new crew members

from reading some posts on Reddit, it seems most people get their new recruits by capturing pirate crews and converting them.
so far i've had a pretty harsh stance of "pirates are scum and need to die", but i guess its possible some of their crew members were captured, and joined them only to not be killed. i'd be liberating them and returning them to an honest life. (yes, i can work with that)
on a side not, it would be nice if pirate, or especially slaver ships could contain prisoners that you can rescue and have join your crew. (maybe they can, i've only ran across 1 pirate ship so far, just got to the second system today)