That seems right. But prisoners making money for people sitting in
some office, not so right. Too easy for some to want to keep more
[WS:] That is true of the entire working class, no? All they do is making money for their bloody bosses. So the additional evil resulting from subjecting criminals to the same treatment is not that big in this context, and easily outweighed by the benefits of socializing criminals to productive life.
BTW, prison labor has a long tradition in socialist countries. It was used as an important element of prisoner rehabilitation and return to society. Obviously, there were abuses (political prisoners, etc.), but the basic approach of rehabilitating parasitic elements that prey mainly on the working class (the state and the rich are pretty much insulated from them) by socializing them into productive life looks pretty sound to me. Certainly much better than the current practice of keeping them idle so they have time to be socialized to prison gangs.
Wojtek