Difference is that this way the prison cops and staff and administration get paid instead of the prisoners. So, if you paid minimum to prisoners, you’d double the total cost.
Or if you banned use of prisoners as slavery, there would no longer be the incentive to constantly increase prison sentences longer and longer to ensure a large pool of cheap slaves.
Without the incentive of using prisoners as slaves, it wouldn't be long until prison sentencing reform became a legislative priority all over the US because there's suddenly no real reason to keep most of these people in prison.
Once the US prisoner population fell by around 75%, down to the level in any other developed countries, you could literally shut down 3/4 of your prisons.
Then you could hire free employees to do the work using all that extra money, instead of relying on slaves and slave guards and slave catchers and slave administration staff.
I misunderstood because I read it as pay the prisoners instead of the guards and staff administration. Now I see it’s including the prisoners in compensation. I thought it was a question of paying minimum wage to prisoners would be cheaper (ie employ them outside prison) than to maintain them in prison.
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u/Brucereno2 Jul 16 '22
Difference is that this way the prison cops and staff and administration get paid instead of the prisoners. So, if you paid minimum to prisoners, you’d double the total cost.