Prison = Slave Labor

Some of you need to think before you speak. This isn't a joke, and this isn't funny. Prisoner doesn't equate to guilty China is not a country known to make that distinction. Many of these prisoners are political by nature. People that are just trying to gain basic human rights for themselves and their country. Stop mocking their suffering. Then there is the entire issue of the punishment not fitting the crime. Does petty theft justify torture. I am sure some guy who stole a bike is being force to do this for years. 

This forced labor is no more or less punishing then hard labor. For the same reasons that assembly line workers have a big turnover. Both the body and the mind revolt against repeditive action. These people are being physically abused, and are being mentally traumatized. That does not bode well for their future, or for society after they are inevitably released. At that point they already carry a stigma, but to be hard pressed to do physical labor, and a damaged mind. What options do they have beyond becoming repeat offenders.

Exploitation based systems just don't work, because they neither address the problem, or adequately protect the public. Not just from criminals, but from the system itself turning on the public. They make the system less just, or more to the point less concerned about protecting and serving the people. What people here are talking about is a slave based economy. Ignoring how barbaric the practice itself is.

Look slave based economies work on increases, and never on decreases. The number of slaves must increase, and it is bound to increase, because it is so profitable. This means they have a vested interest in retention, and in getting new slaves. That breeds corruption within the overlying system. It doesn't take long really before the overlying system is corrupted to serve the slave based system.

This prisoners being used commercially sounds good and all. However it fosters economic disparity between those that own slaves, and those that do not. Which will only lock you into a path for becoming a slave yourself. The system tends towards retention as in longer sentences for all. Plus it wants to expand so it will corrupt the system to acquire even more slaves. It is a viscious cycle. All it creates is unfair competition, and a system that wants to turn more of the total population into slaves.

This isn't a matter of opinion either it is there throughout history. Chinese history is full of stories of enslaved prisoners being worked to death by the hundreds of thousands in massive public works. That mindset strips people of their basic human dignity, and it only results in punishment that doesn't fit the crime.

Kind of hilarious when you go in depth,but nonetheless it's a cruel & unusual.