Should the state train prisoners to do high skilled jobs?

Yes – but only if it does the same for the unemployed and under-employed.

And, generally, it should do so for all groups.

Only insofar as it helps them to reintegrate into society after their release.
Beyond that I consider it slavery.

You know, I never really thought of that but I think it is a fantastic idea. Make it pure voluntarily and give them the skills they need to succeed in life. I know some prisons teach basic blue collar skills, but they aren’t taught them to the extent necessary gain a job. So basically yah, great idea.

I feel that there’s nothing ethically wrong with the state employing prisoners, provided that their working conditions met industry standards. It would certainly reduce the per-prisoner maintenance cost, which ought to add up to lower taxes. Heck, it wouldn’t even all have to be manual labor – think of the unskilled office jobs that they could undertake.
It’s not like not being a prisoner will guarantee good wages and hours. I know actual people who work long hours for a pittance at restaurants and such.

There is still the matter of consent, but I’m pretty sure that a lot of people would be happy to leave their cells for a few hours a day to sort mail.

The economic side of things is a bit thornier – state employees that you don’t have to pay would be phenomenally more popular than ones that you do, so there would be fewer secretaries et. al. being hired. This could further injure the unemployment rate, but at the same time it ought, as I said, to cut down on how much of your income gets eaten in taxes.

I’m not wild about the idea, personally. Many of us pay a lot of cash in the form of tuition for ourselves and our children to obtain these skills and training – or long terms of training and apprenticing of our own – and now I should pay for criminals to obtain those skills?

Added to the fact that they’ll face an employment barrier anyway because of the fact of having been in prison, and now we’ve got high-skill unemployed ne’er-do-wells. Not enthusiastic.

I recognize the need for people to have productive work, and I’d be in favor of reduced jail terms for people who can line up jobs and demonstrate an ability to work and live in society without re-offending. So I wouldn’t have a problem with employers interviewing and training on their own, and providing halfway housing, etc.

I am in no way receptive to another government bureaucracy, administration, political plum, civil service position. I’m strongly opposed to that.

I’m not sold on the idea of jails as ‘punishment’ in any case. In my mind the idea of prison is to sequester known / proven bad actors from the rest of us in order to give us a respite from their bad acts. So I have no problem with prisoners learning anything they can and bettering themselves in any way that they can. I’m just not enthused about the idea of paying for it.

I don’t know so much about highly skilled jobs—especially since such jobs usually have a degree of confidentiality tacked on to their duties. However, either way taxes are going toward keeping prisoners in prisons, and that system is saturated with inmates. Instead of keeping such people cooped up, then turning them right back out into their old situations lather rinse repeat, ad infinitum, impart some real skills so they can break out of those cycles. I may become repetitive in my Fluthering, but this is one of my pet peeves—society is so rabid about punishing, but not about effectively rehabilitating. What is up with that?

Add that to privately run prisons and you have the re institution of slavery. Here in Pennsylvania we just had a judge convicted for sending kids to private institutions for a kickback from that institution.

I think that both prison labor for anything but the upkeep of a state prison and for-profit prisons are un-American, and a form of slavery and human trafficking.

I think anything that goes beyond keeping them busy and using constructive time as a form of reward/punishment thing is wrong. Our local prison makes small wooden items, like bird houses, small wine racks and shelves. I knew a prison in New Zealand where they made pallets and another that made sandals. There is a fine line. Keeping them busy, teaching and training them is one thing, using them as a free labour source is quite another thing.

No, not unless the state has enough of a positive budget to offer the same training to residents who are not criminals. I don’t believe people who’ve acted against other citizens should have preferential treatment- why reward the wrongdoers when there are plenty of challenged non offending people in need?

High skilled jobs are hard enough to come by by those who never set foot in prison. Most prisoners (going out on a limb) won’t have the aptitude or commitment to stay with it and would be weeded out early on but the few who do make good use of it should as a condition of completion after release, repay the state when they are finally employed. That would be fair.

Prisoners should be just that, a prisoner. Yes, many states use prisoners for labor jobs. Most of the these prisoners are trustworthy and save the state and county money. Like, cleaning the side of the roads of trash. We all benefit from this.

Most prisoners are not well-educated. For the most part, most do not have more than a 9th grade education. Some white collar prisoners have degrees, but these people are not normally chosen for medial prisoner jobs.

Bad idea to use prisoners for anything. The opportunity to escape will never leave their mind and they will take advantage of the situation, if it presents itself. This has been proven time after time in prison history.

Given the huge number of people in prison at any one time in the USA, why not? If we didn’t stick them in prison, they’d be out of prison likely being functional members of society!

@bolwerk I think the point should be to fix the system so that there are fewer prisoners not encourage people to plead guilty for free ob training.

@bolwerk I’d like to learn more of that logic….right there :/

@bolwerk Yet every prisoner in prison is there because he broke a law. It’s not like we have much more in the way of laws here than in other Western countries, so I wonder at the imprisonment rate. Maybe our police are just… better?

Hmm, thanks, @Nullo. Once the stupidity of that reasoning fully sinks in, perhaps I will come back to mock it!

@bolwerk hahaha…. @Nullo such flaws in reasoning deserve no rebuttal. But knowing you as I do, I know that your tongue was strongly planted in cheek when you wrote that.

@cazzie
I think he is quite serious there.
I will exclude the possibility that american police is more competent than those of more Civilised countries, so the only two options that remain are.
1. america imprisons a lot of people unnecessarily, be it by excessive punishment or false convictions.
2. america has more criminals per capita that need to be imprisoned.

@ragingloli – I would throw in that perhaps the most important factor is not mentioned – that the U.S. criminalizes a great deal of activity that it need not (i.e., there are more crimes).

@iamthemob
I would put that under 1.