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In Maine, prisoners are thriving in remote jobs

(www.mainepublic.org)
245 points voxadam | 2 comments | 22 Sep 25 22:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.502s | source
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taurath ◴[22 Sep 25 23:07 UTC] No.45340733[source]▶
If we get serious about actual rehabilitation in prisons instead of punishment there’s never been a better time to be able to learn just about anything on your own time. But we’d have to stop dehumanizing criminals. Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now.

We can also be concerned about the incentives for prison labor - for profit prisons and all the many service providers that get paid a mint. Phone calls in many prisons are like $10. Labor gangs and the such. It’s just horrible how badly we treat people in the US for some middleman to make money.

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1. thephyber ◴[23 Sep 25 01:08 UTC] No.45341686[source]▶
Yeah, I think the if at the beginning of your comment is doing some very heavy lifting.

I don’t think many people in the US care about rehab. They seem viscerally invested in the concept of a prison as a place to store/segregate violent people, but have no interest in either helping those people learn to live safely in society or to have any advantages that the poorest non-prisoner gets.

Before we can jump straight to pointing to successful prison labor programs, I think we need to figure out how to message to those voters that it matters how we treat prisoners.

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2. taurath ◴[23 Sep 25 04:10 UTC] No.45342758[source]▶
> I don’t think many people in the US care about rehab

I think they exist quite widely among the population. Old, white republicans want more people in jail. Young, non-white democrats think we jail too many people.

50% of the country thinks we jail too many

s) https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/45975-what-americ...