[Dylan16807]

I never said anything about wanting a high incarceration rate.

There can be other reasons for harsh laws. Don't be so weirdly absolute. If a country does something wrong that doesn't mean it necessarily has the one specific motivation you're mad at and no other.

[ncmncm]

There are many motivations for evil action. They don't contradict, they add. Having more does not make it less evil.

[Dylan16807]

Yep.

Also this has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, which wasn't about the US specifically.

To restate it, just to be very clear: 1. find someone that was legitimately sentenced to a fair duration of prison 2. offering them the ability to labor to reduce their sentence is not forced labor

[ncmncm]

Or, as we actually do, just assume they were legitimately sentenced to what we just assume is a fair duration.

Letting somebody innocent out "early", even if we extracted undue labor from them, could be a net good. But the incentives are all in the wrong direction, and we see the effects writ large all around us. Making fine points about a theoretical situation of justice and legitimacy is a harmful distraction in present circumstances, where we demonstrably don't have those.