Time-based prison sentences mirror the commodification of labor time

Evidence

Moreover, the prison sentence, which is always computed in terms of time, is related to abstract quantification, evoking the rise of science and what is often referred to as the Age of Reason. We should keep in mind that this was precisely the historical period when the value of labor began to be calculated in terms of time and therefore compensated in another quantifiable way, by money. The computability of state punishment in terms of time—days, months, years—resonates with the role of labor-time as the basis for computing the value of capitalist commodities. Marxist theorists of punishment have noted that precisely the historical period during which the commodity form arose is the era during which penitentiary sentences emerged as the primary form of punishment — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 111

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Marx’s labor-theory of value and commodity fetishism, plus Foucault’s rise of disciplinary time. — connects to: Slavery’s abolition parallels the conceivable abolition of prisons; Prison wages act as a fiction measuring moral transformation, not production — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 370; Systems of punishment correlate strictly with systems of production — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 71 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the time-based sentence map quantitatively onto wage forms, or only analogically?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 111

Related

• Systems of punishment correlate strictly with systems of production (similarity 0.83)
• Prison wages act as a fiction measuring moral transformation, not production (similarity 0.78)