Four States Vote to Ban Prison Labor and the “Slavery Loophole”

  https://newrepublic.com/post/168706/four-states-vote-ban-prison-labor-slavery-loophole

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Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont will all change their state constitution.

J. CONRAD WILLIAMS JR./NEWSDAY/GETTY IMAGES

Four states voted to ban slavery on Election Day, closing a loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment that allows for draconian prison labor practices.

The Thirteenth Amendment bans slavery or involuntary servitude, except when used as punishment for a crime. About 800,000 prisoners across the United States are forced to work, often in cruel conditions and for little or no pay.

Tennessee, Vermont, and Oregon all passed amendments to their state constitutions Tuesday eliminating language that allows slavery as punishment in prisons, by 79.7 percent, 89.2 percent, and 54.3 percent of the vote in each state, respectively, according to The New York Times.

 

In Alabama, 76.6 percent of residents voted to recompile the state constitution, which will remove racist language and legally irrelevant provisions, including prison labor. The referendums do not automatically change the state of prison labor, but they do make it easier for legal challenges over the treatment of prisoners.

Unfortunately, in Louisiana, 60.9 percent of state residents voted to keep the language allowing slavery as punishment for inmates.

The U.S. prison system has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and Black people are disproportionately imprisoned, according to the ACLU.

Prison workers produce about $2 billion worth of goods per year, and more than $9 billion in services annually, the ACLU found in a report. California has long used inmates as firefighters, some of whom are sent out with insufficient equipment.

These workers are paid an average of 52 cents per hour nationally—seven states pay them nothing at all—but they don’t get to keep all of the money they do make.

They end up pocketing less than half of what they earn after deductions are made for taxes, room and board fees for the prison where they are locked up, and other costs.

Any inmates who refuse to work are often punished, University of California, Los Angeles law professor Sharon Dolovitch and Stony Brook University associate history professor Robert Chase told The Washington Post, such as with solitary confinement or the removal of sentence reductions for good behavior.

Colorado was the first state to close the loophole in 2018, followed by Nebraska and Utah in 2020.