• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Not to diminish how messed up prison labor is, or how private prisons shouldn’t be a thing at all, to say that prison labor makes up a significant portion of the US economy is a pretty big stretch.

    FPI/UNICORE only has about a half billion in gross revenue, and the entire private prison sector is around ~$8 billion.
    The US economy is in the $25 trillion range. Arby’s is about half the size of the private prison industry, and eight times larger than FPI. ($4 billion)

    Neither should exist in the modern era, and getting rid of them would be an almost unnoticeable impact on the economy.

    • psud
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      4 months ago

      “neither” you mean prison labour and Arby’s, right?

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        I suppose I should have said “none”.
        Even though Arby’s has personally hurt me more than private prisons, I still think that privatized cruelty that somehow manages to be worse than our already pretty shitty penal system is worse that the gastrointestinal nightmare that Arby’s has given me.

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        It’s not a great ruling, but it doesn’t serve to be hyperbolic. They said that fines or punishment for “camping” (existing while homeless) on a cities public lands aren’t de facto unconstitutional.

        Not forbidden to fine or evict the homeless isn’t the same as making homelessness illegal.