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by ecf 868 days ago
It’s not slavery when the human has done things that society deemed bad enough to lose their rights for however long the sentence is.
5 comments

If you truly hold this position you’d be well served to familiarize yourself with Scandinavian prison system which focuses on rehabilitation rather than punishment and various American atrocities such as the war on drugs and the private prison pipeline such as “kids for cash”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Kids for cash was a crime. It doesn't reinforce the idea that the system is designed to ship people into private prisons. It shows the opposite.
This comment makes me incredibly sad.

It’s hard to put into words how destructive your line of reasoning is, and the confidence with which you express it frightens me that others might even share it with you.

I would argue that the private prison system is in fact designed to do exactly this, namely to put people in prison and keep them there for profit.

You could argue that my claim that their intent is nefarious is speculation and I’ll grant you that, because I am unfamiliar with any private prison owners or the people who came up with the idea, but by that token you’d have to grant your opinion about the intent behind private prisons is also purely speculative, and I would add more damaging than my speculation.

> The charges outlined in the information[23] described actions between 2000 and 2007 by both judges to assist in the construction and population of private juvenile facilities operated by the two Pennsylvania Child Care companies, acting in an official capacity in favor of the private facilities over the facility operated by Luzerne County.

Your attempt at logic somehow leads you to tell the victims over a 7 year period ~“look, you won, now stop bringing attention to this issue, the system is designed to do something else, who cares that it is capable of being exploited in this manner”.

If everyone had your perspective those prisons would still be doing this, but thankfully in that 7 year period of “the system working as designed” activists speculated that something nefarious was happening and brought attention to how it actually works.

> It shows the opposite.

This is incredibly naive. When has one entity getting caught ever been a legitimate excuse for everyone else similarly situated to be free from scrutiny?

What is “the opposite” in this context anyway? Do you believe private prisons exist to empty themselves and “give cash to kids”? How does a private prison sustain itself with a population of 0?

You are reading a lot into my three sentences. I didn't say any of the things you are refuting. I'm not going to defend them, not simply because I never espoused those opinions, but also because lots of them are completely irrational anyway.
Communication is a two way street: what is said and how it’s received.

With imprecise communication there is always the danger of misunderstanding, and that can lead to devastating consequences.

You say I misunderstood your comment, that’s fair, but I have read and reread it many times and am unable to interpret it elsewise.

Please elaborate.

It will be best for both of us.

I will know what you truly meant, and perhaps feel better about your position, and you will be assured that your true intent is clear and fully received by your audience.

A crime was identified as proof that the system was organized in a particular way. The fact that it was a crime explicitly tells us the system is not that way. The Green River Killer murdered lots of people and wasn't arrested for 20 years. This doesn't mean that the laws and criminal justice system are designed to advance murder. The fact that they were able to identify him as the murderer and arrested him proves the system is against murder.

Things I didn't say:

- any value judgment about private prisons - no statement about shutting up or stop bringing up the crimes - didn't justify or attempt to justify excluding oversight of government - anything about the business model of private prisons

Scandinavian system is completely incompatible with US population numbers and economic realities for the US. Their total population is less than 39 million, while the US has 10x that.
Slavery is slavery, regardless of how bad the person is.
And kidnapping is kidnapping. According to this logic, imprisonment is kidnapping, and serial killers should be free to roam the streets.
> And kidnapping is kidnapping. According to this logic, imprisonment is kidnapping,

MW definition:

"to seize and detain or carry away by unlawful force or fraud and often with a demand for ransom"

So no: Lawful imprisonment is not kidnapping.

That is exactly my point. The law is the differentiator: the 13th amendment sets apart forced labor for punishment of a crime.
You are losing your freedom of movement, not your rights, no?
Prisoners lose most of their rights. They have no privacy rights, they can be searched at any time without a warrant, they often don't get to vote, they don't get to own weapons, they don't have freedom of association, they don't get to choose their style of dress.
Nope you lose a lot of your rights as well. I don't know about European prisons, though. When you break the social contract, there are consequences.
I've never seen the social contract, let alone signed it. I suppose I used to sort of believe that it existed, but that belief, like so many others I once held, has not survived the past decade or so. Certainly I believe in consequences, but they seem little better than random, though they quite rarely touch the wealthy/connected.
why punish twice for one crime ?