[TheFreim]

I would generally agree. Just as some people characterize prison labor as "slavery", with all of the connotations that word holds when unqualified, I have also seen incarceration described as "kidnapping". Rather than get bogged down in the minutia of arguing about words I'd simply posit that there are moral forms of "kidnapping" and "slavery".

Locking a murderer in a jail cell is moral, I also see no issue requiring them to work.

Where I do see a massive issue is when incarceration is used by private corporations to enrich themselves rather than enriching the public or individuals whose harm is what caused the incarceration in the first place.

I don't in principle oppose private prisons, though I am wary of them in practice. I think there could exist a model where private prisons would be rewarded based on recitivism, but unfortunately such a system would be hard to create for a variety of practical considerations.

[moistly]

> I also see no issue requiring them to work.

It takes away a job that someone who is not a criminal could be doing.

[manholio]

In other times it was said that a woman takes away a job a man might to, or a black man the job a white. You may want to google the "lump of labor fallacy".