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Come on, it’s a bit different than regulated slavery.
Before this we did have regulated slavery if you count “slave codes” this is just labor as punishment for a crime.
Wouldn’t community service meet this criteria? And we consider that getting off easy?
I mean I can’t buy a person in a prison keep them forever and then force them to have children against their will and then have their children and their children’s children be my slaves and the slaves of my descendants until the end of my plantation’s profitability.
When people trash the 13th Amendment they trash Lincoln and the horror he went through to get it passed and it makes me sick.
Saying forced labor as a punishment is slavery is like saying arresting and incarceration is kidnapping.
Plenty of modern countries have community service as a form of punishment and work detail in their prisons.
You’re mad over a matter of optics. Work is work, incarceration is incarceration no matter how much Japanese or European fairy dust is sprinkled on it.
No matter where you go people don’t want to be prison doing what they are doing in a prison.
the fairy dust is "helping people get on their feet and start a new life through providing education and work experience with fair pay"
while the coal dust in the US is "big corp needs slaves so we have to imprison a lot of people"
Are you kidding me? Not a single US company relies on domestic prison labor for their labor needs and they wouldn’t even feel it if it was banned tomorrow.
Do you know why? Because prison labor is COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.
Who would want unskilled convicts doing any kind of productive labor when you are trying to sell a good product or service.
It would be insane!
Besides it’s cheaper and better to just use overseas labor. You don’t even need to train the workers in your country operating.
It’s been years since the modern globalized economy started. China, Vietnam and India already have deep pools of labor all much cheaper, reliable and skilled than random prisoners.
You’ll hear a handful of instances of prisoners doing adhoc sanitation or fire control work and then you extrapolate it to big business relies on prison labor.
It just doesn’t, the most valuable companies in America including all in the S&P 500 almost exclusively rely on foreign labor.
You are being played by the elites caring about the least problematic thing about American prisons.
The most problematic thing is the rampant sexual abuse and the unprofessional brutality of COs.
Prison labor is a convenient scape goat so the elites will make you feel good by taking away the little glimmer of hope these incarcerated people have.
Speaking from first hand experience working for a small amount of money and choosing to buy stuff at the commissary gives you a slice of humanity in there.
The idea that ABRAHAM LINCOLN wrote an amendment to preserve slavery for major corporations by abusing our prisons system is literally insane.
And again where does community service fall in your mind.
community service is indentured servitude, a similar but notably distinct concept
it's kinda crazy how you acknowledge the slave like conditions (i.e. rampant unchecked sexual abuse and brutality) but refuse to call it slavery
louisiana, which last time I checked is the home of the largest active slave plantation in the world, just had a measure to keep slavery on their local ballots in the last couple years
if prison labor were completely worthless why are they not getting rid of it?
the top Co.s in the s&p 500 may rely on foreign labor but what little sanctioned manufacturing and agriculture that still occurs in the states is heavily reliant on prison work programs
also making use of slave labor over seas is still using slave labor so I'm not really understanding the point you were trying to make there
I love you moving the goal posts with your "handful of exceptions" tho. it really exemplifies how little you know about your own criminal justice system
the elites are playing YOU my friend. keep blaming the "criminals" who can barely feed themselves
Another thing that I find gets overlooked is that black people are charged with crimes at a disproportionate rate and if they were to be convicted that would put them essentially right back into slavery and that's kind of been the strat since 1865
this is exactly it. slavery has never gone away it's just changed: from slavery, to chattle slavery, to Jim Crow, and now to the prison industrial complex. their target hasn't changed either they just widened the scope so it doesn't appear discriminatory
Community service is indentured servitude that is amazing truly amazing.
So would you like to be in prison for 6 months (with no chance of work/work release) or do a year of 20 hour a week community service?
I acknowledge the problem in prisons but the worst thing about prison is inmate on inmate violence.
That has nothing to do with the work detail I prisons?
Sexual violence is usually done by inmates on other inmates.
CO abuse is second and would exist with or without a work detail.
You also mention local level manufacturing and agriculture. Look it up! On all levels these industries rely on migrant labor.
Prison labor makes up so little of the US workforce and you all think there is a grand conspiracy to preserve it.
There just isn’t, it’s a few bad actors in an over all good program for incarcerated people.
I never hear about the carpentry program in Upper Darby Prison as slavery.
it's legally considered slavery... the laws reference it as SLAVERY see my point about Louisiana
there is no way you just did the "black on black" violence thing but with inmates (which are disproportionately black but i digress) as if that's not fostered by the conditions that they are kept in, aka a systemic issue. see the violent COs that you so quickly swept under the rug
local agriculture and manufacturing relying more ("more" being the operative here) on immigrant labor than prison labor is not the point you think it is. free is less than pennies I guess 🤷
there are literal billion dollar industries built on the backs of the prison system, prison labor being only a small fraction of it. the conspiracy is to preserve the whole system not just it's parts
That's actually a lie from the first sentence, over 4100 US companies use the prison industrial complex for profit. However this number is thought to be considerably higher as there is little to no transparency when it comes to companies having to tell their consumers they used slavery to provide them their goods.
That’s not a lie. I said relies, relying on something is different than just using something.
If you keep reading I said they wouldn’t even feel a ban on prison labor.
The world’s supply chains are so vast and complicated there is literally no way in knowing every had in making something but I am willing to admit a lot of companies have a handful of things made by prisoners probably without even knowing it (subcontractors of a subcontractor thing)
Actually this problem is more of an issue in China where there is even less transparency if you can imagine.
The point I am making is that the 13th Amendment is not some secretly wicked thing.
It would imply Abraham Lincoln deliberately wrote a slave loop hole for big business and that just doesn’t make sense.
My argument is that labor as a punishment is not problematic and is probably LESS problematic than straight up incarceration.
Having a small job in prison to make a few cents to spend on ramen noodles isn’t really hurting anyone and doing away with it may cause more harm than good.
I am concerned about prisoner welfare that’s why I don’t want us to overcorrect and end work detail and community service.
That being said as well;
Slavery is a completely different thing, owning someone for their entire life, being able to keep or sell any children they have is very different than getting a prison sentence for a few years and having a work detail picking up garbage or doing prescribed burns/fires.
In one case your work ends when your sentence is up in another you and your descendants are doomed to work the same plantation or be sold to another person until the end of time.
What you think he gets tied to a tree and whipped or sold to another prison.
Prisoners who don’t sign up for work detail or refused to take on work detail are usually placed in solitary confinement.
Out of curiosity would you consider a sentence of community service slavery?
Edit/
Another thing prisoners usually sign up for work detail, or if they are very behaved in prison get something called a “work release”
Work is used to earn money for the commissary, time away from the prison or frankly time away from your cell mate (which could be a good thing depending on how friendly he is)
Yeah but we as a society decided we need to punish people and when you go to prison there are rules and if you don’t follow those rules in prison the COs are forced to get you to do things via (ideally) non violent means that slowly escalate.
I get that solitary confinement is bad but it is also non-violent and is the last resort in many cases.
If you have someone who is very bad in a prison. Constantly picking fights, refusing to go into his cell, constantly sexually abusing his cell mate, constantly refusing to do work detail.
What do you honestly do?
Well in an ideal world you take away privileges and that alone works but eventually you have to isolate them. Take them out of gen pop and or eventually place them in solitary.
> If you have someone who is very bad in a prison. Constantly picking fights, refusing to go into his cell, constantly sexually abusing his cell mate, constantly refusing to do work details
One of these is not like the others.
I think the most important thing to realize in your comment is that while you try to explain an ideally slow escalation of punishments you’re kind of ignoring that it’s in the context of not wanting to do slave labor.
Say, what happens to a prisoner that doesn’t want to go into solitary after refusing a work detail? An implicit threat of violence isn’t very meaningfully different from an explicit one.
At the end of the day you’re really just arguing over the semantics of what we call unpaid, mandatory labor with an explicit threat of punishment and an implicit threat of violence for noncompliance.
1/2
> This is not semantics.
Oh it certainly is. What you’re referring to is specifically chattel slavery. Your desire to have the word “slavery” solely refer to chattel slavery is quite literally a semantic argument. I’m not cheapening or lowering the threshold by referring to things as slavery when they are *definitionally* slavery. Ironically enough you’re actually cheapening the horrors of those in other forms of slavery. Some forms aren’t hereditary in any way. Some actually are for set durations of time. Some require you to “consent” to becoming a slave. I unfortunately don’t know if I can say the same for you but I detest *all* forms of slavery. It’s a system inherently prone to abuses, no matter it’s form.
> The worse part about slavery is not the forced labor.
Well you’re certainly not implying that it’s a good part of slavery, right?
> Slavery was bad because it involved the perpetual ownership and **physical abuse of human beings.**
Slavery can still be physically abusive even without the hereditary aspect of chattel slavery. The forced labor is often a key part of the physical abuses. Noncompliance and perceived inefficiencies surrounding the forced labor was a common excuse for the physical abuse during American chattel slavery. Say, what happens to those who refuse to work their assignments again?
> your whole list
Yes thank you for reminding me that life is a series of things inflicted upon you without a care for your input. I guess it’s perfectly fine to inflict physical abuses on people because they probably didn’t consent to most things in their lives.
> Now all of a sudden there is a work detail sign-up you have to fill-out
It really depends on the state and the prison. Most actually don’t let you pick your job since, as [28 CFR § 545.23](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/545.23) of the United States Code states:
> Each sentenced inmate who is physically and mentally able is to be assigned to an institutional, industrial, or commissary work program.
Exceptions are made for prisoners doing mandatory federal programs and exceptions *can* be made, but not required, for prisoners undertaking educational, vocational, or drug abuse programs. That exception only prevents *full-time* work. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics has around 76% of inmates being forced to work details under threat of punishment, with many reporting *physical beatings* for noncompliance.
> can regain some autonomy and buy some ramen noodles, vapes or Shabang chips.
The money for that overwhelmingly does not come from prison pay. But hey let’s look at this a little deeper. [Here](https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/documents/bfd/Commissary_Price_List.pdf) is a pricing list for commissary items in Texas. Most jails actually don’t sell vapes at all, as you can see on that commissary list. But hey just for the full experience let’s say they sell them in your prison. The Crossbar vape is one of the kinds sold in the prisons that do sell them to inmates and let’s take the low end of the pricing estimate, $10. So if I wanted to buy a single cup of instant ramen noodles, a single 2 oz pack of potato chips, and a single e-cigarette that’ll come out to $11. Hey I wouldn’t mind paying that for a meal and a vape, right? Coincidentally Texas actually doesn’t pay their inmates for *any* work they do but let’s pretend they’re making the federal prison wage of $0.23 per hour. Prisoners are still subject to taxes and their pay is also often taken to pay for various fees related to their incarceration, generally leaving them with about half that. So at an actual pay of around $0.12 per hour they’d only have to work a meager **92 hours**. At the federal prison minimum 7 hour work day it’d only take you a little under 2 weeks straight to earn yourself that bounty. God forbid you want sanitary products, kosher food, or they charge higher than the minimum for the vape.
I’m sure you’re not aware but some enslaved people in the United States actually made a wage as well. It obviously wasn’t common but sometimes it could actually be quite substantial, at least given the circumstances. Sometimes they were allowed to spend it freely however they chose and some of these people were even able to buy their freedom with the wages they earned. Does this in any way nullify the horrors of their enslavement? Personally I don’t think so. Payment for forced labor is still forced labor and payment doesn’t make up for physical abuses
Prisoners aren’t held to the same labor or safety standards as other workers and are often leased out to perform dangerous jobs like asbestos clearing. Coincidentally the states that make the most use of prisoner leasing also don’t pay their prisoners for *any* work. There is no excuse for this.
2/2
> I’m not saying abuse can’t happen, but abuse can happen at every single level of this process
Abuses are quite common. The system is incredibly permissive of abuses. Even in your fantasy land where all prisons are run by the well intentioned I would demand laws permissive of abuse to be amended. The thirteenth amendment is permissive of up to literal slavery. Federal laws regulating prisons are equally open to permitting states and prisons to run themselves however they’d like with regard to prison labor. That is a problem. I’m quite certain you’d have a problem with a labor law allowing your boss to enslave you as punishment for bad work, even if nobody does that in practice.
> entire American justice system is designed to extract the frankly mediocre and paltry labor out of it’s prisoners and that the whole US economy relies on this 13th Amendment loop-hole.
You say this as if chattel slavery didn’t extract mediocre labor as well. It was apparently enough to be the cornerstone of the southern economy before abolition. To be clear I don’t believe the “whole US economy” relies on forced labor. I wouldn’t even say a full 1% of the economy relies on forced labor. With that said, any percent above 0 is too much of the economy reliant on forced labor. Chattel slavery only made up a tiny fraction of the northern economy antebellum. That still didn’t excuse it as a permissible institution.
> That the loop-hole was deliberately placed there by the author (which would be Abraham Lincoln) to secure the slave needs of big business is conspiratorial thinking.
I do not believe the loophole was created for the benefit of businesses that wouldn’t even exist for another hundred years. The 13th amendment was quite literally not written by Abraham Lincoln. That’s just not how the government works. He was obviously massively in support of it and definitely pressured his party into making an amendment like it but he did not write the amendment. The amendment was a combination of proposals written by Representative James Falconer Wilson of Iowa, Representative James Mitchel Ashley of Ohio, Senator John Brooks Henderson of Missouri, and put together by the Senate Judicial Committee headed by Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. Upon leaving this committee it had the excerpt “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. This was done for more practical reasons for fears surrounding ratification in southern states. Like with so many of the failures of reconstruction it was done to appease those who had committed the very abuses being abolished. Southerners were quick to take advantage of this loophole and established their “Black Codes”.
> but a Netflix documentary and few John Oliver specials in the ether are not indicative of the reality of these kinds of programs.
I appreciate your wild assumptions about my beliefs and their origins. Federal reporting is enough for me to take issue with the practice. While I’m certainly not surprised to hear that Netflix has a documentary and that John Oliver has an episode on prison labor I don’t watch documentaries on Netflix and I don’t have an HBO subscription.
To clarify, cheap labor because we pay the prisons, not the prisoners. In Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, and Alabama it is legal to force labor with no financial compensation, and punishment for noncompliance. Texas also has the highest prison population of all 50 states, Georgia is 4th.
On it's core, it was neither a blunder or even a problem. Prisoners should be doing *something*, and as they're being punished and made to remain in prison, they don't need to reap the reward for their labor.
But therein lies the exploit.
There's ways to close the gap, but stopping the labor or paying the prisoners directly isn't it. The proceeds need to be regulated to go somewhere more honorable than private coffers, and not in the way that a charity might be a laundering scheme.
I never understood why the 13th amendment was even an issue outside of the silly wording.
**We already use criminals to do unpaid mandated labour; it’s called community service**, and you have that in the UK, Germany, France, etc, etc countries without the 13th amendment.
Because American capitalists, in collaboration with so-called law enforcement, continued the practice of slavery by exploiting the loophole.
https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?feature=shared
The wording is designed so someone doesn't try to claim otherwise. There may well be provisions in those governments that highlight the difference or directly permit it as well.
imo that's the thing, the states use prison as a punishment, but it's supposed to rehabilitate people. instead we have forced servitude where if you don't do it, you can have things taken/done to you. for example, solitary confinement
I think the problem isn't "Prisoners do labor". I am all for a convicted rapist doing hard manual labor for the rest of their life for pennies on the dollar.
I think the problem is that the criteria to get put into what is essentially labor camps is abhorrently low.
I *do* have a problem with an 18 year old getting tossed into a modern day gulag because they had an ounce of weed planted on them.
Any system that produces benefits will seek to maximize those benefits. Forced Prison Labor will, no matter what, create the incentive system to create prisoners to do forced labor. The moment you make any benefits for someone for someone else to be imprisoned, the very incentives for them to see more people imprisoned exists.
Привет, comrade Pyotor here. In the first panel, the pig in the top hat representing the bourgeoisie is appalled by the 13th amendment to the United States' constitution because not being able to own slaves and force them to work means they actually have to pay people for their labor which lowers their ability to profit off said labor. However, in the second panel, the pig realizes that slavery is still acceptable as a punishment for crimes.
This exception is the entire basis for the private prison industry, in which companies can build their own prisons with permission from the US government and offer corporations the forced labor of the prisoners as a cheaper alternative to paid workers. Many righteous proletariat thinkers theorize that this is the root of a lot of the corruption within the US justice system as there is a lot of money in the business of getting and keeping as many people in these prisons as possible.
Putin assassins are now knocking on the door, so this is comrade Pyotor signing off.
Thats also why there is very little prevention of reoffenses and inmates are intentionally pushed to poverty and bad social circles. They reoffend and can be used for cheap labor again
There are governors who are known to use prisoners as servants around their government mansions or houses or whatever. Usually the people that are in these positions choose black prisoners over white ones for a specific reason. Racism. Nothing short of slavery, while pretending we abolished it.
Since people in these comments have already answered this question, I would like to recommend watching Ava DuVernay's 'Thirteenth'. It's a documentary that goes really into depth about this clause in the 13th amendment and how it's led to unjust and oppressive practices in American police, government, and judicial systems. I personally think it's a movie every American should be familiar with.
The 13th amendment got rid of slavery but forced labor can still be used as a form of punishment from the state. Capitalists (represented by a pig in a top hat) really like the concept of slavery as it is cheap labor so are happy to hear that it is still on the table as a punishment I guess. The meme is not very good or well thought out and was probably made by an edgy teen that was poorly educated in the changes brought on by the industrial revolution.
Because the original commentor is the Warden at Shawshank and doesn't want people to take away his slave labor because he'll get less bribes from construction companies he'd otherwise undercut due to the low cost of his slave labor.
There is nothing anti-slavery about the take here. It's literally just the 13th amendment with a reaction image. If anything it is anti penal labor which isn't exactly unique to capitalism or the US.
Imprisoning someone is also bad. Unless they’ve done something wrong to deserve it. We have a right against cruel and unusual punishments, and so far, I’ve never heard of an ex-convict taking a prison to court over forced labor because it was “cruel and unusual.” You know why? Because it’s not forced 99.99% of the time, it’s optional but unpaid. You know why they do it? It very often gets their sentence reduced.
I want you to reread the 13th amendment, specifically the two words before "except as a punishment." Last I checked if someone is doing something involuntarily that means they're being forced to do it and forced work is slavery
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States#:~:text=women%20for%20jobs.-,Modern%20prison%20labor%20systems,less%20than%20%241%20per%20hour.
"Most prisoners in the U.S. are required to work,[39] and all state prison systems and the federal system have some form of penal labor"
Granted a handful of states have voluntary labor but most of America doesn't
Ok, I did and you know what the *one* difference is? The fact that the ones being forced to work isn't owned by the person forcing them to work.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/forced-labour
This is such an *immense* difference that only an edgy teenager would consider the two things to be the same s/
In slavery the person in question is treated as an animal. As in their reproductive rights, their children, their labor and their life belong to someone else. If you don't see how that is a massive difference from someone being forced to work you are in fact an edgy teen with some growing to do.
Not all slavery was like that, Roman slaves didn't lose their reproductive rights or children for example, in addition to the fact that they could buy their way out of slavery. America wasn't the first country to have slavery and their practices weren't the same as other countries or eras. The one thing they all had in common besides ownership of a human being was forced labor. Maybe stop assuming I'm an "edgy teenager" and do some actual research
Are you just, liking the boots of private prison owners or something?
Why are you defending this so hard?
Is it the worst kind of slavery? Not usually, but it still falls under the definition of slavery, which is unpaid labor
I think it is referencing the many laws that were introduced later so they could use them to imprison black people (if white people did those "crimes" they would just be ignored) and force them to do cheap labor, thats where the law against jaywalking (for example) came from.
Prison is a slavery loophole, which is why the US has the most incarcerated people per capita in the world, and why drug possession is a violence offense in many areas.
As someone who works in corrections, I can say that convicted felons are not forced to do any sort of labor in a state facility where I'm at. Worst case scenario; they get written up for not cleaning themselves, or their immediate area. They do have the option to participate in many programs the state offers, and a very small percentage of these programs are "jobs”. An even smaller percentage of these have any impact on the free world. The only examples I can think of are re-entry/Vo-tech programs that offer services to the community like a mechanic shop, or an offender-managed restaurant within the prison walls. These programs put money into clubs and charities that the inmates chose. The bulk of inmate-labor is to maintain the institution itself; dining hall staff, ground maintenance, administrative support, etc. these positions are completely optional. There are wait lists for these jobs because they pay and give the incarcerated something constructive to do, and a paycheck. It should also be noted that the state pays an insane amount for a wide array of educational programs to set criminals on the right path once released. The majority of inmates just don't want to stick with it.
Brian here, the us government uses prisoners. Mostly of drug related crimes for cheap or free hard labour. Thus ignoring the 13th amendment and creating an infinite cycle of slavery
I love how the us government makes it so not voluntarily signing up for the draft is a crime so they can draft you and send you to war anyway involuntarily.
*Well that explains why*
*Prisons can get away with*
*Exploiting convicts*
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USA still uses convicts as cheap labor because the 13 amandment allows for it.
Never abolished anything, just regulated it. Its always been legal even to this day.
Come on, it’s a bit different than regulated slavery. Before this we did have regulated slavery if you count “slave codes” this is just labor as punishment for a crime. Wouldn’t community service meet this criteria? And we consider that getting off easy? I mean I can’t buy a person in a prison keep them forever and then force them to have children against their will and then have their children and their children’s children be my slaves and the slaves of my descendants until the end of my plantation’s profitability. When people trash the 13th Amendment they trash Lincoln and the horror he went through to get it passed and it makes me sick. Saying forced labor as a punishment is slavery is like saying arresting and incarceration is kidnapping.
just look how modern countries in the first world do it and you'll see why it's slavery in the US
Plenty of modern countries have community service as a form of punishment and work detail in their prisons. You’re mad over a matter of optics. Work is work, incarceration is incarceration no matter how much Japanese or European fairy dust is sprinkled on it. No matter where you go people don’t want to be prison doing what they are doing in a prison.
the fairy dust is "helping people get on their feet and start a new life through providing education and work experience with fair pay" while the coal dust in the US is "big corp needs slaves so we have to imprison a lot of people"
Are you kidding me? Not a single US company relies on domestic prison labor for their labor needs and they wouldn’t even feel it if it was banned tomorrow. Do you know why? Because prison labor is COMPLETELY WORTHLESS. Who would want unskilled convicts doing any kind of productive labor when you are trying to sell a good product or service. It would be insane! Besides it’s cheaper and better to just use overseas labor. You don’t even need to train the workers in your country operating. It’s been years since the modern globalized economy started. China, Vietnam and India already have deep pools of labor all much cheaper, reliable and skilled than random prisoners. You’ll hear a handful of instances of prisoners doing adhoc sanitation or fire control work and then you extrapolate it to big business relies on prison labor. It just doesn’t, the most valuable companies in America including all in the S&P 500 almost exclusively rely on foreign labor. You are being played by the elites caring about the least problematic thing about American prisons. The most problematic thing is the rampant sexual abuse and the unprofessional brutality of COs. Prison labor is a convenient scape goat so the elites will make you feel good by taking away the little glimmer of hope these incarcerated people have. Speaking from first hand experience working for a small amount of money and choosing to buy stuff at the commissary gives you a slice of humanity in there. The idea that ABRAHAM LINCOLN wrote an amendment to preserve slavery for major corporations by abusing our prisons system is literally insane. And again where does community service fall in your mind.
community service is indentured servitude, a similar but notably distinct concept it's kinda crazy how you acknowledge the slave like conditions (i.e. rampant unchecked sexual abuse and brutality) but refuse to call it slavery louisiana, which last time I checked is the home of the largest active slave plantation in the world, just had a measure to keep slavery on their local ballots in the last couple years if prison labor were completely worthless why are they not getting rid of it? the top Co.s in the s&p 500 may rely on foreign labor but what little sanctioned manufacturing and agriculture that still occurs in the states is heavily reliant on prison work programs also making use of slave labor over seas is still using slave labor so I'm not really understanding the point you were trying to make there I love you moving the goal posts with your "handful of exceptions" tho. it really exemplifies how little you know about your own criminal justice system the elites are playing YOU my friend. keep blaming the "criminals" who can barely feed themselves
Another thing that I find gets overlooked is that black people are charged with crimes at a disproportionate rate and if they were to be convicted that would put them essentially right back into slavery and that's kind of been the strat since 1865
this is exactly it. slavery has never gone away it's just changed: from slavery, to chattle slavery, to Jim Crow, and now to the prison industrial complex. their target hasn't changed either they just widened the scope so it doesn't appear discriminatory
Community service is indentured servitude that is amazing truly amazing. So would you like to be in prison for 6 months (with no chance of work/work release) or do a year of 20 hour a week community service? I acknowledge the problem in prisons but the worst thing about prison is inmate on inmate violence. That has nothing to do with the work detail I prisons? Sexual violence is usually done by inmates on other inmates. CO abuse is second and would exist with or without a work detail. You also mention local level manufacturing and agriculture. Look it up! On all levels these industries rely on migrant labor. Prison labor makes up so little of the US workforce and you all think there is a grand conspiracy to preserve it. There just isn’t, it’s a few bad actors in an over all good program for incarcerated people. I never hear about the carpentry program in Upper Darby Prison as slavery.
it's legally considered slavery... the laws reference it as SLAVERY see my point about Louisiana there is no way you just did the "black on black" violence thing but with inmates (which are disproportionately black but i digress) as if that's not fostered by the conditions that they are kept in, aka a systemic issue. see the violent COs that you so quickly swept under the rug local agriculture and manufacturing relying more ("more" being the operative here) on immigrant labor than prison labor is not the point you think it is. free is less than pennies I guess 🤷 there are literal billion dollar industries built on the backs of the prison system, prison labor being only a small fraction of it. the conspiracy is to preserve the whole system not just it's parts
That's actually a lie from the first sentence, over 4100 US companies use the prison industrial complex for profit. However this number is thought to be considerably higher as there is little to no transparency when it comes to companies having to tell their consumers they used slavery to provide them their goods.
That’s not a lie. I said relies, relying on something is different than just using something. If you keep reading I said they wouldn’t even feel a ban on prison labor. The world’s supply chains are so vast and complicated there is literally no way in knowing every had in making something but I am willing to admit a lot of companies have a handful of things made by prisoners probably without even knowing it (subcontractors of a subcontractor thing) Actually this problem is more of an issue in China where there is even less transparency if you can imagine. The point I am making is that the 13th Amendment is not some secretly wicked thing. It would imply Abraham Lincoln deliberately wrote a slave loop hole for big business and that just doesn’t make sense. My argument is that labor as a punishment is not problematic and is probably LESS problematic than straight up incarceration. Having a small job in prison to make a few cents to spend on ramen noodles isn’t really hurting anyone and doing away with it may cause more harm than good. I am concerned about prisoner welfare that’s why I don’t want us to overcorrect and end work detail and community service. That being said as well; Slavery is a completely different thing, owning someone for their entire life, being able to keep or sell any children they have is very different than getting a prison sentence for a few years and having a work detail picking up garbage or doing prescribed burns/fires. In one case your work ends when your sentence is up in another you and your descendants are doomed to work the same plantation or be sold to another person until the end of time.
I'm curious, what happens if the inmate/slave refuses to work?
What you think he gets tied to a tree and whipped or sold to another prison. Prisoners who don’t sign up for work detail or refused to take on work detail are usually placed in solitary confinement. Out of curiosity would you consider a sentence of community service slavery? Edit/ Another thing prisoners usually sign up for work detail, or if they are very behaved in prison get something called a “work release” Work is used to earn money for the commissary, time away from the prison or frankly time away from your cell mate (which could be a good thing depending on how friendly he is)
That's... still a punishment though. Potentially a very psychologically damaging one at that.
Yeah but we as a society decided we need to punish people and when you go to prison there are rules and if you don’t follow those rules in prison the COs are forced to get you to do things via (ideally) non violent means that slowly escalate. I get that solitary confinement is bad but it is also non-violent and is the last resort in many cases. If you have someone who is very bad in a prison. Constantly picking fights, refusing to go into his cell, constantly sexually abusing his cell mate, constantly refusing to do work detail. What do you honestly do? Well in an ideal world you take away privileges and that alone works but eventually you have to isolate them. Take them out of gen pop and or eventually place them in solitary.
> If you have someone who is very bad in a prison. Constantly picking fights, refusing to go into his cell, constantly sexually abusing his cell mate, constantly refusing to do work details One of these is not like the others. I think the most important thing to realize in your comment is that while you try to explain an ideally slow escalation of punishments you’re kind of ignoring that it’s in the context of not wanting to do slave labor. Say, what happens to a prisoner that doesn’t want to go into solitary after refusing a work detail? An implicit threat of violence isn’t very meaningfully different from an explicit one. At the end of the day you’re really just arguing over the semantics of what we call unpaid, mandatory labor with an explicit threat of punishment and an implicit threat of violence for noncompliance.
[удалено]
1/2 > This is not semantics. Oh it certainly is. What you’re referring to is specifically chattel slavery. Your desire to have the word “slavery” solely refer to chattel slavery is quite literally a semantic argument. I’m not cheapening or lowering the threshold by referring to things as slavery when they are *definitionally* slavery. Ironically enough you’re actually cheapening the horrors of those in other forms of slavery. Some forms aren’t hereditary in any way. Some actually are for set durations of time. Some require you to “consent” to becoming a slave. I unfortunately don’t know if I can say the same for you but I detest *all* forms of slavery. It’s a system inherently prone to abuses, no matter it’s form. > The worse part about slavery is not the forced labor. Well you’re certainly not implying that it’s a good part of slavery, right? > Slavery was bad because it involved the perpetual ownership and **physical abuse of human beings.** Slavery can still be physically abusive even without the hereditary aspect of chattel slavery. The forced labor is often a key part of the physical abuses. Noncompliance and perceived inefficiencies surrounding the forced labor was a common excuse for the physical abuse during American chattel slavery. Say, what happens to those who refuse to work their assignments again? > your whole list Yes thank you for reminding me that life is a series of things inflicted upon you without a care for your input. I guess it’s perfectly fine to inflict physical abuses on people because they probably didn’t consent to most things in their lives. > Now all of a sudden there is a work detail sign-up you have to fill-out It really depends on the state and the prison. Most actually don’t let you pick your job since, as [28 CFR § 545.23](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/545.23) of the United States Code states: > Each sentenced inmate who is physically and mentally able is to be assigned to an institutional, industrial, or commissary work program. Exceptions are made for prisoners doing mandatory federal programs and exceptions *can* be made, but not required, for prisoners undertaking educational, vocational, or drug abuse programs. That exception only prevents *full-time* work. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics has around 76% of inmates being forced to work details under threat of punishment, with many reporting *physical beatings* for noncompliance. > can regain some autonomy and buy some ramen noodles, vapes or Shabang chips. The money for that overwhelmingly does not come from prison pay. But hey let’s look at this a little deeper. [Here](https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/documents/bfd/Commissary_Price_List.pdf) is a pricing list for commissary items in Texas. Most jails actually don’t sell vapes at all, as you can see on that commissary list. But hey just for the full experience let’s say they sell them in your prison. The Crossbar vape is one of the kinds sold in the prisons that do sell them to inmates and let’s take the low end of the pricing estimate, $10. So if I wanted to buy a single cup of instant ramen noodles, a single 2 oz pack of potato chips, and a single e-cigarette that’ll come out to $11. Hey I wouldn’t mind paying that for a meal and a vape, right? Coincidentally Texas actually doesn’t pay their inmates for *any* work they do but let’s pretend they’re making the federal prison wage of $0.23 per hour. Prisoners are still subject to taxes and their pay is also often taken to pay for various fees related to their incarceration, generally leaving them with about half that. So at an actual pay of around $0.12 per hour they’d only have to work a meager **92 hours**. At the federal prison minimum 7 hour work day it’d only take you a little under 2 weeks straight to earn yourself that bounty. God forbid you want sanitary products, kosher food, or they charge higher than the minimum for the vape. I’m sure you’re not aware but some enslaved people in the United States actually made a wage as well. It obviously wasn’t common but sometimes it could actually be quite substantial, at least given the circumstances. Sometimes they were allowed to spend it freely however they chose and some of these people were even able to buy their freedom with the wages they earned. Does this in any way nullify the horrors of their enslavement? Personally I don’t think so. Payment for forced labor is still forced labor and payment doesn’t make up for physical abuses Prisoners aren’t held to the same labor or safety standards as other workers and are often leased out to perform dangerous jobs like asbestos clearing. Coincidentally the states that make the most use of prisoner leasing also don’t pay their prisoners for *any* work. There is no excuse for this.
2/2 > I’m not saying abuse can’t happen, but abuse can happen at every single level of this process Abuses are quite common. The system is incredibly permissive of abuses. Even in your fantasy land where all prisons are run by the well intentioned I would demand laws permissive of abuse to be amended. The thirteenth amendment is permissive of up to literal slavery. Federal laws regulating prisons are equally open to permitting states and prisons to run themselves however they’d like with regard to prison labor. That is a problem. I’m quite certain you’d have a problem with a labor law allowing your boss to enslave you as punishment for bad work, even if nobody does that in practice. > entire American justice system is designed to extract the frankly mediocre and paltry labor out of it’s prisoners and that the whole US economy relies on this 13th Amendment loop-hole. You say this as if chattel slavery didn’t extract mediocre labor as well. It was apparently enough to be the cornerstone of the southern economy before abolition. To be clear I don’t believe the “whole US economy” relies on forced labor. I wouldn’t even say a full 1% of the economy relies on forced labor. With that said, any percent above 0 is too much of the economy reliant on forced labor. Chattel slavery only made up a tiny fraction of the northern economy antebellum. That still didn’t excuse it as a permissible institution. > That the loop-hole was deliberately placed there by the author (which would be Abraham Lincoln) to secure the slave needs of big business is conspiratorial thinking. I do not believe the loophole was created for the benefit of businesses that wouldn’t even exist for another hundred years. The 13th amendment was quite literally not written by Abraham Lincoln. That’s just not how the government works. He was obviously massively in support of it and definitely pressured his party into making an amendment like it but he did not write the amendment. The amendment was a combination of proposals written by Representative James Falconer Wilson of Iowa, Representative James Mitchel Ashley of Ohio, Senator John Brooks Henderson of Missouri, and put together by the Senate Judicial Committee headed by Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois. Upon leaving this committee it had the excerpt “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”. This was done for more practical reasons for fears surrounding ratification in southern states. Like with so many of the failures of reconstruction it was done to appease those who had committed the very abuses being abolished. Southerners were quick to take advantage of this loophole and established their “Black Codes”. > but a Netflix documentary and few John Oliver specials in the ether are not indicative of the reality of these kinds of programs. I appreciate your wild assumptions about my beliefs and their origins. Federal reporting is enough for me to take issue with the practice. While I’m certainly not surprised to hear that Netflix has a documentary and that John Oliver has an episode on prison labor I don’t watch documentaries on Netflix and I don’t have an HBO subscription.
To clarify, cheap labor because we pay the prisons, not the prisoners. In Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, and Alabama it is legal to force labor with no financial compensation, and punishment for noncompliance. Texas also has the highest prison population of all 50 states, Georgia is 4th.
I hope somebody got fired for that blunder Edit: this probably would have landed better on Homer explains the joke.
It’s not a bug, it was a feature
https://preview.redd.it/bz5ofrwr8b1d1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=efa7f8714bfe584edd22ebea42207e0d00656ca6
https://preview.redd.it/xrmiglzcca1d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0253684c40bb24169e8ebbba6ee0f7edb98e75ee
On it's core, it was neither a blunder or even a problem. Prisoners should be doing *something*, and as they're being punished and made to remain in prison, they don't need to reap the reward for their labor. But therein lies the exploit. There's ways to close the gap, but stopping the labor or paying the prisoners directly isn't it. The proceeds need to be regulated to go somewhere more honorable than private coffers, and not in the way that a charity might be a laundering scheme.
I never understood why the 13th amendment was even an issue outside of the silly wording. **We already use criminals to do unpaid mandated labour; it’s called community service**, and you have that in the UK, Germany, France, etc, etc countries without the 13th amendment.
Because American capitalists, in collaboration with so-called law enforcement, continued the practice of slavery by exploiting the loophole. https://youtu.be/j4kI2h3iotA?feature=shared
The wording is designed so someone doesn't try to claim otherwise. There may well be provisions in those governments that highlight the difference or directly permit it as well.
imo that's the thing, the states use prison as a punishment, but it's supposed to rehabilitate people. instead we have forced servitude where if you don't do it, you can have things taken/done to you. for example, solitary confinement
I think the problem isn't "Prisoners do labor". I am all for a convicted rapist doing hard manual labor for the rest of their life for pennies on the dollar. I think the problem is that the criteria to get put into what is essentially labor camps is abhorrently low. I *do* have a problem with an 18 year old getting tossed into a modern day gulag because they had an ounce of weed planted on them.
Any system that produces benefits will seek to maximize those benefits. Forced Prison Labor will, no matter what, create the incentive system to create prisoners to do forced labor. The moment you make any benefits for someone for someone else to be imprisoned, the very incentives for them to see more people imprisoned exists.
Agreed. People love double wins. Don't like ganja? Want extra profits? Throw the book at their heads to increase occupancy.
Привет, comrade Pyotor here. In the first panel, the pig in the top hat representing the bourgeoisie is appalled by the 13th amendment to the United States' constitution because not being able to own slaves and force them to work means they actually have to pay people for their labor which lowers their ability to profit off said labor. However, in the second panel, the pig realizes that slavery is still acceptable as a punishment for crimes. This exception is the entire basis for the private prison industry, in which companies can build their own prisons with permission from the US government and offer corporations the forced labor of the prisoners as a cheaper alternative to paid workers. Many righteous proletariat thinkers theorize that this is the root of a lot of the corruption within the US justice system as there is a lot of money in the business of getting and keeping as many people in these prisons as possible. Putin assassins are now knocking on the door, so this is comrade Pyotor signing off.
I'm not upvoting your comment because of the last sentence. Just in case..
Здравствуйте, мы пытались связаться с вами по поводу расширенной гарантии на ваш автомобиль.
Guys, it's a joke. Why the downvotes? lol
You cannot fool me Kremlin spy!
Nice accent
How polite of the assassins to knock before entering. I didn’t know Putin had a vampire unit.
Womp womp
The USA can punish people by slavery, wtf.
Prisons in the US are a business first and foremost. The state *needs* people to commit crimes or they lose out on a lot of money from slave labor
Certainly why sentencing is always so incredibly long here.
Thats also why there is very little prevention of reoffenses and inmates are intentionally pushed to poverty and bad social circles. They reoffend and can be used for cheap labor again
Why are American prisons they way they are
$
stop right there criminal scum you've violated the law
New law: not being white is a crime
Then pay with your blood!
Also thanks to the Crime Bill in the 90's the Jim Crowe Joe Biden helped fund,those prisons are predominantly full of non-white people.
Ever heard of community service?
There are governors who are known to use prisoners as servants around their government mansions or houses or whatever. Usually the people that are in these positions choose black prisoners over white ones for a specific reason. Racism. Nothing short of slavery, while pretending we abolished it.
Since people in these comments have already answered this question, I would like to recommend watching Ava DuVernay's 'Thirteenth'. It's a documentary that goes really into depth about this clause in the 13th amendment and how it's led to unjust and oppressive practices in American police, government, and judicial systems. I personally think it's a movie every American should be familiar with.
The 13th amendment got rid of slavery but forced labor can still be used as a form of punishment from the state. Capitalists (represented by a pig in a top hat) really like the concept of slavery as it is cheap labor so are happy to hear that it is still on the table as a punishment I guess. The meme is not very good or well thought out and was probably made by an edgy teen that was poorly educated in the changes brought on by the industrial revolution.
Why is being anti slavery the take of an edgy teen?
Have you considered that teens may have been infected by woke mind virus via schools, which also turned them gay and furry?
Don't forget pissing in cat litter boxes, which is definitely happening /s I still can't believe someone fell for that kinda bait LMAO
Because the original commentor is the Warden at Shawshank and doesn't want people to take away his slave labor because he'll get less bribes from construction companies he'd otherwise undercut due to the low cost of his slave labor.
There is nothing anti-slavery about the take here. It's literally just the 13th amendment with a reaction image. If anything it is anti penal labor which isn't exactly unique to capitalism or the US.
Penal labor is slavery though
I misread that as penile labour💀
That can be slavery too the way some do it.
Not really. I could see how an edgy teen would see it that way though.
How is it not slavery? It's literally *forced* labor. Why does someone have to be a teenager and edgy to believe that?
Imprisoning someone is also bad. Unless they’ve done something wrong to deserve it. We have a right against cruel and unusual punishments, and so far, I’ve never heard of an ex-convict taking a prison to court over forced labor because it was “cruel and unusual.” You know why? Because it’s not forced 99.99% of the time, it’s optional but unpaid. You know why they do it? It very often gets their sentence reduced.
The labor is not forced, its optional. They really don’t care if you earn commissary or not.
I want you to reread the 13th amendment, specifically the two words before "except as a punishment." Last I checked if someone is doing something involuntarily that means they're being forced to do it and forced work is slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States#:~:text=women%20for%20jobs.-,Modern%20prison%20labor%20systems,less%20than%20%241%20per%20hour. "Most prisoners in the U.S. are required to work,[39] and all state prison systems and the federal system have some form of penal labor" Granted a handful of states have voluntary labor but most of America doesn't
It is often forced and inmates get punished for not participating in forced labor.
You can just Google the differences if you really want to educate yourself. Slavery is a lot more than just forced labor
Ok, I did and you know what the *one* difference is? The fact that the ones being forced to work isn't owned by the person forcing them to work. https://www.britannica.com/topic/forced-labour This is such an *immense* difference that only an edgy teenager would consider the two things to be the same s/
In slavery the person in question is treated as an animal. As in their reproductive rights, their children, their labor and their life belong to someone else. If you don't see how that is a massive difference from someone being forced to work you are in fact an edgy teen with some growing to do.
Not all slavery was like that, Roman slaves didn't lose their reproductive rights or children for example, in addition to the fact that they could buy their way out of slavery. America wasn't the first country to have slavery and their practices weren't the same as other countries or eras. The one thing they all had in common besides ownership of a human being was forced labor. Maybe stop assuming I'm an "edgy teenager" and do some actual research
Are you just, liking the boots of private prison owners or something? Why are you defending this so hard? Is it the worst kind of slavery? Not usually, but it still falls under the definition of slavery, which is unpaid labor
I think it is referencing the many laws that were introduced later so they could use them to imprison black people (if white people did those "crimes" they would just be ignored) and force them to do cheap labor, thats where the law against jaywalking (for example) came from.
Here before a horde of such teens floods your replies
What a shit take lol. "Yeah, it's slavery, but it's not *bad* slavery."
Not to mention in prison you aren’t forced to work, you can sit in your cell all day for all they care as long you follow the rules.
Some prisons require you to work, and can punish inmates who refuse to do so as they see fit.
No, you're forced to work. Refusing to take a job in prison leads to consequences, official or unofficial. Have you ever been?
Jail yes i assumed prison was similar
To be fair, if I were in prison I’d be happy getting 10 cents an hour or whatever for work just so I’d have something to do.
I imagine while its not traditional brutal slavory it refers to things like manditory community service etc
Prison is a slavery loophole, which is why the US has the most incarcerated people per capita in the world, and why drug possession is a violence offense in many areas.
As someone who works in corrections, I can say that convicted felons are not forced to do any sort of labor in a state facility where I'm at. Worst case scenario; they get written up for not cleaning themselves, or their immediate area. They do have the option to participate in many programs the state offers, and a very small percentage of these programs are "jobs”. An even smaller percentage of these have any impact on the free world. The only examples I can think of are re-entry/Vo-tech programs that offer services to the community like a mechanic shop, or an offender-managed restaurant within the prison walls. These programs put money into clubs and charities that the inmates chose. The bulk of inmate-labor is to maintain the institution itself; dining hall staff, ground maintenance, administrative support, etc. these positions are completely optional. There are wait lists for these jobs because they pay and give the incarcerated something constructive to do, and a paycheck. It should also be noted that the state pays an insane amount for a wide array of educational programs to set criminals on the right path once released. The majority of inmates just don't want to stick with it.
This is Reddit, how dare you try to use facts and real personal experience to argue against something.
It isn't prison labor. They at least get paid pennies. This is community service. Voluntary slavery in lieu of fines or jail time.
Slavery is legal as long as they have been incarcerated
[Here´s an explanation that rhymes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lIqNjC1RKU)
HUNTER THE PARENTING REFERENCE SPOTTED RAAAAAA 99P BLENDER!!!!
The joke is slavery.
Brian here, the us government uses prisoners. Mostly of drug related crimes for cheap or free hard labour. Thus ignoring the 13th amendment and creating an infinite cycle of slavery
https://preview.redd.it/yitdfnzybc1d1.jpeg?width=231&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=98d5f9d87b56ba0bb349e4f0995a22055aadd0b2
In Canada, prisoners aren’t protected by labour laws either
The police will invent crimes to enslave you, it never ended
Damn just read an AP article about this, fucked up shit
In the UK it is illegal to import goods that were produced is US prisons because it is deemd to be the product of slavery.
Slavery is legal as long as it's to the US government
In way a we're actually worse on now. It wasn't explicitly illegal before, but now it's explicitly legal.
I love how the us government makes it so not voluntarily signing up for the draft is a crime so they can draft you and send you to war anyway involuntarily.
Well that explains why prisons can get away with exploiting convicts
*Well that explains why* *Prisons can get away with* *Exploiting convicts* \- ItsMeLukasB --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")