Why back-breaking prison labour will ultimately fail

[Cain]

Because it's more profitable to get prisoners to engage in gold-mining online than to make them mine, make furniture or act as a call centre:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells.

Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old ... reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

Ultimately, this might be the best thing for prison reform ever.  If it is more profitable to have prisoners playing games, it will eventually, hopefully, be favoured over less useful activity.  In turn, the prisoners will be engaged in something which is actually, if not exactly their cup of tea, at least not as  mind-numbing as normal prison labour.  Plus, they can settle disputes by shanking each other's Level 24 dark elf shamans as opposed to, you know, actually each other.

On the other hand, fucking future.  This is Warren Ellis meets Charlie Stross in one of my cheese-fuelled nightmares. 

[Triple Zero]

Amazing.

[Freeky]

Because it's more profitable to get prisoners to engage in gold-mining online than to make them mine, make furniture or act as a call centre:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells.

Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old ... reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

Ultimately, this might be the best thing for prison reform ever.  If it is more profitable to have prisoners playing games, it will eventually, hopefully, be favoured over less useful activity.  In turn, the prisoners will be engaged in something which is actually, if not exactly their cup of tea, at least not as  mind-numbing as normal prison labour.  Plus, they can settle disputes by shanking each other's Level 24 dark elf shamans as opposed to, you know, actually each other.

On the other hand, fucking future.  This is Warren Ellis meets Charlie Stross in one of my cheese-fuelled nightmares. 

That's got some evocative imagery.

[Jasper]

In a dystopian future, games are punishment. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Holy shit! 

[Jenne]

Huh.  See, and I would have thought that for oldtimers like my dad this would never have worked--he is tech savvy but not gaming savvy--I mean, he's 56 years old for crying out loud.

That's not to say, however, he couldn't have learned...I mean the guy in the article is 54, so obviously he had to play catch up and learn to play as well.  Interesting as hell.  I'll have to tell him about this.

In the US, by the way, you're "lucky" if you get a wage paying job...of ANY sort.  You have to apply and interview, and you have to weasel your way into it.  It's a prestige thing to even take a toothbrush to the floor and toilets and showers in county jail...makes you a king of men somehow...so I'm not sure how chain gangs in China measure up to the way the CA prison system, for example, runs its jobs.

I DO know, however, that our prison guards make their $ on illegal tobacco, cell phone and drug smuggling.