Talk:Penal labour

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Improvement Drive

Roma people has been nominated to be improved on the Improvement Drive. Support this article with your vote and help us improve it to featured status!--Fenice 10:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PI = Prison labour ?

The PI page says that "PI may stand for: Prison labor". But if that is the case why PI and not PL???!

I found on the List of Prison Break characters page that it may mean "Prison Industry".

Anyway, if someone has an explaination for "PI", I think that it should be somewhere at the beginning of the page! It may be obvious to you but it is not at all for me... (english is not my mother tongue) ZeroJanvier 00:52, 4 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling of lab*r

Why is it not "labor"? Is it because the British Empire invaded all these countries and made penal labour of them? Skinnyweed 18:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia manual of style states that:

The English Wikipedia has no general preference for a major national variety of the language. No variety is more correctthan the others are.

Each article should consistently use the same conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. For example, these should not be used in the same article: center and centre; insofar and in so far;

An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation.

For all of these reasons, and to maintain consistency with the spelling of title, I have switched the spellings to labourGeraintlewis (talk) 17:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mention of Alleged German Camp Purposes

Why, if the subject of the page is "penal labor," is there a totally unnecessary comment about the "main purpose" of German NSDAP's concentration camps? It seems that the camps need be only discussed in the context of the article at hand.

"The Soviet Gulag camps were a continuation of the punitive labour system of Imperial Russia known as katorga, but on a larger scale - together with executions and forced migrations the Stalinist oppression may have made more victims than the Nazi occupation."

That sentence is confusing, does it mean the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union and the millions of deaths suffered during the fighting or the Nazi occupation of Europe.

No Englishmen

We shall use the proper AMERICAN spelling for this site, thank you. This is America, and if you don't like it, you can GET OUT!!!!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.195.16.211 (talk) 18:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

The Internet is America??!! <confused> NuclearWinner (talk) 23:43, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, his PC is in America... "How did you all make into my PC?! Show me your visa!" :) 213.199.30.165 (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pretty sure this is Australia :P CybergothiChé (talk) 04:52, 20 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it out of use?

The article mentions that prisoners' labour can be used to the government's economic gain. It doesn't say why it has fallen out of use. Anyone know? Leushenko (talk) 20:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article sounds a little biased.

Sounds like it was written by someone who is definitely not in favor of prison labor.

Can we get a viewpoint from more positive sources? 207.237.41.202 (talk) 05:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Work instead of prison

The interwiki link for the article Werkstraf in the Dutch language Wikipedia links to this article, but that is not right. These are completely different things.

The werkstraf (literaly, 'work punishment') has been introduced in recent decades in the Netherlands and Belgium (I don't know about other countries) as a alternative for imprisonment. It is considered a punishment that is more serious than a fine, but lighter than a prison sentence. The convict is sentenced to do between 20? and 240 hours unpaid work, for example, in public gardens, hospitals, or other non-profit institutions. In the mean time, the convicts are not put in jail and can stay in their own homes.

Just like fines, the execution of the sentence is enforced by the fact that convicts will have to go to prison if they do not show up at their assigned work place. (The same is true for people who do not pay the fines imposed by a court of law).

When it was first introduced, it was a voluntary mode of punishment. A convict who was sentenced to prison (for a short sentence) could request his punishment to be replaced by a work sentence.

Question: What would be the English term for 'werkstraf' and is their an article about that in the English language Wikipedia? Johan Lont (talk) 22:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just remembered the term Community service, which answered my own question. This is described in a subsection of that article: Community service#Alternative sentencing. Further in that article: "In the United Kingdom, community service is now officially referred to by the Home Office as more straightforward "compulsory unpaid work""

The section on 'Alternative sentencing' should be split off Community service. The title could be Compulsary unpaid work or something like Community service (sentence), Community service (punishment) or Community service as an alternative punishment. Johan Lont (talk) 14:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I love the ...

I love the source from the Cuban government mouthpiece, real objective. Because, of course, Cuba is a bastion of human rights, the ultimate worker's paradise. God, Wikipedia sucks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.132.235.8 (talk) 22:05, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what source you are talking about.

Everybody can contribute to Wikipedia, so it is quite possible that someone adds biased or otherwise unreliable information. That's why Wikipedia sometimes sucks. Fortunately, we can do something about it. Subjective information can be replaced by less subjective information in a community effort. You are welcome to help. Johan Lont (talk) 09:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Penal Labor is Slavery, pure and simple

I speak this, as a former slave. I was falsely convicted, imprisoned in a U.S. prison for two years, tortured, and forced to work in slavery. I won my appeal, my conviction was nullified, and I was released. From the day I entered that prison, I was a slave. I was then as much a slave, no less, than after I was released from slavery, when the bogus scam that was run on me by the state was nullified in their own kangaroo court. Either way, the state would deny that in any way they had ever held me as a slave. From my perspective, however, I was clearly a slave, no if's, and's, or but's about it. When you are a slave, you know you are a slave.

I bristle against any argument that prison labor is not slavery. You can not make an an exception in such a matter. That treating a person one way by one set of people or segment of society, is slavery, but treating the same person the same way by another set of people or other segment of society (who under an illusion of nothing more than an idea, call themselves 'the state' or 'the public'), is not slavery. If you imprison me as a captive and force me to do work, under whatever pretense, whether it be your own scam called 'justice' or the 'natural order of things' or any other justification the slaver has for his peculiar institution, that is slavery. Period. End of argument. Looking backwards through history, from the Roman Times, to slavery in the Southern United States, through Nazi Prison camps, all of these were 'legal' and metered out as for the 'good of society' and in a bulk of cases, methods of punitive justice for accused behavior deemed aberrant, to further entrench the power of the state and empire.

Its a bogus argument of the fiction of the state, that feels it has an inherent public and God given right and mandate to 'punish people'. When quite frankly, it has no such thing. Too many people think United States / Western concepts of what is slavery (an individual forcing another individual to work under duress) is not the same thing as what the state does by incarcerating people. Such a thing did not come into existence however until the end of the Civil War, when slavery finally was written into the Thirteenth Amendment. Its okay for the state to engage in slavery, but not corporations or private citizens. Such is always the case for the state, always when push comes to shove, as any gang would, arguing we have the right to that power, but you do not. We may wage war and kill people on an unprecedented scale, but you the individual are not allowed to murder. We may steal millions in taxes, eminent domain, seizure of new territory and contraband, and the like, but you may not steal. We may capture people and run a slander game upon them, to denigrate them in societies eyes, reduce them to subhuman, as vile criminals or witches, that the public should project their fears upon them, and and that then the state should hold such as such individuals as captives and slaves for the good of some nebulous public, but you the individual may not do this. The gang of thugs who pander themselves off as the 'state' seek always to destroy other competing states, gangs and groups, so that they may hold power exclusively over all territories and domains.

It was never any question in my mind, at any time, whether or not I was a slave. I knew a scam had been run on me, I knew I was a slave, I knew I did not want to be there, I knew I wanted nothing to do with the place, and I knew I wanted In fact, I actively and aggressively committed acts of sabotage and insurrection. It does not matter if you are Sparticus in ancient Rome, a negro on a southern plantation, a Jew in an Nazi Concentration camp, or a prisoner in the vast United States Prison complex. Its all the same, and its all slavery. History, in retrospect, will make it quite plain and prove me right.

I put forth and argue then, that Penal Labor be merged with Slavery. Yes, I know, it looks good standing here on its own, and it deserves its own separate identity and article of its own, because its a distinct form of slavery. But I want it to be clear, that penal labor is slavery, and that under slavery, penal labor has its own small subsection and description of it in brief, that links and refers to this article.

You can say the state does not own me and I work not as a slave, but I still see that gun in your hand and I still do the work you will me to do against my own will under duress and threat of punishment. A rose by any other name would stink the same.

You may not agree with me, having never experienced it yourself. In which case, I would say, spend two years in prison as a falsely convicted individual, or two years in a Nazi Concentration Camp, or two years as a slave sold into bondage from some supposed rule or societal custom you violated in ancient Rome, and you will change your tune. A gang of thugs is still a gang of thugs is still a gang of thugs, no matter who they call themselves or by what authority they claim rights or powers over you. 71.226.11.248 (talk) 13:57, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

UNICOR

Employs about 17% of US prisoners and a growing numbers of other private corps plus CCA are putting prison labor to use at about 40% of the typical wage. The article reads as if this is an archaic phenomena but it is growing. 97.85.163.245 (talk) 06:42, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]