> Locking people in a cage for years and controlling every detail of their life: okay
Not "okay". Far from okay. Potentially justified on the theory that imprisoning people may be necessary to protect society and deter offenders. (Although many other countries obtain better results with lower/fewer prison sentences and better conditions.)
Forcing people to dig holes, on the other hand? Not necessary. And yes, it is slavery.
> making them do work while locked in the box unacceptable
It's more the "incarcerated workers in the U.S. earn an average of just between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour" that's unacceptable, I think, rather than just the concept of prisoners working.
It does not seem fair, when someone tells you one thing, to imagine that they believe some other thing they have not mentioned and then ask them why they believe those two things together.
I'm not telling someone they believe those things. I'm saying that I don't see how you can believe one without believing the other, since they both require the same leap of logic.
And I don't think people believe that locking prisoners up is actually kidnapping and abduction - I am actually more of the mind that people don't really think it is slavery, but are just saying that as a rhetorical point.
Just like many conservatives don't really think abortion is murder, which is why they don't want to punish aborters the same way they want murderers to be punished.
It seems much more likely that the people who insist on calling forced labor compelled using the threat of torture "slavery" (which, to be clear, is not really an opinion about whether or not we ought to do it) are opposed to the vast majority of the imprisonments in the USA than that they are fine with them.
Right. No one is saying that putting people in a box is kidnapping/abduction because it is baldly ridiculous . However, it is the same exact logic as calling prison labor slavery.
If someone can tell me how prison labor is slavery, but putting them in a box is not kidnapping/abducting, I would be most edified.
I am claiming that putting someone in a box is abduction.
Whether or not the safety of society requires e.g. a violent criminal to be sequestered from that society is immaterial. Taking someone from the world and sticking them in a box is abduction.
> prison labor is slavery, but putting them in a box is not kidnapping/abducting
No one ever claimed this in this comment space. You are inventing a straw-man.
I am happy to vouch for the claim that prison labor is slavery and prison in general is coercive detention, ie, kidnapping, as are many others I'm sure.
In the comment you're replying to, I literally say "no one is saying this"
Why does prison labor get called slavery, but prison detention gets the euphemistic treatment of "coercive detention"? Why isn't prison labor "coercive labor"?
Arrest is kidnapping. When someone other than the state does the crime of imprisonment, that crime is "false imprisonment," so there doesn't seem to be a big divide between the language we use for the two things.
Totally unrelated to language issues, kidnapping and imprisonment are very harmful and people ought to exercise great care to do them very little.
At least in the US we have this statement in the Constitution:
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
There is no such supporting language for calling imprisonment "kidnapping", whereas compelling labor from prisoners is explicitly identified here as your choice of "slavery" or "involuntary servitude".
I believe that even before emancipation was finally achieved, slave holders were already looking for the next slavery analogue: share cropping, jobs which were paid in tips, and prison labor.
The prison part is the slavery, the digging the whole is the labor. As you have pointed out, there's an odd pearl clutching among a lot of people on the matter. I think those who argue of the negative incentives it creates are right, but too many appeals to emotion over the term slavery. The reason the 13th amendment included the crime provision is so that we can continue to imprison people, any work they do or don't do is secondary to the loss of rights.
