In Maine, prisoners are thriving in remote jobs

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.

One of the overlooked purposes of imprisonment isn't revenge or rehabilitation, it's just letting the rest of us be away from that person for a while, removing them from society.

Yeah the conclusion from here [1] is that the biggest reason a prison can reduce crime is not because of rehabilitation or deterrence (even in places that try to do either) but because of incapacitation. It holds people in their prime age of doing crime (15-30) and spits them back out when they're too old to do those anymore. The obvious conclusion is that exile will have the same effect, but we don't have place to exile people to anymore.

1. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prison-and-crime-much-more-...