Industrial Labor

Even though our prisons fail in their goals of deterrence and rehabilitation, there is one way they succeed: incapacitation. When criminals are in prison, they cannot commit crimes in the free world. They still commit crimes in prison.

Incapacitation now ranks as the primary justification for prison. Society has almost given up on rehabilitation, the original goal of the penitentiary. When Congress abolished parole in the federal criminal justice system, they found point-blank that rehabilitation efforts have largely failed.

Some studies show great value in temporarily preventing crime with incapacitation. One found that for each convict released due to prison overcrowding litigation, over a dozen crimes are committed, at a cost of above the average cost of keeping a prisoner for one year. Another found the cost of releasing a criminal to be over 10 times the cost of incarceration. Many inmates unless confined commit something like 200 crimes per year. One economist found four reasons for the marked decrease in U.S. crime, starting in about 1991: the rising prison population, more police, the receding crack cocaine epidemic and the legalization of abortion. One advantage of prison is that it gives young men and women time to mature. After lengthy prison sentences, older, more mature offenders are less likely to re-offend violently than when they were younger. Read the rest of this entry »

“Arbeit macht frei” is a German phrase meaning “work brings freedom” or “work shall set you free/will free you” or “work liberates” and, literally in English, “work makes free”. It became the unofficial slogan of Nazi concentration camps, as the prisoners would enter the camp they would see the wrought iron sign over head and would savor its message.

If I do what these people are compelling me to do I can regain my freedom. But it was a mixed message while the prisoner interpreted as regaining his freedom his slave masters read it another way work makes free. Your work makes products free for that is the essence of slave labor compelled indentured or forced labor. The Nazi’s employed thousands in their war machine for these slaves were captured prisoners or undesirables or both and it was essential to keep them busy for the good of the state.

For unlike America the Germans looked down on Rosy the riveter they preferred the ladies to stay home to make babies for the next generation master race. But the Reich needed labor so what’s a Fuehrer to do? The Japanese as well had huge programs of forced labor during world war two and thousands died at the hands of their slave masters. It would be easy enough to assume that their slave masters were wantonly cruel but that misses the point completely, it is the nature of slavery to dehumanize the slave. Read the rest of this entry »