I think it's reasonable to assume an additional risk for people in prison.
Even though the enrolled people are completely trustworthy, doing this prevents untrustworthy people to simulate interest in the program just to be able to contact the external world for illegal activities.
Not really, contraband includes many things that are completely legal for non prisoners to have like currency, phones, knives, or alcohol. Sending that stuff to prisoners is illegal https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1791
"No cut" is reasonable, but also "Some cut" is reasonable. However while arguing that "no cut" should be mandatory is reasonable, given that "no cut" would itself be reasonable, it is probably not pragmatic. Therefore in order to best support this kind of thing one should determine exactly how much "some cut" should be.
Isn't this largely just a one off situation that happened to work out? I doubt there will be legions of prisoners working remotely. If that future did come to be, it would be rather dystopian imo.
if, right now, it is not dystopian, then there is no reason to say it would inevitably be dystopian if there were multiple occurrences, although sure, I expect it probably would be considering what the world is like. Of course I am the last person who one would expect to say it but - there is always hope.
I disagree. The cut should support the program itself and then further offset taxpayer expenses related to housing, feeding, and caring for the prisoner. I could even see a case for taking it as a way of ensuring it was saved and returned at release.
Fuck no! Lowering the cost of keeping people in prison would make it even easier for the government to lock people up for smaller crimes and with bigger sentences. It's even worse with the privatised prison system that the US has. They already know the "market price" (what the government is willing to spend) so adding "free money" into the equation just makes it easier for them to raise prices and end up pocketing even more money than they already do.
Framing it as offsetting the cost would also make it very easy to increase the cut, bit by bit, until it gets to a truly unreasonable level. And since the person is already in prison and we have to pay for them no matter what, why would they choose to work if the deal is so bad?
It's even worse with the privatised prison system that the US has.
This is a state by state thing. FWIW in this case, ME doesn't have private prisons. I don't bring this up to imply everything related to their cut is on the up and up, however, I believe Maine is very much incentivized to make this a useful program in terms of keeping people from returning to jail (as opposed to squeezing every dollar from the prisoners).
Fix the problem then, don't perpetuate it. If you think the problem is corrupt and profiteering prisons that will turn to this type of shenanigans, there's a bigger problem to fix.
No. Prisons should cost society money. If you are taking away someone’s freedoms, there should be a high cost so you don’t do it flippantly when another solution will work.
Are you concerned that if you make prison too expensive society might resort to capital punishment to reduce prison costs? Or we end up releasing prisoners who are legitimate dangers to society.
And to be clear, I'm opposed to capital punishment and dangerous conditions in prisons. I'm just pointing out that I don't think your argument is very good. If you think we as a society are willing to flippantly put people in prison because it's cheap I don't see how you can trust us to no resort to other flippant measures if the cost was high.
No, they forfeited their freedoms and we're put away by due process, but if that's your point of view then we've nothing further to discuss. Incredible stuff on HN these days.
To be honest, if he didn't pay a cut of his earnings while living off government allocated funds, wouldn't that put him in a better position than those who haven't been found guilty and sentenced for breaking the laws of the land in which they reside? I can't see a much resistance to the argument that they one really ought to pay the full cost back to the state, as with community service... no?
If my employer payed for my housing and food I would not consider it unreasonable that my paycheck reflected that.
> Why are they paid
Because people have expenses other than food and lodging. Prisoners do to, some save money for after they leave prison others spend it at the commissary.