The older articles I wrote offer a lot more details including some links to some catalogs of products and services.

I actually worked for a corporation that provided goods to inmates to assemble in 1994-1996.    I hadn't really realized what the implications of that were until many years after I was no longer working there.

My older articles I linked have examples including links to their actual catalogs (at only a few places) so you can see some to the types of products and services they provide.

"WE DON'T HAVE LABOR CAMPS IN THE US!" says the news reporter talking to Rodman about North Korea. :3"

There's truly no comparison, though, between U.S . prison labor conditions and North Korean labor camps.  I've read many accounts of former prisoners, including a book by one called "Eyes of the Tailless Animals." 

It sometimes left me in a daze of horror at the brutality,  which at least equaled the Nazis. It very much reminded me of the Holocaust, and that's the overwhelming conclusion of people who research it. From the UN, where North Korea should be brought to the International Criminal Court: 

- "the gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world".

- "unspeakable atrocities" which amounted to "crimes against humanity".

And this from the UN leader in charge of investigating North Korea's atrocities:

"Mr Kirby said that the descriptions he heard reminded him of Holocaust abuses.

"He said: "I never thought that in my professional life, my life as a judge or as an officer of the United Nations, I would sit there and hear descriptions that were so similar to the descriptions of what went on in those places.

"I thought we had said as a world community, 'never again'.

"I thought that was what the charter of the United Nations was about. I thought that was why in the charter it speaks of international peace and security and the protection of universal human rights together."

Whenever I think of those North Korean camps, I think that right now, under the same sky of this planet that I'm looking up at, there are people being constantly and most cruelly tortured in dozens and dozens of horrific ways. 

http://news.sky.com/story/north-korean-defectors-harrowing-stories-10407270

https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Tailless-Animals-Prison-Memoirs/dp/0882643355

You should check out their catalogs.   I doubt you realize how many businesses they can effectively put out of business for people that are NOT in prison.

People worry about robots taking their jobs, etc.

I also think many people still view them as breaking rocks and license plates.   It has gone behind that to making tons of food, dominating large parts of the furniture industry, catering, making web pages, etc.

The older posts I linked have some links to catalogs and more specifics.

It is also not just life sentenced.  It can be people that were caught with marijuana (*maybe several times*) though not necessarily selling it.    They can often end up in prison for a decade or more.    They are in prison for choosing to put something the government has deemed illegal in their body, though they didn't actually harm anyone.

They make up a large portion of the prison population.

Privatized AND Subsidized.... also government gave exclusivity deals with the prisons... which is how monopolies and corruption happen.

Many governments mandate that a large portion of their goods must be purchased from the prison industry.

This is true... there are some truly crazy laws out there, and more all of the time.

Did you read anything I wrote?

The vast majority of criminals in our prison system are there for victimless crimes.   That means they did not rob a bank, in fact they didn't hurt anyone.    In fact, a lot of them are in there due to putting substances in their own body and being hit with the three strikes rule.    

If the people in prison were there due to harming others or property belonging to others then your points might be valid.

However, this practice also greatly impacts people OUTSIDE of prison that have committed no crime as they cannot compete with the slave labor of the prisons.    So it also hurts people that are not even criminals.

When it was pounding rocks and hard labor those were jobs people don't want.   Yet had you read what I wrote you'd see that this has not been the case for some time now and it is getting worse.   Do you for example make web pages?   Well so do inmates, and their cost might undercut yours.     Not to mention government agencies are often mandated they must get a pretty high percentage (the document I am thinking of I saw last year said 60%) of their goods and services IF AVAILABLE from the prison industry.

Some of the older posts I link share links to numerous catalogs that show what you can buy from some places in terms of services and products.   I likely only did Colorado and California, though I may have also hit upon Texas.   These programs exist in every state within the U.S.

Cant you see? Prisons are not labor (slave) camps!  Else they would have the same name, duh.

Let me explain you the difference: A prison is run by good guys, a labor camp is run by evil guys.

It's so easy to understand, how can people not get that simple fact?

Combine this with victimless crimes and it is SLAVERY that they are trying to pretend is not slavery.

Yeah, it is something I saw happening but didn't realize the ramifications of until the last decade or so.   I actually witnessed some of this industry growing in the mid-90s as inmates would come pick up stuff from a furniture company I worked for (*CPSI*).    I hadn't really realized what I was actually seeing until recently though.

meep