I understand now that you’ve rediscovered the 13th amendment everything looks like a nail, but murder isn’t a status crime like vagrancy, some pretext to reincarnate slavery as convict leasing. We were always going to punish murder (traditionally, by hanging).
And against the complaint that even fixed-term sentences don’t come with an exit plan these days, “ease out your last few years doing off-campus catering around the most powerful people in the state” doesn’t strike me as rank barbarity tbh
The real issue isn’t the amount of suffering by inmates performing janitorial work, but creating a system in which there is a reward for incarceration other than lowering the crime rates. You get what you pay for, after all.
