Nevada county's plan to charge inmates for jail meals draws lawsuit threat
ACLU says making inmates pay is a "cruel and unusual" action. I don't know about cruel but it is unusual. On the outside, you have to pay for food, medical care etc. Why should you get a free ride once you are in jail?
Can anyone explain the legal thinking behind this?
Can anyone explain the legal thinking behind this?
When you are arrested, you become the moral responsibility of the government.
Can they decide not to feed those who do not pay?
In a different discussion, it was suggested that prisoners could be put to work. That makes the government a trafficker in forced labor. Wardens did make money for themselves by renting out their prisoners.
Ayn Rand once answered a letter from a student about "proto-Objectivist" statements by early industrialists and inventors - Frank Lloyd Wright was cited, as I recall. Rand cautioned that Objectivism is a philosophy of PRINCIPLES, and that not everything that "sounds like" Objectivism really is. In this case, the "no free lunch" statement sounds like Objectivism, but in reality, it drops the context.