Short answer yes, they should work and get paid.

It's not who operates the prison but how. In the private prison sector prisoners are treated as a commodity. The difference is, it costs the state money to run prisons, for profit private prisons make money from occupancy. Private prisons are lobying for new and longer sentences to make more money.
If the state puts people behind bars just to have a cheap labor force then it's equally bad.

I'm not saying work is bad for prisoners. But let them do work maintaining the prison, growing food, cooking, cleaning and other things to reduce prison operating costs. Not hire them out to call centers to make a profit.

Tell me more about how the state doesn't "profiteer".

How many state employees are on the paybook because of things like the War on Drugs? Police? Prison Wardens? the DEA? How much power has the Government been able to claw in thanks to the WoD? Much of the PATRIOT ACT was expanding powers used against drugs to terrorism.

Besides, forget prison. How am I not already a "de facto slave"? Do I own anything? Can I volunteer to engage in any exchange I want? Am I even allowed to kill myself?

That's not profiteering. Profiteering is about making money on stuff. You're talking about pork. Employees of the state can profiteer off of things like the War on Terror, but the State as a whole draws no revenue from rounding up terrorists or conducting warrantless wiretaps or what have you.

What's on earth's "the state overall"? Governments, like all other organisations, are just collections of people. Corporations don't profit. States don't profit. The people involved do.

However doesn't the government essentially profiteer by having prisoners do work for "the public good"?

Having some prisoners clean up trash on a state road vs having some prisoners act as janitors for a private run factory.  Same difference really

Really, I think prisoners should be paid minimium wage.  That can be used either for marked up products in the prison system or that can be sent to family members/saved for release.  Of course so should farm employees since they do some hard as hell manual labor.

That way they can be used to build a better future when they get out.  Support family members, or buy luxuraries while offsetting the cost of their imprisonment.

Fuck no. British prisons are too cushty and need to be toughened up I like the American system of tough jails. Prisoners should only be paid a pitence for their labour. They owe a debt to society not the other way round.

The state overall is like "the company overall." If you're working for a nonprofit organization that does charitable work, they as a whole draw no revenue from what they do, though you personally profit. So it is with the State, whose only revenue-drawing functions are taxes, fines, interest from sovereign loans, and military weapons sales. Much of what the state does is not about profit.

And I just said that companies don't profit. People profit. When Microsoft posts "$X" profit, the little piece of paper which is the Microsoft Corporate Charter hasn't gained anything. It's the stockholders and employees. So saying that "the state overall is like the company overall" doesn't really do anything for your argument.

Everything that the state does is about profit. The state is the farmer, and we are the animals. The difference is, I can see the fence, while you're demanding the the chickens get the same amount of land as the cows.

Yes. They should also have to pay for food and rent.