I feel like you could make a Stephen King esq horror movie from this. Got caught buying a stolen horse trailer, no record of drug abuse. Get sent to the gulag “rehab,” center. Hand pulled into the machinery. Block you from getting medical treatment. Force you to keep working. Steal your workers comp. Meanwhile the warden is walking up and down the halls singing hymns and menacingly dragging a chain.
Sit through the whole 1h30min movie and it turns out it’s just a Tyson nuggets commercial.
It's unbelievable and if they ever make a movie or HBO-type series of it, it will need to be seriously toned down, lest it ends up being too horrirific.
They should change the name from "Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" to "Biblical Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" because there is nothing Christian about what they are doing. Not an expert on Jesus but from what I've read he was a pretty forgiving guy. I did read the old testament and most of the stories are about cruelty, punishment and obedience.
I'd go further than that, using Jesus's name to enslave and abuse for the benefit of private companies is nothing short of blasphemous.
I have a lot of time for Jesus's teachings, but no time for institutions using his name as an instrument of control and abuse. Would the man who famously threw the merchants and money-changers out of the temple and went to his death with the intention of attaining forgiveness for all mankind want abusive slave camps built in his name? The mental gymnastics required to make that work would be worthy of Olympic gold. I hope the people behind this awful system really do have a powerful spiritual/religious experience and seek forgiveness for the horrors they've inflicted on their fellow human beings.
Please spare us the "there is nothing christian about..." or "jesus was a forgiving guy..." because this is what Christians do over and over again.
There is no special innate morality that Christianity imbues in people. If anything it feeds people's narcissism and makes them behave even worse. "I am important b/c god speaks to me, I can do no wrong because I have the word of god and am surrounded by people who say the same."
Christianity is constantly on the wrong side of history. Christians were overwhelmingly pro-slavery, and used the bible to justify their owning of slaves. Women's rights, accepting of homosexual and trans individuals. Heck, look at today: The republicans whose absurd agenda are prolonging the pandemic are overwhelmingly Christian.
Maybe it's time to stop pointing at "bad Christians" and saying "well they are doing it wrong." Maybe YOU are doing Christianity wrong.
I can't be doing Christianity wrong because I've never done Christianity at all.
But if Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, which would make sense since they named the religion after him, they're straying pretty far from the rulebook.
Slap a sticker with Jesus on the can and pay off Pastor Bob to babble some nonsense and you have a “Christian” service. Things operate a little differently because you’re serving Jesus, and Jesus wants you to be rich.
You can peddle anything from slave camp to variable annuities with that model.
Well, no, if they aren't following the authentic way of Christ, they aren't.
Of course, who that applies to is a problematic thing to apply, but the fact that it may be difficult to authoritiatively assess the degree of Christianity of different groups just means that that degree is indeterminate, not equal among them.
You are falling to No true Scotsman aka appeal to purity fallacy with religion.
Christianity is defined by Christians not how others interpret the bible. Different Christians define it differently. There is no one real way to be Christian.
Agreed, but aren't there ways not to be a Christian?
What Janet Wilkerson is doing goes against every quote I've heard in the Bible about Jesus. Love thy neighbor, do unto others as others would do unto you and more.
Christianity has a code of ethics, they vary by interpretation, but what Wilkerson is doing is so out of the mainstream that I'm giving her a red card. Same with Westboro Baptists and the other televangelists that cloak themselves in religion as a tool to rake in cash.
It's a religion, it's based on a work of fiction. Everyone can gatekeep it to their liking, that doesn't mean they are right. You said it yourself, it all depends on interpretation.
> Christianity has a code of ethics [citation needed], they vary by interpretation
There are only Cafeteria Christians. Their bible has been finely tuned to be full of interpretation, contradiction, and weirdness. Nothing resembling a cohesive doctrine can be formed without picking and choosing the parts you like and completely ignoring the parts that go against it.
I mean, for a couple of centuries, one of mainstream Christianity’s big things, perhaps its _defining_ thing, was invading Palestine and doing extremely nasty things to the locals when they won (and not just to Muslims and Jews; local Christians, being the Wrong Sort of Christian, also didn’t fare well). And that was all, at the time, basically accepted as compatible with Christianity.
Today, virtually no Christian would be okay with the Crusades, and certainly wouldn’t think of what was done as being compatible with Christianity. Christianity’s been historically extremely malleable, and what Jesus said has rarely been all that big a part of it for most Christians.
So if you're a Protestant, and a Catholic says you're not a proper christian because difference in religious dogma who's right? What about Jews for Jesus? Is a Christian defined by his faith or his acts?
These things are all up for debate.
To attack your metaphor: Is he a true Scotsman when both his parents are scottish and he was born just a wee bit over the border?
Well, if you disagree with the one central dogma of christianism, it's pretty much the case that you are not christian. It's not the case that your scottish was born just over the border, it's that his family is from Madagascar and he was born there.
Otherwise, what is giving that group of people a name even good for? It's like somebody claiming to be democrat, as long as all the law is written by a single person, or marxist, as long as commerce and private ownership are preserved.
But my point is exactly that: the "central dogma" doesn't exist. Is it essential dogma that gays will not get into heaven? Yes, and also no, depending on the denomination.
When you get a billion people creating hundreds(thousands?) of factions, there are no unifying ideas that bind everyone. I mean the council of Nicea had to happen for exactly this reason.
"Thou shall not kill/murder" is a commandment, and yet the crusades were allowed to happen because of the interpretation of what "kill/murder" means.
Christianity is not a monolith, and the book can be used to justify all sorts of things that other people would feel goes entirely against the core of the faith.
There's no true Scotsmen here because Scotland is a state of mind and not anything absolute.
The whole bible is about liberation from slavery (of sin) and quite clear about being against slavery (physical).
Read of Israel's salvation from Egyptian slavery? Joseph? Limits on slavery (7 year max) because people were too stubborn to accept not having slaves. The year of Jubilee?
The bible has multiple verses codifying how to treat slaves. All sorts of rules and protocols. The old testament does not say "slavery is a sin" or "slavery is forbidden". It clearly says "slavery should be done this way". An as soon as you do that, slavery becomes accepted.
It has provisions to help limit the harms of slavery, this is not the same as actively promoting it. It's similar to the allowance of divorce (and polygamy) in the OT which Jesus says was simply allowed/tolerated due to the hardness of their hearts.
There’s plenty of bits about fighting the neighbouring lands, killing all the men and taking the women for “marriage” (which, let’s face it, is a fancy way of saying sexual slavery and rape).
The Old Testament is full of these battles of conquest...
People popularly think he is more forgiving than he is, in new testament (he isn't, for example he explicitly says he "brings the sword", he more than once displays he is at least annoyed with people, and the famous passages about giving the other face and so on are more about civil disobedience than forgiveness)
And people like to portray old testament God as unforgiving (he isn't either. he did forgive people a bunch of times, and was very patient, and some of episodes that understood today as cruel, were necessary for one reason or another, for example when he told Israelites to execute the children of their enemies after a particular battle, the reason for that is the battle happened in the middle of the desert in a place with not enough food for both groups, it was either execution or abandon them to starve on the desert on their own).
> it was either execution or abandon them to starve on the desert on their own
Yeah, that's cruel and unforgiving. Surely an all-powerful deity could've sprouted a few plants and let the kids join the conquerors with enough food.
The much more reasonable explanation is that this was purely human cruelty created by a lack of resources because there never was a higher power helping them out in the first place.
In the new testament they are bouncing back and forth between man-jesus, God Jesus, and eastern philosophy quotes attributed to man-god Jesus. Select the Jesus you want or just ignore him and focus on Paul's letters.
The diversity of philosophy in early Christianity is really interesting, I'd advise anyone from the most evangelical of Christians to the most evangelical of atheists to study it with an open (but not uncritical) mind. At the very worst, you'll have gained new insights into what might have been had history worked out a bit differently which is always really interesting in my opinion.
Love it or loathe it, Christianity has had an enormous influence on Western civilisation so if that's where you hail from it will always be something worth knowing about and knowing about from a neutral perspective.
This is one of the most horrific articles I've read in recent times. This is absolutely disgraceful.
We have to be better than this, there has got to be more tools for people to liberate themselves away from this.
I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity. I went through a residential treatment program in Nashville, and there were jobs galore back then, so I went right to work and I've been sober for 22 years, and actually my 22nd year started just a few days ago.
This guy didn't even have an addiction problem, I'm almost certain the judge is getting some sort of incentive to punish these people with this program. I honestly think private rehabs are just destined for abuse, it doesn't make sense to treat a public health problem as a private industry product.
>I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity
They're poor, not stupid. Moving to a blue state doesn't magically make you richer and opportunity doesn't mean anything unless there's a chance you can capitalize on it.
Unless you have a skill or trait that somehow gives you a leg up over the local poors you're destined to be just as poor when you get there. And if you do have some path upward you may as well work that path locally with the benefit of your support network.
If you're young, a hard worker and paying into your support network a lot more than you're getting out and don't have a lot of time/effort/money sunk into your support network yet than a bus ticket might be a good idea (and young people often do move long distances). If you're supporting a family then the better bennies might be worth it but if you're supporting a family moving away from your support network without taking several steps backwards in terms of stability is going to be nigh on impossible.
One of the biggest things that keeps people poor is an inability to have a financial buffer for unplanned expenses. And everyone knows that relocating is fraught with high risk of those kinds of expenses. If the destination has a higher cost of living all the risks are magnified.
Speaking as someone who has been helping a friend stay afloat for years now, you’re absolutely correct.
“Just move” is a recurring theme in HN comments whenever this type of story pops up, which seems to be a reflection of the misconception that people in poverty are to blame for failing to have enough initiative to get out.
> This guy didn't even have an addiction problem, I'm almost certain the judge is getting some sort of incentive to punish these people with this program.
Maybe. After reading the entire article, I think that it's a little more complex. The convict gets the option of jail or chicken farm.
After choosing the chicken farm, the convict still has the option of doing the jail time instead. The reason they work so hard, endure the horrific conditions and do so without pay is because they still feel that it is better than jail.
The problem arises when Judges (who, like you said, may have an incentive to provide slaves) start weighting the jail option heavier in order to promote the chicken farm option; for example, offer 5 years in jail or two years in slavery.
Another problem with biased Judges is that they may start convicting based on the labour requirements, not on the criminal intent, element and other factors.
Anyone here who also read The Talisman (Stephen King, Peter Straub)? Similar thing there.
>The convict gets the option of jail or chicken farm
I'm not convinced that's always true. There's many different courts from different states sending people there. At the very least, there are probably threats of much longer prison times. Like "1 year at the chicken farm" or "3-5 years in prison" perhaps. Or "1 year at the chicken farm that's eligible to be expunged from your record" vs "1 year in prison that will always be hanging over you in the form of background checks". Prosecutors and judges are quite good at making optional things not really optional and have all sorts of levers they can pull (credit for back time, waiving court costs, dropping X of Y charges, "enhancements" of charges, pre-sentencing conditions, deferred adjudication, and so on).
Providing jail as the alternative fits the definition of forced labour under the 1930 UN Convention on Forced Labour
"UN Convention No. 29 concerning forced or compulsory labour defines
‘forced or compulsory labour’ as ‘all work or service which is exacted from
any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said
person has not offered himself voluntarily’. "
That doesn't say what you think it says. There is no menace of penalty; the person in question is already sentenced to imprisonment for their crime.
The option to escape imprisonment via "rehab" or "labour" is done voluntarily while they are under the sentence handed to them.
IOW, the convict is offered an option to not serve their imprisonment. They're free to reject it and continue to serve out their imprisonment. This is not forced labour, as their is no penalty imposed on them for refusing the offer.
Actually such programs are often a form of "diversion" you haven't actually even been convicted yet. Say someone robs a store to feed their drug habit. In the good form of this we realize that drugs are the root cause and allow someone to complete drug treatment instead of going to prison. If you complete it the charges are dropped and you don't have to live the rest of your life as a felon.
People just realized that they could create "Christian" work programs where they mix in a gram of jesus into their 10 tons of hard labor as marketing or flavor if you prefer.
> Actually such programs are often a form of "diversion" you haven't actually even been convicted yet.
Are you sure? All the cases I know off (including the ones in the article) have these deals made only after conviction but before sentencing[1].
[1] Most people don't realise that those are two separate processes, commonly rolled into a single court date. It is not unusual to have one appearance for judgement (conviction) and a separate one for sentencing.
The jail time is almost always higher than it would have been under normal circumstances in order to make the choice "forced" without actually being forced. It's an age old trick of plea deals and prosecution perversion.
> The jail time is almost always higher than it would have been under normal circumstances in order to make the choice "forced" without actually being forced. It's an age old trick of plea deals and prosecution perversion.
Yes it is, and I already said that, but that still doesn't make it forced labour.
> At the very least, there are probably threats of much longer prison times. Like "1 year at the chicken farm" or "3-5 years in prison" perhaps. Or "1 year at the chicken farm that's eligible to be expunged from your record" vs "1 year in prison that will always be hanging over you in the form of background checks". Prosecutors and judges are quite good at making optional things not really optional and have all sorts of levers they can pull (credit for back time, waiving court costs, dropping X of Y charges, "enhancements" of charges, pre-sentencing conditions, deferred adjudication, and so on).
Didn't I say all that with
> The problem arises when Judges (who, like you said, may have an incentive to provide slaves) start weighting the jail option heavier in order to promote the chicken farm option
> It feels heavy enough that the word "option" often no longer applies.
Maybe, but the article omits any details about what was offered, so we can't tell if it was a fair or transparent offer to the convict. All we can do is say "We FEEL that it is unfair", because there are no facts for us to say "We KNOW this is unfair".
He was sent to a rehab facility when he had no addiction problem[1]. He was forced to attend AA meetings, etc. That's enough for me to assume the state had other motives.
> The reason they work so hard, endure the horrific conditions and do so without pay is because they still feel that it is better than jail.
There may be sunk cost issue involved here as well: as I understand the article, whether you drop out of the "rehab" program in the first month or last month of your planned stay, you're going to prison for the full time. So the longer you stay in the program, the stronger your incentive to stay until the end.
Furthermore, not to discount that the program is literally feeding and preaching to these people.
So, aside from the power disparity (send them back to jail on a whim), there's an omnipresent opportunity to propagandize whatever you want.
And I'm pretty sure CAAIR isn't spending a lot of time talking to people about how chicken processing is hard, backbreaking, unsafe work, and prison is a viable option.
> After choosing the chicken farm, the convict still has the option of doing the jail time instead.
Per article, majority "chooses" jail. Also, lets not pretend people are making some kind of free will choice here. The legal system heavily influences which decision it sees "right" and which is going to be punished.
> I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity
I'm not american, nor do I know much about the states, but at a guess I'd say it comes down to 3 things:
1. Cost of living (I could be wrong, but I imagine these states are cheaper to live in, and moving is often a massive expense in itself)
2. Lack of applicable skills (if you grew up in an area which produces mainly farmers for example, and you move to an area which produces mainly programmers, you're going to have a tough time finding work)
3. Culture (For you these may be "shitty redneck states", but I wouldnt find it suprising at all if the people that live there consider the bigger liberal states the shitty ones. Again US culture isn't a strong point for me so this is just a guess).
This is the big one. I live in a major metropolitan area in a swing state, and my jaw drops whenever I see how low the costs for property, rent, housework, materials, and gasoline are in traditionally red states.
Yeah, I'd pay $1M for the same house in suburban SF that I paid $250K for in suburban Cincinnati. Even if I worked for a FAANG company my salary wouldn't go up four times. Were I to decide to move to a very blue area my standard of living could drop noticeably.
I help people move to Germany. It's tough to explain how much savings you need to cover the flight, rent, deposit etc. at least a month before you see a paycheck.
Additionally, why would someone want to move to a place where folks view their home state / people as "shitty rednecks"? That attitude bleeds into interactions and gets old fast.
> I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity.
I know of two reasons.
1. The "blue states" have, quite deliberately, stopped building housing. This closes a traditional way out of rural poverty, and I think/speculate it's a major driver behind the opioid crisis.
2. The book "Dignity" by Chris Arnade documents the life of dirt poor America. I strongly recommend it. It talks a lot about how many people belong somewhere, and won't move because of that.
Nice places to live stop building housing, as they get wealthy property owners who are sma c conservative/aristocratic (which is a mix of Democrat and Republicans). It's a local effect not a state effect.
A study showed that being a property owner was a far better predictor of opposition to building housing developments than political affiliation. In America we are more united in our desire to protect our property values than we are with our party.
> I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity.
Sometimes you just don't know any better, or you're stuck for what ever other reason. I am 100% certain if it was easier to walk away from situations, anyone really would.
Regardless, congratulations on being sober for 22 years.
Because I grew up in a shitty redneck state, and left to get sober, land my first six-figure job, etc. I'm not making the shit up to insult people, I feel this way because I literally did it. It was the second best decision I ever made aside from getting married.
I've had thousands of conversations in Georgia, and thousands in Oregon, and I prefer the folk in Oregon. And if I was a young twenty something with a rap sheet in Oregon right now, I don't think I'd have to worry about getting sent to a chicken farm to be a slave.
This. It takes a special kind of person to land in a new town, make connections, and find a good job. Especially without skills. Few people are that person.
I've had friends who had to choose between moving away and making some more money and staying where they grew up and making less with a strong support network. In most cases (i.e. unless they are changing industries after completing an education/training/career milestone) the support network reduced their expenses more than the extra wages would have been.
I mean, of course. A lot of the men in the program I went through felt the same way, they would leave after the program back to little hillside towns in TN even and they might make it a few weeks or months before relapsing and doing it all over again.
It's just that element of having to stay in one place is what breaks a lot of people down in recovery. You end up back in the same situation as before, with the same places and faces, and there's this insidious thing your brain does that puts your progress out the window and reminds you exactly how you felt and thought when you were last in that situation.
It's the same reason residential programs work so well, because you learn to associate the place and faces with the learned behavior and learned coping skills. Programs could improve by teaching the skills necessary to recreate the behavior in new places, that's really what sobriety is all about. How can I make it through today, no matter what happens, without walking into the liquor store? If you KNOW that you can answer that question for yourself, regardless of the place, then you're sober. Otherwise, you're on borrowed time.
As someone with addiction experience, a question came to mind while reading this. Horror and evil of this particular example aside.
In your opinion, does staying busy help? I suppose (a) in the initial detox, (b) while relearning behaviors, and (c) after one's left a program and returned to "normal" life?
On the one hand, idle hands, etc. On the other, it feels like learning to be sober while working 14 hour shifts in chicken processing probably isn't the best pattern to set up for returning to life (and a 40/wk job).
Would be interested in any thoughts on the pros or cons. Also, congrats. I've family and friends adding up their own time, and know it's not easy.
In the immediate aftermath of ceasing usage/consumption, yes. Work DOES work in that aspect.
I think regularity and disciplined labor can be hugely beneficial, but if they're working for profit, then of course they should be paid their dues. Now, having said that, I can see a case for placing those funds on hold, so that they don't spend unwisely during cessation, or make bad impulse buys. I've known guys who spent their paychecks on dope right after being clean for 18+ mo in a residential. It can go any direction, that's hard to predict.
As for relearning behaviors, it's sort of reflective. If I get fired and I'm sitting at the bus stop with no supervision and nowhere to be, and I feel ashamed of myself or inadequate, I mean, that's a recipe for relapse. I grew my skill in reflecting on the ability to choose DURING those events. A few days ago, my best friend from rehab was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He's terminal, I went and saw him over the weekend and he looks like walking death. I felt all those crazy feelings and it's like they were all under one big [[you don't have to drink to get through this]] annotation. I can't explain how to just do it, but THATS the skill they're relearning. That's what drugs and alcohol takes away from you until you can get it back.
Normal life is honestly the easiest, but can hurt the most. In most of the people I've met and known, it revolves around relationships with their family and loved ones. That's always an individual thing. All I can say is not to rush it, and just make yourself unimaginably patient no matter what. Being busy isn't that important. It might even be less important, because you just need to give your family time to see you grow back into your previous capabilities with your new knowledge and understanding.
Yes, I don't think the kind of people living in poverty in red states can get a job with an interview over zoom with the company that will pay relocation fees.
Have you seen the cost of housing in the blue states? Where are the booming blue collar job bases to support people without high-end skills and education?
Hmmm...rehab is tough. Are you expecting someone to show up, keep their money, not work, and come and go as they please? If that is the case then you fail at the first step. People who are going to rehab need their entire world consumed with work on a strict schedule.
You ever try helping an opioid addict? They immediately try running off to buy drugs in any way they can. They are consumed with chasing the next high and will lie and steal left and right to get it. Family, friends, it doesn't matter. You can put them up, feed them, give them a job, build them a house on your property, involve them in their nieces and nephews lives, and they still sneak off and go on a bender and hide drugs in your house. The fiascos have no bounds.
People with normal lives seeing the conditions of a rehab program? They are merely appalled by reality. Find something else to get outraged by.
I've unfortunately known the kind of person you describe*, I've also known people with drug problems who would not have been well served by having their "entire world consumed with work on a strict schedule". There's a reason most rehabilitation centers don't focus on that kind of treatment -- it's arguably cruel and absolutely not evidence-based.
* My fiancee's brother was a nasty piece of work. My "favorite" thing he did was lie for months to their father that he had polycystic kidney disease, a heritable disease which had killed their mother. He just kept pulling money out of their father for "treatments" only for it all to be a ruse. I remember Mike (the dad) being in tears because his son was so close to dying. Ugh, it makes me feel dirty just thinking about it.
Edit: although he died a few years later, it was due largely to his not taking care of himself (e.g. untreated diabetes that had already taken his foot). No kidney disease to be seen. And none for my fiancee, knock on wood.
It's notable that in this article the individual they followed wasn't addicted to anything at the start. He fell behind on paying fines and lost his privilege of probation. The state he is living it using hard labor as a diversion from actually going to prison for potentially longer duration than their term of slavery in a chicken plant.
It's not the all consuming nature of the labor that is the issue. The issue is that they actually aren't doing anything whatsoever to help anyone. It's a program to exploit the governments offer of free labor in an environment that first exploits workers and then often destroys them. The individual involved who started with no addiction at all left with a pain pill addition due to permanent spinal damage in unsafe conditions.
> I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity.
Being poor near family and friends is about 100x better than being poor away from them. That network can provide tens of thousands of dollars (if you had to pay strangers for it) per year in services and assistance.
> I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity.
The human mind may be the least well understood thing out there...an even better question might be: why do people expect that other people should behave in a highly logical manner, when they themselves don't?
The guy did have a prison problem. So it was trading one problem for another.
There are folks who are paid to work in such plants. That he didn't get paid is a scam. But the work? It's just working in a chicken plant. Not 'the most horrific thing', unless you've never worked hard and then sure it might seem like that.
So scam aside, this story was 'guy worked hard for a year'.
> That's not an option, it is a threat. And it fits the definition of forced labour.
If you take away the option, they're going to jail anyway, right?
They're convicts so they aren't going to escape the punitive measure unless the court allows it. You're literally arguing that, for a convict, putting them in jail if they refuse the alternative is forced labour, but that's ridiculous, because if all the abusive places referenced in the article didn't exist, they'd be in jail anyway.
Convicts (i.e. people found guilty of a crime and sentenced to imprisonment) aren't going to go free just because the "rehab" places don't exist.
In most jurisdictions convicts get no option - they get the punitive measure whether they like it or not. Giving them an alternative to the punitive measure is not "forced labour" no matter how you try to interpret it.
I disagree with this characterization, if for no other reason than the fact that the nature of the alternatives might not be entirely clear. And should the convict decide six months in that he's tired of being abused doing dangerous work so that meat suppliers can get free labor, he doesn't get time served -- that six months is just lost.
> I disagree with this characterization, if for no other reason than the fact that the nature of the alternatives might not be entirely clear. And should the convict decide six months in that he's tired of being abused doing dangerous work so that meat suppliers can get free labor, he doesn't get time served -- that six months is just lost.
I agree with all of that, but it still doesn't make it "forced labour". Using the term "forced labour" is a larger mischaracterisation of the situation.
But, then again, in my post I did point out that there is not enough information here to determine whether the options being offered are fair, or whether the options are presented factually and truthfully.
If we had more information we might know more, but the article in question is written to provide only a single point of view, and hence all the detail that might let us determine how fair/unfair this is has been omitted.
It's technically interesting to distinguish "labor" from "(more) time in prison", but both are a form of slavery -- loss of major freedom to choose how and where to spend one's time.
Of course it is, obviously. No dispute there. Lets keep to the point.
That's irrelevant to the bulk of the article which tries to paint 'hard work' as an atrocity of some stripe. That's what I'm calling out.
Other people work in chicken plants without being prisoners. They want to. So the work is hard, admittedly, but not some kind of torture. Hey, the prisoners admit that freely by their actions. The article mentions the guards 'threaten' them with return to prison if they don't work. So they choose to work instead of returning to prison. It's a conscious choice, and clearly they prefer the chicken farm.
Agreed, though the threat of "going back to prison" may not just be "oh you have 3 months left, so the threat is doing those 3 months in prison".
The threat could be doing the entire sentence over. The prison sentence could be longer than the 1 year at the chicken farm. It could include loss of eligibility for deferred adjudication (wiping the record clean). And so on. There's typically strong leverage for diversion programs that's more than just "prison" or "chicken farm".
I was born in East Berlin, under what the West likes to call the "horrific Soviet dictatorship". But what I know of the country back then, it was often naive, ineffective at being horrible. People's lives were actyally kind of simple, with fewer pressures. Like if you worked against the state and it's ideals you could get into real trouble, or if you were born to the wrong kind of intellectuals, life could be difficult.
But being poor in the US seems so much more horrible. Having the wrong skin color, or being involved with the wrong herb, the State may treat you so much worse.
> Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime.
I read this reportage years ago and it made my blood boil. For some reason, of all stories of everyday injustice, this stuck with me. My mind often goes back to this case like some sort of mental titinnus. These judges and factory owners have NAMES and ADDRESSES. They need to be REMINDED that all of this can be taken away.
I'm with you 100%. That said when I read something like this and get angry about it I really don't know what I can practically do about it. I have disposable income but I'm not the type to feel righteous and self-assured because I dropped a couple hundred dollar donation on a criminal justice reform NGO.
As far as actions to take, what immediately comes to my mind are ideas that involve becoming a federal felon for violation of the computer fraud and abuse act.
Does anyone have any concrete ideas on what to do as a technical, moderately affluent person when you come across such insidious bullshit?
The other day I found an interesting webpage linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232716 that outlines the practical accessibility of hiring researchers for things. There are a lot of possibilities here: a domain expert could autonomously take the subject further, or they could provide targeted insights that factor in your strengths/areas of expertise, or they could even work with the original reporters (who likely have private access to a tonne more info, and might be willing to follow up with it further if independent funding is possible, etc).
(The thread the above comment is from was also very interesting too.)
> CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts
How is this not just outright fraud? The state may turn a blind eye towards horrific abuses of prisoners, but they're not going to be so sanguine about theft of their money. Even worse this creates an incentive to make the workplace dangerous, since each injury is more cash in the administrator's pockets.
And then the engine of government will pounce on you with a vengeance for daring to "threaten" them even if you do so much as offer a angry letter.
The complete lack of personal accountability was not always a thing. Tales abound in colonial America about officials getting tarred and feathered for acting in nakedly corrupt ways. But the global village means you dont even care what happens to your neighbor anymore as they are too far and distant from you despite geographic proximity.
Good to mention, but the UK prison release programme is paid, albeit often at minimum wage and subject to a 40% additional tax. As far as I understand it, it is optional for prisoners to engage with though.
> As far as I understand it, it is optional for prisoners to engage with though.
I think we often use “optional” in the wrong way when we’re talking about choices we give to prisoners. When the other option is a dangerous prison it really starts to feel more coercive.
The California inmates fighting wildfires for $1.45/day also comes to mind.
Even at 1.45 they fight and compete over slots to participate. They'd have prisoners volunteer to do it for free even. You have to realize how draining and soul destroying prison is.
By doing the fire fighting they get to leave the prison occasionally, and do something with their life that people compete to do outside the prison system. Also parts of fire fighting training is pretty cool to be honest. People want something/anything to give their life meaning and purpose, and fire fighting does that in a very prestigious way.
Ideally they'd get full wages, (at least minimum wage, sense their food and housing is taken care of) and be able to use their fire fighting certification to immediately enter the work force on release. But I believe they are barred from becoming fire fighters afterwords.
Institutional review boards (IRBs) take a very tight view of doing research in prisoners specifically for this reason. The environment is inherently coercive and when someone wields this much power of you there is very little that you would see as optional.
Slavery as punishment for a crime is specifically allowed in the Constitution. The high incarceration rate for former slaves is not a coincidence. Former slaveowners retained their positions of power after the civil war and have worked tirelessly to bring back what they see as the natural order of things.
What is amazing to me is that this comment 20 years ago would have seemed like an unhinged rant, but today, with all that has happened in the last decade, rings as painfully true.
Wasn't there a study of addicted mice that renormalized completely in an environment with lots of social activity, lots of play, lots of good food, lots of exercise, i.e. essentially "mouse heaven"?
The data isn't quite as compelling since you can't lock humans up in cages for this kind of experiment (unless you're an Arkansas judge) but most of the evidence suggests the same thing in humans too.
The instinct for "shock treatment" and to hope they hit "rock bottom" is completely misguided. While there is probably no one-size-fits-all treatment for addiction, in most cases they need resocialization, routine, exercise structured around activities that reward without the drug. In the case of serious addicts prone to relapsing or who can't get through withdrawal successfully, a slow medically supervised taper off is probably ideal.
Basically, you want to minimize the stress on the addict, avoid withdrawal, make the transition off the drug a gradual one, and stabilize them socially and economically so they have deeper ties so they build up coping strategies besides resorting to drugs. Unfortunately this is the very opposite of what we usually do. Criminal intervention often destroys social relations, results in repeated cyclical withdrawals (often with risk of overdose each time), results in job losses and housing losses, and generally just adds a great deal of chaos that makes getting stable harder.
When you're convicted of a crime, you lose a lot of freedoms. The 13th amendment (the one that abolished slavery) explicitly contains the wording "...except as punishment for crime..."
A huge amount of western industrialized life is built upon wage slavery, the constant threat of being made homeless at gunpoint if one does not work long hours at a completely shitty job.
It takes a LOT of garbage haulers, floor sweepers, line cooks, dishwashers, and the like to keep our society humming along.
It's ostensibly voluntary, so not the same thing as in TFA, but close.
There is also a huge amount of slave labor used in the US's world-leading prison population. Slavery was never really abolished in the US, just limited to prisoners. Correspondingly, the number of black people in prison skyrocketed.
So, so much suffering. The worst part is that we all support this global system of inequality with every purchase and every vote. It is the inescapable consequence of "more for me."
It can be simultaneously true that men have systemic problems with Eg. A higher completed suicide rate (women attempt suicide more often, but men chose deadlier methods when attempting) and also that women are also oppressed on multiple other axis that are also important to evaluate and support, such as women having significantly higher risks of being sexually assaulted and being significantly higher risk of being subjected to being a victim of sex trafficking and sex slavery.
I do think it merits a serious investigation as to why so many men are undersocialized and unable to be vulnerable and intimate outside of a relationship, which in turn forces relationships to essentially be their therapy (which is deeply unhealthy and codependent). But doing a men vs women thing is a distraction from focusing on men.
Ah right, so men-on-men violence, it doesn’t count? Because all men are pigs, right?
Are you asserting that women can’t do anything about it? Try harder: In 1914, they demonstrated so that single men go to war, because they wanted to be protected.
And up to today, the men who date are the ones who are feminist, ie the ones who require other men to do things for women. When it’s men-on-men violence, it’s often in the name of women, who will complacently benefit from, for example, men establishing a large company at the expense of the people who were overworked.
The ones who date men do turn a blind eye on the competition men face at work, as long as they have a nice date, a nice holiday together or a nice family. But all those require to be at ease with money, risk bankruptcy for those who create a company, truck accidents for those who work day and night, shootings for those who enter a big drug coup, and cardiac arrest at 45 for office jobs. And god forbid, not annoy the missus with those “details”. It’s just risks we’re talking about, why bother her before they are realized.
That should probably read "rich people", because while, yes, it was usually men doing the dirty work of enslaving other men, it was usually rich families who reaped the rewards.
That doesn't make it right, easy to address or something to dismiss.
The feminist movement showed that it is possible to address gender roles and inequities in society without it being a zero-sum game. Some men have noticed.
Evidently someone read Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly and thought it contained some good ideas for a business, rather than a dire warning of a ghastly dystopia
I considered writing this with a throwaway account but decided against it. Enough time has past that I feel sharing won't impact my future.
I dropped out of an art college a little over a year after high school due to poor grades and just getting stoned all the time. I ended up moving into a house my parents rented for my sister and I where I just partied, played video games, and did not work. My parents, fed up with the direction I was headed in life, gave me an ultimatum. At the advice of their pastor they said I needed to either move into a "faith based rehabilitation facility" or be cut off from them completely. Having zero resources or practical skills I agreed. They dropped me off at a house in the city and said their goodbyes.
This house was a waiting/feeding facility to enter the program. I slept in a large room with a dozen or so bunk beds that held some very colorful characters. In the daytime, we sat and did bible study or cleaned the house. Compared to the rest of the program this was very tame and I was only there for two weeks.
After those two weeks a van took a lot of us to a facility several hours away. This was a "satellite compound". I would spend roughly five months here. The days varied - somedays you would spend all day doing bible workbooks and listening to sermons. Other days they would send you out to work. I weed whacked catholic cemeteries in the hot sun all day. You were not paid for this as it "covered your stay in the program". They also solicited donations by taking us all to different churches on the weekend. They would have us all stand up in front of the congregation and one or two people would share about how jesus saved their life. On one occasion, I spent the day standing in front of a Wal-Mart with a bucket asking for money. Secular materials were not allowed and I took great joy in the National Geographic's my sister smuggled in on a visit.
There was no internet, phones, and you were not allowed to leave the compound (unless it was for work, church, or solicitation). I will say that the people that worked there did seem to actually care - it was just an insane bubble of existence.
After my months there I "graduated" and a van took a lot of us to the main compound several hours away. There were over a hundred people that lived here (compared to the 20 or so at the previous compound). I cannot express adequately how INSANE this place was. Some highlights:
- I worked nights in an egg factory for 8 hours doing the monotonous work of stacking cooked egg paddies. You were not paid as this "covered your stay in the program"
- Due to good penmanship, I had to make the wedding placeholders for 100+ guests for the program directors daughter. At the time, I thought this was a privilege because they let me hang out in a room alone
- Bed bugs hit the compound HARD so they moved everyone to the gymnasium on cots. Imagine an entire gym floor covered in cots and a hundred + people. We had to sleep like that for over a month. I was "lucky" and had one of the gym closets that I shared with only 4 people.
- Your standing with the administration and the community depended entirely on your outward expression of love for jesus and the program. At services people would shout in tongues and roll on the floor.
- The program received a LOT of donations. While the facility we lived at was in disrepair, the administration building was brand new and well designed. I remember the program director having many nice watches and cars.
I ended up getting to leave the program early after pleading with my parents that I was "cured". Honestly, spending almost a year isolated gave me enough time to think about what I wanted in life and motivate me to do something with my future. As far as the program goes - the content was nonsense and predatory.
>- The program received a LOT of donations. While the facility we lived at was in disrepair, the administration building was brand new and well designed. I remember the program director having many nice watches and cars.
This is unfortunately par for the course across these sorts of nonprofits, religious or not, rehab or not. The profits that help special needs kids and the elderly are unfortunately no different. All the money goes to those at the top. Generally speaking, the less directly the state is funneling "customers" to them the less slimy a given organization is.
>Honestly, spending almost a year isolated gave me enough time to think about what I wanted in life and motivate me to do something with my future.
My brother was a addict till a argument with a dealer lead to him getting his arm broken in two places and being hospitalized for a month. Helped him get clean but he wouldn't recommend it.
There's no contempt in what I'm saying, I am honestly glad that this incident got my brother to re-evaluate his life. My point was experiencing something terrible can lead to change for the better, its not an exact science and it is not by any mean pleasant. Getting his arm smash with a baseball bat was my brothers wake-up call but he isn't going to start espousing the benefits of having your arm broken as a form of rehab, just like I assume TecoAndJix isn't going to endorse the force labor compound they were sent to despite it being the thing that forced them to re-evaluate their life.
I'm sorry you had to suffer that. What I never understood, and maybe you can help me, at least for you personally ... was there never a thought of revenge?
It often surprises me in cases like these. They do horrible things to lots of people and guns are easy to come by, why aren't more victims of programs like these go vigilante since the three pillars of democracy obviously don't care?
I’ve got nothing to add except that sounds both insane and challenging. It’s hard to read all these stories and to not see these religious facilities, all of them, as fundamentally flawed. Thanks for sharing.
Wouldn't you have been at least 18 at this point? Unless I'm missing something you were absolutely allowed to leave the compound, but I presume then your parents would no longer pay for your housing.
If you left you were out of the program and that was that. People did in fact walk off sometimes (except the ones ordered to be there by the court). Since I was hours from anyone or anywhere I knew with no money I was effectively stuck there.
A good exercise is to ask where the failure or fault was in this system. There will always be businesses looking for ways to cut costs. There will always be people with flexible ethics willing to exploit others for their own gain. There will ways be vulnerable people without options and unable to advocate for themselves. We must take that all as a given and still find a way to prevent these abuses.
It comes down to what we as a society permit via our laws and courts. If we do not do the hard work of building and maintaining a just society, it will not exist.
This is so horrifying in so many ways. Slave labor, forced religion, and further contribution to pain and suffering in the meat industry. It reminds me of a recent article where meat companies in the UK are also trying to get prisoners for their own slave labor. I thought that stuff only happened here. Needs to be a serious overhaul of this loophole which allows slave labor from incarcerated or as an alternative to incarceration. Hillary Clinton's household staff was from such a prison labor program at one point.
There were two judges convicted.[1] One of them was recently released because of the pandemic. There were also two others involved, a lawyer and real estate guy, who have both long been released.
What did I just read. This is so sad. How come no Christian pastor or Christian leader is speaking about this evil since it all done in the name of christianity but subverted for gaining profits. I hope the men find freedom and peace. But above all, how is the judge sentencing people to such horror.
For one, it requires the inmates to have been convicted of a crime. (Not that I consider that to be just either, for the record.) What the article describes is likely a violation of the US constitution in at least some of the cases.
I understood Americans much better once I understood Calvinism.
The very belief that a core group of the first settlers brought to America which is that there exist not just fundamentally good and bad people, but that God would reward good people with success and money and bad people with poverty.
From which follows that rich people must have been good and poor people must have been bad.
From which follows, that good people need to be rewarded further and bad people punished more.
If you look through every single aspect of the U.S. judicial, education, legislation [,...] systems — even Hollywood movies — you will find clues that point back to this core belief.
Not judging, just noticing since someone told me "in order to understand Americans, you need to understand Calvinism".
FWIW as a former Calvinist I think your your assessment of Calvinism is wrong on multiple points. Because it was the presupposition of his hearers, dispelling the notion that “The rich must have been good in this life and the poor must be getting what they deserve” is the whole point of Jesus’ rich man and Lazarus parable. And the concept of “fundamentally good vs bad people” is also out-of-nowhere for Calvinist doctrine as they hold to “total depravity”, that all people are sinful and under God’s judgement.
It depends on your interpretation of Calvinism. The specific concept the parent post is talking about, I think, is Double Predestination.
> Double predestination is the idea that not only does God choose some to be saved, he also creates some people who will be damned.[0]
Even setting aside whether that's a mainstream Calvinist belief or not, the idea of "Good people" and "Bad people" is deeply ingrained in American Culture. "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun"- that very phrase presupposes the existence of two groups of people, one Good and one Bad, setting aside the whole 'right to bear arms' thing.
And just as deeply ingrained in American culture is a lack of sympathy for "Bad people". You can make prisons a living hell, keep people in there for life after "3 strikes", remove their ability to find jobs if they ever get out- because they're Bad people and helping Bad people is wrong. It's morally superior to punish Bad people more, since they are Bad. Politicians get elected on that, calling it 'tough on crime'.
> Even setting aside whether [double predestination] is a mainstream Calvinist belief or not...
FWIW Calvin taught double predestination (as the Wikipedia article says). It's the logically- and biblically- consistent view. But again it's not a "bad people deserve what they get in this life" justification.
I don't get where not being tough on crime comes from. Having grown up in a third world country with rampant crime, and also in the US (and having seen California decriminalize petty theft, traspassing and various other things), what is there left to do? Is the US system in need of fundamental changes? Yes, absolutely. But being soft on crime isn't going to make it disappear either.
The words "tough on crime" have a particular connotation, one which involves criminalizing minor offences then coming down with excessive punitive measures that are intended to deter crime. The end result is seen as being ineffective (punitive measures do not address the root causes of crime and will not alter the behaviour of some people) and is even seen as contributing to the problem (e.g. prisons may worsen, rather than reform, criminal behaviour; having a criminal record reduces opportunities that may steer people away from a life of crime).
If those words meant something different, such as people will be caught and expected to redress their crimes or prisons will attempt to reform behaviour and provide the tools to steer away from a life of crime after release, then being tough on crime would have fewer detractors.
And in many respects those detractors are right. The resources being invested into the current tough on crime measures would be better invested into addressing the causes of crime. It won't solve all of the problems since there are some genuinely nasty people out there, but there is a good chance that it would do a much better job.
The difference is that the US has the money to attack the root causes of much of crime: poverty, and (mental) health care.
But instead, it spends even more money punishing those who commit crimes. This has zero effect on reducing crimes, but makes people feel good about punishing the bad guys, because again: it's morally superior in American culture to punish 'The Bad People', and it's difficult to be elected on a platform that can be seen as helping 'The Bad People'.
The cost of putting 100 at-risk kids into after-school programs to help steer them away from crime isn't small. But if it keeps 1 person out of prison, it pays for itself many times over. And Americans, generally, don't want to fund this sort of thing.
By debating "tough" vs "soft" on crime you're already buying into their framing of the issue. "Tough on crime" in America is code for "feed people into the prison industrial complex for life for low-level crimes" thanks to things like Biden's "three strikes" policy. It's also rooted in racism, as typically the people the system is "tough" on are people of color.
To give but one example of the difference in mindset: Portugal has had great success by decriminalizing drugs and treating addiction as a mental health issue, whereas America prefers to throw people in a cage and ruin their lives because "drugs are bad". That's part of what America means by being "tough" on crime: lack empathy, don't look at individual circumstances, and treat mental health issues as crimes to keep feeding a for-profit prison industry and ever-increasing police power.
Edit: I wonder if the downvotes are partisan over my mention of Biden’s role in our current state of affairs. Just trying to help explain America’s peculiar pathology that led us to the shameful statistic of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.
There's this arc in the Bible. Near the beginning of the Old Testament (say, Deuteronomy), there's a lot of "God will reward you in this life for righteousness" (heaven wasn't even invented yet) and "look how many cattle and wives he has; surely he is righteous; don't you want to be like him?" It's only later that this starts to change. You see this change a little in Job, where a righteous man is punished by God. And then it kicks into overdrive with Jesus, who is a reformer.
So it's not like the "Prosperity Gospel" messages aren't there -- they are, in the Old Testament. But they miss all the subsequent reform.
2. "The English Civil War"
One weird thing about all this is that the Calvinists (who I think of as aligned with Cromwell) went north; they became Puritans and went to New England. Their descendants also ended up, later, in the Pacific Northwest. They became abolitionists and such.
And the English who went to Virginia and the Carolinas, and who practiced slavery, were more aligned with the royalists. The plantation was like an exaggerated bizarro version of the English "country home".
Which then makes it strange that a lot of this Calvinist, Cromwellite stuff eventually ended up "on the right" in American society, with the "planters".
> So it's not like the "Prosperity Gospel" messages aren't there -- they are, in the Old Testament. But they miss all the subsequent reform.
I think that’s fair. It’s where Jesus’s hearers got that mindset he’s trying to change. Also see Luke 13 where Jesus is like “do you think the people that building fell on are any worse than anyone else?”
I grew up in a Calvinist church and in addition to being inconsistent with doctrine, that comment also doesn't fit with the cultural attitudes that I encountered. Money was seen as dangerous and worldly. Like sex, we were taught that it was important part of life, but also something that could lead us away from God. Being rich was embarrassing. We had wealthy people at our church, but I only found out when I was older, since they drove old minivans like everyone else.
I think the combination of "unconditional election" (God has chooses those who he will save not based on virtue, merit, or faith in those people; rather, his choice is mercy alone) and "limited atonement" (Jesus didn't save everybody, only the "elect") strikes many people as very odd.
The notion that God will only save some people and that they will have done nothing in particular to deserve it - and then of course, religious people always believe that they are among the people who will be saved. So "God will save some people but not others; they don't deserve it; and the saved just so happen to include me!" This all comes off a bit arrogant to me, as GP alluded to.
I can't comment on Calvinism, but I don't believe that the US has ever really escaped from its dependency on slavery, which is another thing that goes right back to its earliest days.
What's changed is that you're not allowed to ship black people from Africa now, but when you look at articles like the one that was posted, and mass incarceration and prison labour, and basically living as if your employer did you a favour by hiring you...the pattern remains constant even as the implementation changes.
And there are still those puritanical underpinnings about 'bad' people deserving the bad treatment they get from 'good' people.
Many countries in the world have moved on from that system. Obviously not all of them, but it's still rather shocking that a first world country still actively encourages a system where you can lose all of your agency as a person.
Many countries out there today have much more literal intersocietal slavery.
It would be amazing to break these bonds, but it would completely destroy globalism and dramatically alter 'quality of life' in the west, which is why it's not happened already.
Isn't the distinctive teaching of Calvinism that those who are saved and those who are not are known to The Boss at birth? That there's nothing you can do to redeem yourself?
I've met quite a few people who's attitude is that "bad" people are irredeemable. Not all of these people were from the USA; but it seems to be an attitude that is particularly prevalent in the USA. This is a bit odd, because most USAians aren't Calvinists. It's as if there's a thread of Calvinism running through evangelicalism - but most evangelical traditions don't inherit from Calvinism, or so I thought.
Well the US every hundred years or so has a tradition of revivalist movements (starting back in the 1740s), basically where some evangelical preachers preach some common message across denominational lines. So there’s a lot of cross-breeding between American Christian churches: Calvinist ideas were broadly disseminated as part of some of those early revivals.
In psychology this is the Just World Fallacy. Somewhat common in religions, and it’s an idea that people tend to find easy to subconsciously accept, despite being nonsensical if you stop and think about it.
You get it everywhere to some extent, but… maybe it’s more of a thing in the US? At the extreme, some US Protestant sects like to blame the likes of natural disasters on the presence of what they think of as sin (often gay people); while this idea is obviously not a majority view, it doesn’t really show up _at all_ in European Christianity or most other religions.
I don't remember hearing much about wealth when I read about Calvinism in college. I remember that the elect were predestined to do good works and go to heaven, and that's it.
The intriguing thing for me about the philosophy was that, yea, you're predestined so you in theory could do whatever you want, but if you're not doing good works, you're probably not one of the elect.
Where did you read that Calvinists believe that the elect were also bestowed wealth? Was this a widespread belief? I'm genuinely interested, this is new to me.
As a "Calvinist" (I prefer label reformed Christian) it appears as though you have totally misunderstood Calvinism. One of the bedrocks of Calvinism is that every person in his natural state is fundamentally bad and any spiritual/material blessing is undeserved so how could we could we boast?
Commentary from John Calvin on Luke 13:4 where Jesus comments on whether the 18 people killed by a falling tower were bad people because they suffered this fate:
"This passage is highly useful, were it for no other reason than that this disease is almost natural to us, to be too rigorous and severe in judging of others, and too much disposed to flatter our own faults. The consequence is, that we not only censure with excessive severity the offenses of our brethren; but whenever they meet with any calamity, we condemn them as wicked and reprobate persons. On the other hand, every man that is not sorely pressed by the hand of God slumbers at ease in the midst of his sins, as if God were favorable and reconciled to him. This involves a double fault; for when God chastises any one before our eyes, he warns us of his judgments, that each of us may examine himself, and consider what he deserves. If he spares us for a time, we are so far from having a right to take such kindness and forbearance as an opportunity for slumber, that we ought to regard it as an invitation to repentance."
I totally agree. You get your more charismatic varieties of this same thinking. For example, the name-it-and-claim-it churches basically teach if you are God's favorite you will be blessed, and if you aren't, you just don't have enough faith.
That's not predestination, but it comes down to the same kind of thing.
In general, I think all forms of justice in the west are based on free will being true. If some form of determinism is true, then "punishment" doesn't make sense.
> In general, I think all forms of justice in the west are based on free will being true. If some form of determinism is true, then "punishment" doesn't make sense.
Isn't that backwards? Believing that someone is inherently bad is effectively equal to them having no free will and their fate being determined. You can swap out "born with an evil soul" for "genetic predisposition and early environmental factors".
If you really did replace the judicial system with one based on the view that free will does not exist, would the solution to habitual criminals be to simply separate them from the rest of society for life since they have no ability to determine their own actions? If instead you think they can be externally influenced by rehabilitation then how is this different from having a compassionate view of criminal behaviour that could include free will? Having free will doesn't mean that a person will always make the correct choice or even the moral choice, we're limited and imperfect after all.
I would say that it doesn't mean that someone is inherently bad, just that there are factors out of their control leading to them doing something that is unwanted by society as a whole. From this it follows that it would be unethical to "punish" people for such acts and the more ethical approach of society should be to try minimize the occurrence of these factors.
I still think the two are equivalent. The only difference is in the baggage attached to the terms "bad" or "evil". The same solutions are applied in both cases. If someone is an immediate threat to others they are removed from society. Rehabilitation is attempted in order to prevent further commission of crimes. Some signal (punishment) is provided to the person who committed the crime in order to deter them and others from repeating the offence (fines, community service, probation, length of incarceration). The problem is in the execution of those strategies, it's a mess because there are a lot of perverse incentives both monetary and based on personal beliefs. There is also a lack of and/or a misdirection of funding.
I don't think removing punishment is a cure for this. Excessive, cruel or needless punishments should not be applied but you do need to impose some cost as a consequence. Human beings are capable of learning and both reward and penalty are necessary for that to happen. If we are going to push a lever it should be focused on effective rehabilitation, which would involve a complete overhaul of and a lot of investment in prisons so they can address the needs of every inmate.
"If some form of determinism is true, then "punishment" doesn't make sense."
That doesn't really follow. If you know you are going to receive punishment for some action, or that you have been punished for some action in the past, you can completely deterministically "decide" not to do something you would otherwise have done. I mean, we build AIs that nobody would claim have "free will" and are entirely deterministic based on their algorithms and input based on the same principle.
Some sort of ineffable moral element of somehow making your free-willed self a "better" free-willed self may be removed, but the sheer brutal pragmatics of "other entities want your behavior to be thus, and by applying punishment can increase compliance" works just fine in a deterministic regime. And to my eye, our ruling elites are in practice very, very concerned about the latter and do not give the slightest rip about the former, whatever their beliefs about "free will" may be.
I think that you may be somewhat combining Calvinism and the Prosperity Gospel.
Calvinism teaches that, although salvation is freely available to everyone, human nature is such that no one would choose salvation on their own. Therefore, God chooses to intervene to cause some people to accept salvation.
The Prosperity Gospel teaches that God rewards faith and/or good deeds with worldly blessings like wealth and good health.
I actually think that some of the problems that America faces are due to an overreaction by Calvinists (and other conservative Christians) to the Prosperity Gospel. That is, in their eagerness to avoid the Prosperity Gospel they overcorrect and deemphasize the parts of the Bible that teach that God cares about the poor and meeting people's physical needs.
"We find it difficult to accept the threats to our "happiness" with a serenity which transcends happiness and sorrow. We are also offended by the contumely of allies as well as foes, who refuse to regard our prosperity as fruit and proof of our virtue but suggest that it may be the consequence of our vulgar Philistinism. We are therefore confronted for the first time in our life with the questions: - whether there is a simple coordination between virtue and prosperity; and whether the attainment of happiness, either through material prosperity or social peace is a simple possibility for man, whatever may be his scientific and social achievements" - Reinhold Niebuhr
> The very belief that a core group of the first settlers brought to America
The way America was settled historically was way more complicated. Simplification that boils it down to the "core group of the first settlers" with far reaching consequences up to now is bound to be wrong.
It's American Conservatism. American conservatives fundamentally buy into the just-world hypothesis [0]. They believe that the world is so strongly a meritocracy (itself a dubious assertion) that it affects basically all aspects of life. It's why conservatives often champion "personal responsibility," while simultaneously excusing their own irresponsibility. They believe that when bad things happen to others, it's because they deserve it so they should be responsible for what they did. When bad things happen to them, it's just bad luck. That leads to cliches like "the only moral abortion is my abortion" and other such hypocritical nonsense.
I'm sure you can trace this idea back to one of the series of evangelical or fundamentalist movements in the United States, but personally I believe that it's almost always tied to the simple fact that many people manage to reach middle-age without having failed or suffered due to circumstances beyond their control while absorbing pro-American propaganda all their lives. It leads you to a mistaken understanding about how much power and control you have over your own life and about what the real causes of success are.
> There wasn’t much substance abuse treatment at CAAIR. It was mostly factory work for one of America’s top poultry companies. If McGahey got hurt or worked too slowly, his bosses threatened him with prison.
And he worked for free. CAAIR pocketed the pay.
> Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime.
It's somewhat incredible (in a bad way) how far capitalism can go in terms of monetizing everything in people's lives when left unchecked.
> It's somewhat incredible (in a bad way) how far capitalism can go in terms of monetizing everything in people's lives when left unchecked.
Slavery/indentured servitude/prison labor predates capitalism by forever, that really has nothing to do with it. Similar (but much worse) labor camps existed in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
I think that the point is that while it is widely agreed that these sorts of issues exist under systems like slavery, many people do not believe that they exist under capitalism.
Many people on the right believe that capitalism is incompatible with the exploitation associated with practices such a feudalism and slavery. Therefore, they argue that safeguards and regulation are not needed. This is showing hat exploitation is also a feature of capitalism; therefore, the regulations are still needed.
less capitalism, but the concept of having everything handeled by private enterprise that is for-profit. With prices set 'by thr market' is sorta what happened here.
Rule by unaccountable large organizations isn't specifically "capitalist", as it has existed in societies of every type of economic organization. By this definition even the Soviet Union was capitalist.
I totally agree with you that private organizations being above the law (especially sadistic ones like this) is bad.
> by the market
How is someone forced by the state to perform free labor a market participant?
Heros for sensationalizing rehab facilities? The only thing disturbing is the reality of managing addicts. Can we put you in charge of one addict and see how it goes?
This is horrifying. I'm not opposed to using prison labor to get work done, but these are still people and they deserve to be treated as such. I bet these people running this camp think they're going to heaven because of all the Jesus juice they are shoving into these poor men.
The state of Oklahoma could have easily offered these men the option of doing volunteer work for a non-profit of their choosing while they attended periodic counseling.
Instead they chose a system with forced labor camps where prisoners are sold off to local businesses.
We can build a system to enrich the life of the incarcerated or we can enrich the capitalists. Time after time our local governments choose the latter path - does anyone know why?
There are so many terrible conditions like this in our food supply, forced labor, 80 hour weeks at frito lay, and so on. So the question I am left with is, what can I eat to avoid this, if anything?
Those who were hurt and could no longer work often were kicked out of CAAIR and sent to prison, court records show. Most men worked through the pain, fearing the same fate.
This reads like a Gulag or Uyghur Camp. It's 100% unpaid, force labor. What the hell?
Instead of paychecks, the men get bunk beds, meals and Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. If there’s time between work shifts, they can meet with a counselor or attend classes on anger management and parenting. Weekly Bible study is mandatory. For the first four months, so is church. Most days revolve around the work.
100% reads like a Chinese "re-education" camp. Dear god.
I personally know someone who's parents sent him into similar programs as a teenager. One program got shut down by the government, then he was sent to another one that IIRC was nearly as bad (in Montana). Lots of forced labor, forced education, solitary confinement, etc.
Once you’ve made a mistake, plucked chickens you’ll make. You’ll be beat with a rake. You won’t get a fair shake. Your dignity they’ll take. You’ve no idea what’s at stake.
That's exactly the problem. No, not every country is doing the same crap, not by a long shot. I have no particular axe to grind and I'm not even American, but pretending that the US and China are somehow equivalent on human rights is so dishonest that if anything here is propaganda then that rhetoric is.
1. Taking away many or even all liberties from millions just because they live in the wrong place (Hong Kong) or belong to to the wrong ethnic-religious group is of a different order.
2. The USA is a federal state, not top-down ruled, unlike China.
3. He Without Sin, Cast the First Stone is a call for compassion, not to stick your head in the sand.
From the title, I thought it's a horror story about how people got ground into a powder, mixed with some plants, and fed to the chickens. So the actual events didn't sound too bad by comparison.
The article says 1 in 4 complete the programme. Sounds like the majority of people eventually choose prison. After providing a few weeks or months of free labour for an organization apparently breaking far more laws than they ever did...
People are not "choosing" this sort of rehab -- judges are choosing for them. Even if given the choice at a sentencing hearing ("would you prefer prison, or a rehabilitation center?"), I suspect many of those convicted have no idea that these rehab centers are really corporate labor camps.
The article doesn't mention if they did any research in this case but it is also quite common for judges to receive kickbacks from for-profits to get them inmates.
A judge assigning a non-user to a rehab could be the result of that kind of conflict of interest.
Two american judges went to prison for sending hundreds of minors to private, for profit detention facilities and receiving kickbacks. They made over 100k doing it. Don't have a link at hand, but since i read this on HN, someone else might supply it. Sorry, too lazy to google it for you, on mobile and realizing i'm procrastinating on important stuff.
The article specifically mentions that he was threatened with prison if he didn't work fast enough. That implies he had the option to stop work and, instead, go to prison.
“Stop working and you’ll go to a hitherto unknown, potentially worse, prison” doesn’t sound like any kind of option that I’m familiar with. The article makes it sound like many of these men were on their first offence (if that’s even applicable here) and may not have realized that their current status as slave laborers was actually the worse one. They probably shouldn’t be faulted for that.
This is only me guessing, but I'd assume this kind of behaviour would be noted in his files as some kind of insubordination and used against him if he ever applied for parole or similar.
He had no choice in going to rehab initially, I'm not sure "summon the wrath of the rehab managers and then get sent to prison" is reasonably considered a fair choice. I also suspect that getting remanded to prison because of a poor work ethic would not help his case for parole.
Sit through the whole 1h30min movie and it turns out it’s just a Tyson nuggets commercial.