Slavery is completely legal in the USA

[scarletghoul]

when it comes to prisoners.


Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Many companies in the US invest in slave labour via the prison system. It's highly profitable, and is an incentive to lock up more and more (poor, mostly non-white) people. The USA has by far the largest prison population in the world, probably in human history.

So when some proud Amerikan tells you that slavery was abolished, be sure to correct them. It is still alive and well. And it's not like this is just a few criminals suffering from some minor anomaly; millions of ordinary people are in US prisons, enslaved.

[S.Artesian]

More, worse than that, was the imprisonment of African-Americans on bogus and bogus debt related offenses in the South after Reconstuction in order to hire them out to plantations, mills, mines etc. as a source of labor.

Great book on this is Slavery By Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon.

[scarletghoul]

Sounds interesting, might check that out. Though the book title is wrong, it's still called slavery by the US constitution.

[S.Artesian]

Naah.. I think the constitutional scholars committee would argue that penal servitude for crimes is not slavery in that the prisoner cannot be sold as property.

Mere technicality.

[scarletghoul]

The constitution explicitly states that slavery can be used as punishment for a crime. It uses the world 'slavery'.

[Unclebananahead]

Naah.. I think the constitutional scholars committee would argue that penal servitude for crimes is not slavery in that the prisoner cannot be sold as property.

Mere technicality.

Sold as property? Nope. Rented? Yes. Rent-a-serf, that's what they should call it.

[Ocean Seal]

when it comes to prisoners.



Many companies in the US invest in slave labour via the prison system. It's highly profitable, and is an incentive to lock up more and more (poor, mostly non-white) people. The USA has by far the largest prison population in the world, probably in human history.

So when some proud Amerikan tells you that slavery was abolished, be sure to correct them. It is still alive and well. And it's not like this is just a few criminals suffering from some minor anomaly; millions of ordinary people are in US prisons, enslaved.
While this is a good argument, and it should be used against those arrogant capitalists who claim that capitalism ended slavery, we should remember that the oppression of the capitalist is global. Amendment or not wage slavery is not only legal, but also considered moral, and a success story of one man by and large.

[Widerstand]

The prison-industrial-complex is pretty scary tbh, cos the people running those prisons are also the ones lobbying for tough-on-crime stances. It's catching up in Europe as well, often under the cover of rehabilitation (as if being forced to work would somehow rehabilitate anyone).

[Die Neue Zeit]

The constitution explicitly states that slavery can be used as punishment for a crime. It uses the world 'slavery'.

I'm not sure. The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment." S. Artesian made good points, though.

[Property Is Robbery]

Naah.. I think the constitutional scholars committee would argue that penal servitude for crimes is not slavery in that the prisoner cannot be sold as property.

Mere technicality.
But in a way they become property, many prisons have stock and the stock goes up or down based on the population.

[Nolan]

The constitution explicitly states that slavery can be used as punishment for a crime. It uses the world 'slavery'.


Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.It's kind of vague whether it means only involuntary servitude as punishment or literal slavery as well.

[Jimmie Higgins]

While I think this is a good argument to make propagandistically - particularly against people who talk about how much freedom there is in capitalism - I also think it's a little problematic. But just to add to this argument, Angola prison is famously a former slave plantation - people should check out the documentary about it that came out a decade or so ago.

However, slavery implies that the prison system is like forced labor - the point of which is production through a direct form of exploitation. Is this the main reason for high incarceration and the profiling and targeting of mostly young and black, Latino, native American, and poor men in general? Do prisons actually turn a profit? Some do I guess but I'd be suprized if even a sizable minority of prisons allow a profit to be made when you compare the furnature and telemarketing jobs done in prison to the financial costs of the system.

In California the prison system is actually a big financial burden on the state, so if cheep labor was the incentive, then the prison system is a huge failure. Instead of making profits, the prisons are a drain on the budget and yet the rulers of California are so behind this huge repressive system that they are willing to risk backlash and exposing the messed up priories of the state. After pushing austerity on students and public workers for 2 years while saying "we have no money" California actually took out loans to build a new Death Row.

I think we have to look at the prison system in the US in the same way most radicals view the military system in the US. Do both systems have politicians who owe their positions to satisfying the demands of both "industries"? Yes. Are there profiteers who rake in huge amounts of public funds from military and prison contracts? Yes. But are these groups the reason the capitalists on the whole need the prisons or the military? No, I think the profits, exploited labor, and so on are just side benefits - the real reason for it is to control the surplus labor (not super-exploit it with 10 cent an hour wages), to scapegoat segments of the population, and serve as an object lesson in the repressive power of the state.

So I think the prisons serve a much more ideological reason than just cheap labor

[Cultural Revolution]

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
– 13th Amendment, 1865

An 18,000-acre former slave plantation in rural Louisiana, the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the largest prison in the U.S.

Today, with African Americans composing over 75% of Angola’s 5,108 prisoners, prison guards known as “free men,” a forced 40-hour workweek, and four cents an hour as minimum wage, the resemblance to antebellum U.S. slavery is striking. In the early 1970s, it was even worse, as prisoners were forced to work 96-hour weeks (16 hours a day/six days a week) with two cents an hour as minimum wage.

Officially considered (according to its own website) the “Bloodiest Prison in the South” at this time, violence from guards and between prisoners was endemic. Prison authorities sanctioned prisoner rape, and according to former Prison Warden Murray Henderson, the prison guards actually helped facilitate a brutal system of sexual slavery where the younger and physically weaker prisoners were bought and sold into submission.

As part of the notorious “inmate trusty guard” system, responsible for killing 40 prisoners and seriously maiming 350 between 1972-75, some prisoners were given state-issued weapons and ordered to enforce this sexual slavery, as well as the prison’s many other injustices.

Life at Angola was living hell — a 20th century slave plantation.


Black Panthers Robert Hillary King, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace are known as the “Angola Three.” Woodfox and Wallace were co-founders of a Black Panther Party chapter at Angola in the early 1970s.

These Panthers saw life at Angola as modern-day slavery and fought back with non-violent hunger strikes and work strikes.

Prison authorities were outraged by the BPP’s organizing, and retaliated by framing these three BPP organizers for murders that they did not commit. Woodfox and Wallace were both framed for the 1972 stabbing death of white prison guard Brent Miller, and have now spent over 37 years in solitary confinement.

King was framed for a 1973 murder of another prisoner, and spent 29 years in solitary confinement until he was released from in 2001 after his conviction was overturned.

[piet11111]

In the past failure to pay your debts could land you in jail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison)

[brigadista]

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