In Maine, prisoners are thriving in remote jobs, other states are taking notice
90 comments
·September 22, 2025taurath
mullingitover
There are also perverse electoral incentives to having a prison in your voting district. Generally the prisoners count toward your population numbers but they can’t vote. No pesky three fifths compromise.
Terr_
If I had my 'druthers, disenfranchisement for felonies is anti-democratic nonsense, so people in prison should retain voting rights.
The only ethically-hard problem is which jurisdiction their vote should count in, since they cannot demonstrate it by choosing where to live. Perhaps a choice between:
1. The location of the prison, if their main interest is the conditions of their detention rather than anything outside.
2. The location of their property or close family, because they're still paying property-taxes or school levies etc. and they will be returning there later.
dylan604
I've never understood the not allowing felons to vote, even while incarcerated. Does serving time really mean you should not get the same say in leaders as everyone else? As if being incarcerated isn't punishment enough, but disenfranchising on top just seems over the top.
Many people live in an area, but keep their voting registration in another. They are even able to vote without having to return to their registered polling place. Allowing inmates to vote could just as easily be handled the same way.
Taek
You could also just use the last place they lived in before prison.
someothherguyy
In some states, until they are off parole or never again even.
https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/20...
NooneAtAll3
how would non-voters affect voting results?
Terr_
Not the results, but the weight given to the results.
Places with a greater population tend to get more representatives in a state or federal legislature, all else being equal.
This makes sense for minors (part of voter-households) and noncitizen adults (either another part of voter-households or with freedom of travel) but it becomes a perverse-incentive when we start talking about people forced to be in a specific place by a government that put them there and won't let them leave.
mikestew
Voting districts: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039643346/redistricting-pris...
whitexn--g28h
The less voters you have in your district the easier it is to gerrymander a guaranteed win.
themafia
If you want rehabilitation then you should ensure that they're working for more than slave wages and that money is set aside to be available to them upon their release.
Ensuring they can communicate with their families at no charge would be a huge plus as well.
JumpCrisscross
Do we have high-quality studies on what facilitates rehabilitation?
Teever
I would imagine that the best data comes from places that have the highest rates of rehabilitation and lowest rates of re-offending. As usual the Nordic countries seem to have this stuff figured out.[0]
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid%3A42e604d8-31d0-4067-a08c-...
gdbsjjdn
What we're currently doing is creating a permanent underclass of "criminals" who are viewed as subhuman and used as political fodder. The status quo benefits wealthy people by providing cheap labour and a convenient scapegoat. People who have been incarcerated are impoverished and cut off from careers and social lives, so they can't function outside of prison.
There's lots of evidence that maintaining connection to family, and providing skills training reduces recidivism. You should be asking for studies proving that what we're currently doing is effective or humane.
gchamonlive
> Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now.
Here in Brazil criminals are extremely dehumanized as well and used as electoral fodder. Leave them to rot in amounts proportional to the anger of the population against criminality as it rises again in the country, or at least the perception of it.
They are used to quickly let this social pressure out without actually solving anything and without making the population safer.
It would be really nice if remote work could serve as a viable vector for rehabilitation. Everyone involved would benefit from it, we just have to beware of the wrong kinds of incentives, so that people don't get thrown in jail only to serve as cheap remote labor later.
terminalshort
Not a fan of private prisons, but prisons (public or private) don't make money. They are a massive cost to the government. Incarceration is expensive (Google gives me a median of $65K per prisoner per year), and the percentage of prisoners that are able to earn more money through labor than the cost to lock them up is probably very low.
superb_dev
It might cost the government $65k to imprison someone, but that money isn’t disappearing. It’s going into the pockets of all the private businesses running the prisons who take a hefty profit
jacobr1
There seems to be a presumption that private prisons are widespread. And while not rare, they are only 8% of prisons. There is widespread use of profit-seeking vendors like food suppliers or phone companies though.
I only bring this up because it seems like the mental model most people have is that 50--90% of prisons are private - mainly because it gets discussed so much. But the problems with prisons by-and-large involve government administration, not for-profit companies running the amok (despite that also happening in a much smaller number of cases).
httpsoverdns
Prisons cost the taxpayers quite a lot of money, yes. But private prisons make enormous profits from the burden you and I shoulder. More than a quarter billion dollars every year, goes into the pockets of private prison operators. Many consider the way that they extract these profits to be cruel and inhumane to those that are supposed to be under their care.
https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/the-economic-impact-of-pr...
defrost
Top private prison companies see profits amid administration's immigration crackdown
~ https://abcnews.go.com/US/top-private-prison-companies-profi...
Prison Contracts: Profits & Politics
Two corporations, GEO Group, Inc. and CoreCivic, Inc. (CCA), manage over half of the private prison contracts in the US.
These contracts are extremely lucrative; in the 2017 fiscal year, GEO Group and CoreCivic earned a combined revenue of more than 4 billion dollars.
Corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic are invested in mass incarceration because incarceration is profitable for them.
Such corporations ensure that correctional facilities are in demand through a variety of techniques, including minimum occupancy clauses and political lobbying efforts.
vovavili
>But we’d have to stop dehumanizing criminals
This is a starry-eyed, naive perspective. Truth is, criminals disproportionately are vile people, largely past any hope.
ants_everywhere
I'm not convinced you know any criminals
coolestguy
>Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now.
Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated.
JumpCrisscross
> Criminals have to want to stop doing crime before they can be rehabilitated
This is literally what rehabiliation entails. Convincing criminals that they have better options than crime.
It doesn't work for everyone. There are absolutely bad people who will just violate social contracts, or who can't control their rage turning into violence. Those people need to be incapacitated. But for the vast majority of criminals, particularly non-violent criminals, crime is an economic cost-benefit exercise.
tomrod
Les Mis is a great treatment of exactly this, even if fictional. It takes more than justice to reform the soul. It takes making room by society to forgive the repentant. We call this mercy, and it is the higher ideal.
ryandrake
If it's too much for society to forgive someone who has done their time, the very least society could do is to stop actively fighting their rehabilitation.
Whenever a read a story about someone who's been to prison and then ends up a solid, productive member of society, I can't help but think: "This person must have extraordinary grit and determination!" Because when a criminal gets out of prison, the entire system and the entire society is set up to try to oppose his rehabilitation and get him back into prison. Overcoming this active hostility must take a remarkable person.
none2585
This is an incredibly naive take and doesn't address what you quoted in your comment. We should not dehumanize anyone - criminal or otherwise.
mwambua
I'm not justifying the crimes and I think people should pay for the consequences of their actions, but I don't think it's that simple.
I think some people just haven't been exposed to the benefits of taking a path to life that doesn't involve crime. Some people also need to be convinced that there are viable alternatives to crime. And as someone else said, society needs to give them the chance to redeem themselves and pursue those alternate paths.
djohnston
That's not entirely fair - there are all walks of life in those prisons. Some are undoubtedly beyond help, but the ones we can actually rehabilitate, or at least give meaningful work to, are not an opportunity worth overlooking.
avs733
This is the result of the dehumanization effort. It highlights OPs point in attempting to refute it
cwoolfe
When I visited a local prison through the https://www.douglassproject.org/ I had this exact thought: why not allow remote work? I'm glad it is being done somewhere! I hope it becomes more commonplace.
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cl0ckt0wer
On the one hand, prisoners being coerced to work is payment for their crimes. On the other hand, that job would have gone to someone else at market rates. This kind of thing drags down the market rates.
We really need to get rid of the exception in the 13th amendment.
_qua
The number of prisoners who are capable of this type of work are minuscule and unlikely to affect wages at large.
faitswulff
Ah, but the number of people who are capable of this type of work who could be imprisoned is quite large!
_qua
It's rather difficult to do enough bad things to get a lengthy prison sentence these days. Usually requires a violent offense in the context of significant priors.
If you're interested in doing hard federal time, I would suggest you consider interstate trafficking of distribution quantities of drugs.
SuperShibe
The obvious solution to this are harder sentences so you can imprison more people that are capable of this kind of work
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WaltPurvis
>prisoners being coerced to work is payment for their crimes. On the other hand, that job would have gone to someone else at market rates. This kind of thing drags down the market rates.
That's a different problem, for different inmates -- the inmates covered in this story are paid market rates. It mentions the software developer has a six-figure salary.
lovich
The loss of rights should be the payment for their crimes. Having volunteer job opportunities for reform or having them maintain their own facilities is the max that should be mandated.
It’s just slavery with all the perverse incentives that come with it, and I think we’d all be better off if this was a lever that no one in society had access to pull on
malcolmgreaves
Sounds nice, until you're robbed, they catch and prosecute the guy successfully, and then you're unable to be made whole again because the criminal doesn't have any money to pay you back.
What then? If they're not forced to produce something of value to give to you, then how can you ever be made whole again? Does the state pay? If so, why do taxpayers who didn't commit a crime foot the bill? If it's insurance, then why do non-criminals paying insurance premiums foot the bill?
If there's nothing linking the action (_theft_) to the needed outcome (_restitution_), then there's this unmoored loop of perverse incentives wherein some folks can continue to commit crimes with very limited consequences.
Doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to work while in prison. But surely for any and all crimes that have a clearly defined dollar amount, shouldn't that criminal be forced to pay that amount back? Garnishing future wages can be circumvented (_just don't get a real job when you get out, keep stealing things to support yourself_). And even at best, it's very much _delayed_ restitution. Justice delayed is justice denied.
margalabargala
> What then? If they're not forced to produce something of value to give to you, then how can you ever be made whole again?
To be clear, in the present day, when a prisoner works, how much money do you think they make, and who do you think keeps the value produced?
ryoshoe
>If they're not forced to produce something of value to give to you, then how can you ever be made whole again? Does the state pay? If so, why do taxpayers who didn't commit a crime foot the bill? If it's insurance, then why do non-criminals paying insurance premiums foot the bill?
Are any of these solutions that unreasonable when you consider that the state/taxpayers are already footing the bill to keep prisoners incarcerated?
p_ing
> Sounds nice, until you're robbed, they catch and prosecute the guy successfully, and then you're unable to be made whole again because the criminal doesn't have any money to pay you back.
How do they pay you back when employers run background checks (not to mention housing)?
charcircuit
>This kind of thing drags down the market rates.
Why would the prison / prisoner charge below market rates for their labor?
jacobr1
The prison could, for grift reasons. They can undercut competition because their costs are lower. If a union, or even a market-rate shop needs to pay, say, $20-hour for labor, and the prison can pay $1-hour (or day) they can charge much less, and then pocket the difference. Their advantage isn't a higher quality product just a cheaper one.
rammer
For profit prisons are the worst, it should be a state responsibility not a for profit company.
Especially with all the race issues in imprisonment.
voxadam
All prisons in Maine are state or federally operated, none are private or operated for profit.
citizenpaul
>Wages are garnished for child support, victim restitution and other fees. And for those who earn above a certain amount, 10% goes to the Department of Corrections for room and board.
So they take a cut of your pay. Totally not profit? They deserve it? Why not 20% why not 95%.
nickff
This criticism 'proves too much', as the same critique can be made of taxes, which doesn't seem like your intent, unless you believe that prisoners are just the 'tip of the iceberg' when it comes to state-slavery.
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nickff
From what I understand, Maine has no private prisons; why are you bringing them up in this topic?
ckemere
I interpreted it as a potential explainer for why this sort of result is unlikely to spread broadly.
Do you have knowledge of, eg of New Hampshire (which is mentioned as a counter example in the article?)
nickff
I think NH doesn't have any private prisons either, and hasn't since 2000. Private prisons only have about 10% of the total prison population anyway.
https://www.criminon.org/where-we-work/united-states/new-ham...
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-states-use-private-pr...
umvi
This... seems like it has the makings of a really great idea. So often prisoners are repeat offenders because they have no skills, no support system after getting out of prison so they revert to their old ways. Imagine already having a job and a large nest egg in your savings account because you got a remote job in prison. Or imagine going to prison as an 18-year-old, learning some skills through a prison educational system, and then getting a remote job and actually start contributing back to society. I'm not sure about Maine's implementation specifically, but something about this idea resonates strongly with me.
terminalshort
Yeah, I guess it's a good idea given the state of our current system. But it seems like prisoners fall into two basic categories - 1. people who very few employers would hire for remote work due to their criminal history. 2. people who really shouldn't be in prison at all.
tolerance
Meanwhile on the outside…
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atlgator
So they work remote jobs and keep the money while tax payers foot the bill for their housing, food, medical, and utilities? Is that right?
Why aren't we all doing this?
lovich
> Costa says he was also surprised to learn that Thorpe was eligible for remote work while he was in prison. He hired him in June. He figured Thorpe might have trouble clearing the company's background check and he says he prepared himself for that. But since it only searches back seven years and since Thorpe has been in prison for more than a decade, "He is actually our cleanest background check," Costa says.
This just makes me feel like the entire modern process of matching workers to employers is a kafkaesque hell that has negative value.
The boss doesn’t even care that the guy obviously violates the intention of his companies process. Stay in jail long enough and you’ll pass one of our arbitrary steps!
JumpCrisscross
> boss doesn’t even care that the guy obviously violates the intention of his companies process
What's the intent of the process?
I remember hiring a few years ago, where a deep background check uncovered an assault charge on a candidate I liked. The charges had been dropped. But they were violent in nature, and this spooked my team.
Fortunately, our GC once did family law. Between me pointing out this was a remote position and our GC showing that the facts of the case looked incredibly like domestic dispute in the midst of divorce, we wound up hiring her. And she was great!
terminalshort
The crazy part to me is that people are in prison at all for crimes don't even rise to the level that employers consider a disqualifier.
throwmeaway222
Heck, we might as well just limit jail sentences to 7 years! That will solve a fuck ton of problems, right guys?
Apocryphon
Maybe it's a statute of limitations thing. It sounds like his crimes were non-violent.
RickJWagner
Wow, that’s fantastic. I bet recidivism rates plummet when the cons exit after having a good job.
bluefirebrand
Oh cool so all I have to do in order to keep my job fully remote in the future is go to jail.
Awesome. So so so awesome
null
If we get serious about actual rehabilitation in prisons instead of punishment there’s never been a better time to be able to learn just about anything on your own time. But we’d have to stop dehumanizing criminals. Dehumanization seems to be the trend that the US is leading on right now.
We can also be concerned about the incentives for prison labor - for profit prisons and all the many service providers that get paid a mint. Phone calls in many prisons are like $10. Labor gangs and the such. It’s just horrible how badly we treat people in the US for some middleman to make money.