• Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
      235·
      11 months ago

      If it happens in US it’s actually a privilege, not forced labor.

      Characterizing prison work as forced labor is wrongheaded, he said, because most inmates who qualify for paid work earn that classification based on positive credits for behavior. “In other words, it’s a privilege,” he said, better than some of the other alternatives behind bars.

      -Shawn Bushway, RAND Corporation

        • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
          72·
          11 months ago

          The US actually has a higher prison population than China, both per capita and total despite having a fraction of Chinas population. I’m not in favor of forced labor or the carceral state in general.

          When it’s happening in the country I live in, it’s going to be a slightly higher priority for me.

      • DoiDoi [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        193·
        11 months ago

        The US has the largest prison population in the world and when measured per capita stands alone as a completely absurd outlier. A country that has legalized slavery if used as punishment for a crime. A country that has private prisons where the prisoners are used to make consumer goods, fight forest fires, and in some cases even work on farms classico style. There’s no probably about it at all - the US facilitates enourmous amounts of slave labor and that’s not even getting into the resource extraction from the global south that keeps the whole machine running.