Hard labor as a punishment simply becomes for-profit slavery (as opposed to "just" slavery) in favor of the owners and managers of prisons. Unspecified rape could just as "easily" become for-profit (and/or for-pleasure (of the raping, non-paying authorities), of course) sex slavery (as opposed to "just" slavery) for the same. I can see some people suiciding to avoid hard labor. Maybe it's not the normal response, but I don't think that suicide is the normal response to being raped, either. How horrible (or not horrible, as raping Maytag would be to Maytag via book 0) things are is completely variable, and it's meaningless to impose some standard level of minimum or maximum reaction of any polarity (negative or positive (or neutral, but absolute neutrality (the only true kind) is quite unlikely)) to any given event (not that each event is actually even "the same" as another of its classification, either). Anyway, if hard labor to for example repay debts (and line some authorities' pockets as well, because this will obviously happen) is acceptable, then what about women with debts? Hard labor for them, too? They wouldn't wouldn't usually repay their debts as fast as men would (per debt unit, not per debt percentage, which obviously varies with the total size of the debt), but physically or psychologically weak men wouldn't repay their debts as fast as "normal" men, either, especially if they killed themselves because they couldn't take it. Alternatively, if the hard labor was the same for all regardless of "ability" (which usually ignores the mind even though there is no possibility of doing something if the will to do so doesn't exist, and of course if the will doesn't exist there is likely no or at least insufficient will to gain the will, etc., recursively, either, making it impossible to gain the will, making it impossible to do the something) some would be harmed much more than others. If women can't get hard labor then the punishment is sexist. Whether that's a worthy ideal is up to each individual. It's not to me.