Talk:Penal labour

Improvement Drive
Roma people has been nominated to be improved on the Improvement Drive. Support this article with your vote and help us improve it to featured status!--Fenice 10:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

PI = Prison labour ?
The PI page says that "PI may stand for: Prison labor". But if that is the case why PI and not PL???!

I found on the List of Prison Break characters page that it may mean "Prison Industry".

Anyway, if someone has an explaination for "PI", I think that it should be somewhere at the beginning of the page! It may be obvious to you but it is not at all for me... (english is not my mother tongue) ZeroJanvier 00:52, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Spelling of lab*r
Why is it not "labor"? Is it because the British Empire invaded all these countries and made penal labour of them? Skinnyweed 18:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedia manual of style states that:

The English Wikipedia has no general preference for a major national variety of the language. No variety is more correctthan the others are.

Each article should consistently use the same conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. For example, these should not be used in the same article: center and centre; insofar and in so far;

An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation.

For all of these reasons, and to maintain consistency with the spelling of title, I have switched the spellings to labourGeraintlewis (talk) 17:08, 30 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I have gone through again and made the spellings consistent --Mgp28 (talk) 12:11, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Mention of Alleged German Camp Purposes
Why, if the subject of the page is "penal labor," is there a totally unnecessary comment about the "main purpose" of German NSDAP's concentration camps? It seems that the camps need be only discussed in the context of the article at hand.

"The Soviet Gulag camps were a continuation of the punitive labour system of Imperial Russia known as katorga, but on a larger scale - together with executions and forced migrations the Stalinist oppression may have made more victims than the Nazi occupation."

That sentence is confusing, does it mean the Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union and the millions of deaths suffered during the fighting or the Nazi occupation of Europe.

No Englishmen
We shall use the proper AMERICAN spelling for this site, thank you. This is America, and if you don't like it, you can GET OUT!!!!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.195.16.211 (talk) 18:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC).
 * The Internet is America??!!  NuclearWinner (talk) 23:43, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No, his PC is in America... "How did you all make into my PC?! Show me your visa!" :) 213.199.30.165 (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is Australia :P CybergothiChé (talk) 04:52, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Why is it out of use?
The article mentions that prisoners' labour can be used to the government's economic gain. It doesn't say why it has fallen out of use. Anyone know? Leushenko (talk) 20:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Article sounds a little biased.
Sounds like it was written by someone who is definitely not in favor of prison labor.

Can we get a viewpoint from more positive sources? 207.237.41.202 (talk) 05:05, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Work instead of prison
The interwiki link for the article Werkstraf in the Dutch language Wikipedia links to this article, but that is not right. These are completely different things.

The werkstraf (literaly, 'work punishment') has been introduced in recent decades in the Netherlands and Belgium (I don't know about other countries) as a alternative for imprisonment. It is considered a punishment that is more serious than a fine, but lighter than a prison sentence. The convict is sentenced to do between 20? and 240 hours unpaid work, for example, in public gardens, hospitals, or other non-profit institutions. In the mean time, the convicts are not put in jail and can stay in their own homes.

Just like fines, the execution of the sentence is enforced by the fact that convicts will have to go to prison if they do not show up at their assigned work place. (The same is true for people who do not pay the fines imposed by a court of law).

When it was first introduced, it was a voluntary mode of punishment. A convict who was sentenced to prison (for a short sentence) could request his punishment to be replaced by a work sentence.

Question: What would be the English term for 'werkstraf' and is their an article about that in the English language Wikipedia? Johan Lont (talk) 22:06, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I just remembered the term Community service, which answered my own question. This is described in a subsection of that article: Community service. Further in that article: "In the United Kingdom, community service is now officially referred to by the Home Office as more straightforward "compulsory unpaid work""
 * The section on 'Alternative sentencing' should be split off Community service. The title could be Compulsary unpaid work or something like Community service (sentence), Community service (punishment) or Community service as an alternative punishment. Johan Lont (talk) 14:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I love the ...
I love the source from the Cuban government mouthpiece, real objective. Because, of course, Cuba is a bastion of human rights, the ultimate worker's paradise. God, Wikipedia sucks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.132.235.8 (talk) 22:05, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know what source you are talking about.
 * Everybody can contribute to Wikipedia, so it is quite possible that someone adds biased or otherwise unreliable information. That's why Wikipedia sometimes sucks. Fortunately, we can do something about it. Subjective information can be replaced by less subjective information in a community effort. You are welcome to help. Johan Lont (talk) 09:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

UNICOR
Employs about 17% of US prisoners and a growing numbers of other private corps plus CCA are putting prison labor to use at about 40% of the typical wage. The article reads as if this is an archaic phenomena but it is growing. 97.85.163.245 (talk) 06:42, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
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Screw as origin of slang for prison officer
May I express discomfort at the claim that the slang word "screw" for a prison officer derives from an adjustment screw on the crank machine? To be sure it is claimed in the Inveraray article cited: "The warder could make the task harder by tightening a screw, hence the slang word for prison warder". I beg to suggest that this is an urban myth endlessly repeated and taken a life of its own. (Yes, I know that as long as you cite a reference it's legitimate to put it in Wikipedia even if you don't believe it.)

The crank machine had paddles rotating in a sand box and the prisoner had to turn the crank against the resistance of the sand. There is no screw adjustment available in this situation. I have never seen a contemporary engraving showing any screw or any other adjustment on the apparatus.

Fwiw I think it is more likely that the crank machine itself was regarded as a "screw", just as a ships' propeller gets that name ... in other words a screw doesn't have to be a small device for fastening two pieces of metal.

I would be delighted if someone could shed authoritative light on this, one way or the other ... Afterbrunel (talk) 17:02, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

"Unfree Labor"
"Unfree Labor" used in the lede seems like a euphemism for "forced labor" (which is where that link redirects). Is there any good reason to use that rather than the more common term? It's not like "forced labor" is inaccurate in any way I can see. Hppavilion1 (talk) 10:57, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Content Addition Intention
For the section on the Soviet Union, it mentions Gulags without first describing what they are. I would like to add some more background information on the gulags. I would also like to mention the kulaks that were commonly imprisoned in these gulags. My changes would be approximately 200 words and would use Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History. Applebaum has a degree in history from Yale and has won a Pulitzer prize. She also has a masters degree in economics. If anyone has any comments on these changes, please let me know on this Talk Page or on my Talk Page. Chapmanstudent00 (talk) 19:43, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Neutrality dispute
Why is the neutrality of this section being disputed? Jarble (talk) 02:52, 9 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I don't see why either. Since the original editor is an IP and hasn't come forward to explain, and no one else has made a case for it, I'm going to remove the template for the time being.
 * To me that section seems like a relatively cut-and-dry recitation of facts, and it looks largely well-sourced. I suppose someone might object to the amount of space given to prison strikes and prison labor reform movements, but looking at the list of references I think it's pretty easy to see that these are significant political issues in the contemporary U.S. as far as e.g. mainstream news media is concerned, so I don't think it gives the subject undue weight to cover it for a few paragraphs. Aside from that I'm not sure what anyone might think was biased. If anyone disagrees, obviously we can put the template back and all talk it over. Mesocarp (talk) 19:57, 19 January 2022 (UTC)