Simon Power is complaining about the lack of work in prisons, saying that the government "lets 81% of prisoners do nothing". Reading down, while he complains about the lack of spending on work training programmes, he also states that
“Prisoners should be doing meaningful work, training or study while they are in prisons, and I imagine the public would agree.”
Tough talk. But when you unpack this, what he's really saying is that the coercive power of the state should be applied to those we keep in prison to force them to work. As I've pointed out before, there is a word for people who are kept behind bars and forced to work all day. They're called slaves. The National Party is supporting the use of slave labour in New Zealand. I guess its one way of keeping wages down and easing the labour shortage...
Both our international obligations (e.g. Article 8(3)(a) of the ICCPR) and basic moral decency should rule out the sort of prison slave labour scheme Power is advocating. The government should be providing work and training schemes, both to assist with rehabilitation, and so prisoners have something to do other than sit and stare at the walls of their cells all day. But these must be voluntary, at market rates (with any deductions made transparently), and with the full protection of employment law. Anything less is exploitative, coercive, and wrong.
5 comments:
If you are going to lock people up, and I think we lock far too many up, then it makes sense for them to do something while in jail.
I don't mean sewing mailbags, but some sort of literacy training, behaviour therapy, etc. can only be useful - if only to keep them from planning crime with their mates, which I suspect most prisoners spend their time doing.
Posted by Rich : 11/06/2006 02:48:00 PM
I don't get it.... you refer us to Article 8(3)(a), but the next paragraph is:
(b) Paragraph 3 (a) shall not be held to preclude, in countries where imprisonment with hard labour may be imposed as a punishment for a crime, the performance of hard labour in pursuance of a sentence to such punishment by a competent court.
In general, your thought in this area is completely sloppy, brow-beating, and question-begging i/s, hence not worth responding to (because where does one begin?).... but this exercise was so specifically pathetic it seemed worth mentioning!
Posted by Anonymous : 11/07/2006 10:25:00 PM
Anon: note the important bit: "in pursuance of a sentence to such punishment by a competent court". People in this country aren't sentenced to hard labour, and haven't been for quite some time. Absent such a sentence (and a law providing for it), forcing them to work violates the ICCPR, and possibly the BORA ban on ex post facto punishment as well.
Posted by Idiot/Savant : 11/07/2006 11:33:00 PM
Power is hardly talking about hard labour when he says "meaningful work, training or study." Also conditions of imprisonment aren't punishments within the terms of the ban on ex post facto punishments (Courts have held this would be unworkable).
Posted by Graeme Edgeler : 11/08/2006 12:08:00 AM
And the *next* clause continues:
(c) For the purpose of this paragraph the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include:
(i) Any work or service, not referred to in subparagraph (b), normally required of a person who is under detention in consequence of a lawful order of a court, or of a person during conditional release from such detention
Of course, the next clause goes on to explicitly allow national service/conscription..... but that too is just more slavery according to i/s. How frustrating it must be to live in one's own terminological bubble but to be constantly dependant on authorities that constantly bburst that bubble.
By "transparent deduction" I do hope you mean "at least 95% of market rate is deducted and this explicitly charged against the massive cost of keeping the person in prison - prisoner is also provided with representative pictures and descriptions of what the government could have purchased in the outside world with all the money that's being spent on them there". But I guess not.
Posted by Anonymous : 11/08/2006 01:30:00 AM
Post a Comment
(Anonymous comments are enabled).