of the harshest terms in the world in some of the more BS prisons, and having them volunteer for such work can give them more "points" towards getting our earlier.

What I'm getting at is, volunteering for an inmate is not necessarily the same thing as volunteering is for a free man -- or even the same thing as a prisoner in a place without medieval prison conditions and vindictive attitude towards prisoners volunteering.

[ficklepickle]

I'd tend to agree. I mean, if I was locked in a cage first, I'd likely be more willing to agree to something, anything, that gets me out of that cage.

Whether that is good, bad or indifferent is a whole different matter, but I think it is safe to say that it is a thing.

[fwn]

Surely there is no power relation stacked against prisoners that might lead to any suspicion regarding their consent.