Shame On You, Miami Herald

The Miami Herald publishes a women's prison exposé detailing allegations of abuse. So far, so good. But then they have the temerity to title it "Bartered sex, corruption and cover-ups behind bars in nation’s largest women’s prison."

"Bartered" sex, as if the farmer's wife is swapping two chickens for a skein of yarn.

No, Miami Herald, that is not "barter." That is rape. The guard-prisoner relationship is and must always be coercive. "Coerced sex" is fancy-talk for rape.

ATSRTWT

NB, I do not fault the author for the rubbish headline. Composing headlines typically falls to editors.

Good pick for the lead anecdote though. I appreciate it when anyone highlights the cruelty and absurdity of the nation's barbaric drug prohibition statutes.

Consent in Captivity

If you don't already subscribe to Simple Justice, consider adding it to your list. Greenfield is usually entertaining, always prodigious (at least 2 word-packed posts a day), and unfailingly filled to the brim with righteous indignation. It's also good to see what law looks like from the trenches if, like me, you're either a punter or an academic.

Today's AM post was of particular interest to me in my capacity as a fan of prison drama. From the old WIP exploitation films of the 70s to the mostly well-executed premium TV shows of today (Oz, OITNB), I've been a fan of the genre as far back as I can remember. And always and everywhere, one of the enduring literary tropes of the Caged Heat variety is sex in prison. Is it lewd? Is it rude? Is it always in the nude?

More importantly for EE purposes, can it ever be consensual? I don't mean just guard-and-inmate relations, which obviously contain coercion, but prisoner-prisoner relations. Excluding forcible rape, can a prisoner tryst be euvoluntary? In prison, indeed in any extended-stay, isolated community, outside options are limited. You aren't really free to choose with such limited choices, right? It would be a bit like being locked in a restaurant and then being asked what your favorite food is. Sure, you might choose something off the available menu, but are you being sincere or merely convenient?

Then again, even people with the relative liberty afforded by all our modern conveniences hardly consider anything more than the tiniest sliver of the entire world population. Even with the assistance of computers, we generally limit ourselves to the people available in our communities, our workplaces, our schools, our churches, our online forums, &c. Folks in the regular world are presumed to give free and clear consent even with all those limitations.

How good a BATNA is good enough? Can a prisoner give enthusiastic consent? Can anyone in a cloistered community give enthusiastic consent? How cloistered is cloistered?

Kids Prefer Euvoluntary Cheese

So you find out that the cheese you pay dearly for at your upscale grocer is made by prison labor. What do you do? Should you be offended? Should you credibly commit to shopping elsewhere? Or should you take comfort that convicts are learning a valuable trade that they should be able to convert to productive behavior upon release?

Is there a better use of their time? If so, what?

Time to Serve

This idea, that people in China can pay a "double" to serve time for them in prison, is so odd that I have trouble believing it's true.

The problem is that it is SO inefficient.  If you allow this practice, then you should reduce all penalties to huge fines.  Then you could pay the state, or serve the time.

The advantage, from the perspective of the state, is that they would get the revenue.  It is bizarre to accept a double for jail time, and then pay the costs of incarcerating that double.  The only punishment paid by the perpetrator is the payment, in effect a fine.  Why dissipate that cash by running jails?  Take the cash directly, and make the fines huge.  $100 per day, something like that (apparently the "wage" to serve in jail is $31, so $100 is substantial).

But, all that aside, the question posed to me by the LMM (who sent the link):  Is the private transaction here euvoluntary?  That is, is the poor person / street person / hobo who serves the time as a double acting as a free agent?

I'm thinking the answer is "yes."  These are people with a very low opportunity cost of time, and their outside option is pretty bad.  But there should be a competitive "labor market" for doubles, and in prison you get fed.  A payment of $31 per day for a month is a smidge over $900, in a country where minimum wage is $150-$200 per month.

So:  dumb policy.  Encourages corruption, wastes resources.  But, exploitative of the "double"?  Nope.