> Why is that a bad thing?

> I mean I’d rather they were...

> They should be oriented towards rehabilitation.

You said it yourself. It's a bad thing because they should be oriented towards rehabilitation.

These systems steal life and the opportunity to have a life beyond prison walls. Like you also said yourself, the world isn't perfect. As such, people aren't either – we make mistakes. Sometimes we make mistakes due to influences more powerful than ourselves. Slavery doesn't seem like a sound correction to this reality.

I do believe we need consequences to help us feel guilt and the overall gravity of our errors in order to begin to recognize what went wrong and what we need to do differently. But exploitation of another human being doesn't teach them to be more human, but rather, it will tend to dehumanize them. This is why this system perpetuates problems more than it corrects them.

The justice system is not just, plain and simple. People face higher rates of incarceration because of their race, country of origin, etc.

Any system that financially profits off its prisoners' labor. Inadvertently, create a market for that labor and commodifies it.

Slavery is bad and people have rights.

> They should be oriented towards rehabilitation.

Exactly.

As long as you say it, you're okay with slavery when it's for the right person.

> Most of those people are a burden to society.

This is both extremely dehumanizing and also not true.

Forced prison work isn't paying anything back to society. It's lining the pockets of people who are profiting from forced labor.

It is true. Society paid a price from their crimes and then pays an ongoing cost to prosecute and maintain them in prison. It’s a very high cost.

I imagine the underpaid labor goes to reducing that cost either directly or indirectly (if it did not, why would it be allowed.)

What price did society pay for a guy driving around with a bunch of weed in his car for personal use? Countless people have been sent to prison for years for something as dumb as this. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about to so widely call these people a burden.

>if it did not, why would it be allowed.

because we live in a society that is massively exploited by greedy scumbags who are enabled by people like you thinking it's justified