No, prisoners shouldn't get paid for work they do in prison. It's punishment for what they did.
Though I do think some of the points you bring up are quite valid.

"They can pay some sort of rent as well. Life in prison? Great! Pay for it, instead of making Joe shmoe pay for it out of his ten dollar an hour salary."

where do you think the money hed get would come from? Also, Mr. 10 dollar an hour wouldn't be paying for it considering he'd most likely pay a tax rate of 0%... (or damn close to that)

I never said they weren't paid. I'm saying where do you think their pay comes from? It's not like prisons are a private corporation that profits from prisoners working. The citizens are paying for it with taxes. They shouldn't be paid at all in my opinion. and they should live in tents and be refused cable tv.

No. It's punishment. There are programs for parolees to keep them on the right track, they are almost never left with no resources after serving a sentence. The jobs they do are public service jobs. If they got paid it would come from our taxes and I don't want to pay more taxes, especially to scum bags doing time. They get paid in fresh air.

A smart private jail will one day make the prison system profitable

Getting paid to work while in prison seems to me to defeat the entire purpose of being in prison. I just don't see how that can be justified. We're already paying for their food, water, and shelter, along with their TV, weights, baseball mitts, and jumper suits. Since the money for all of that --including your idea of paying a wage-- comes from us, as prisons are funded by tax dollars, I don't see any justifiable reason to increase the burden on taxpayers in order to be "nicer" or "fair". Last I checked, life isn't fair, and prisoners are there for a reason.

You forgot the major one... the health benefits of being a prisoner. Full coverage, all the prescribtions paid for, surgeries paid for, dental paid for!

they already do get paid, just not in the usual sense. they have free accomodation, free food, no bills and there criminals. they certainly dont deserve more than what they have.

^^^ This.

I have a better proposal: How about we take a look at the reasons why the criminals decided to commit criminal acts in the first place and make sure that those reasons won't tempt the criminal to return to a criminal life after releasing them?

If a person sees a criminal life as the most beneficial way of making a living, chances are that mere punishments won't change those views. It might work for the lazy people who won't educate themselves/try to find a decent job despite having the possibility, but the problems are often much deeper than that.