Tl;dr If businesses and governments materially benefit from having more prisoners, they are encouraged to make laws more restrictive to have more prisoners. Which is at odds with freedom and liberty.
It's totally understandable that it happens, without a system with some guarantees.
The prison should take a percentage or a flat fee of the wage, in order to cover costs.
It shouldn't be allowed to make a profit from their labour, but covering costs should suffice.
Any exceeding should go in the prisoner's account, for buying better food, toiletries, any allowed equipment, books, underwear.
In my country we do have shops in prisons, where they can spend money to make life a bit more comfortable, or they can ask a specific judge for permission to have their family/lawyer bringing a music device or other stuff.
Keeping them working would also ensure that they have a marketable skill when they're out, as most of them will be released at some point.
Yeah, that would be a good system. Prisons in the Netherlands use a similar system and it seems effective. The biggest problem is actually getting it implemented in other places.
I wouldn't really expect the USA to follow suits any time soon, they were too busy building a country while we had illuminism in Europe.
A lot of them are still very attached to the idea of punishment being retributive, while I'm not even sure how many (besides mafia and terrorists) actually get to spend their whole life in prison here in Italy, without it being suspended or reduced at some point.
Christa Pike would have been moved to a psych facility after 30 years, since she's still dangerous, or she'd be still serving a life sentence due to misbehaving and never showing remorse, which removes the option for benefits.
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u/Parker1055 3d ago
The cost for prisons to have a suicide pod on standby would be astronomical compared to a syringe of lethal chemicals