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this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Also literal slavery under the 13th amendment for convicts, which is one of the primary drivers of disproportionate incarceration rates of minorities for non-violent crimes.
You're not wrong, but it's certainly a huge step in the right direction.
While you are right about it being a step in the right direction, the big “except” in the 13th amendment led to slavery never leaving. Vagrancy laws and other racial laws led to slavery because forced servitude was legal as a punishment, but with worse conditions since the employers cared less about slaves than plantation owners since there really wasn’t much penalty for killing them, and instead of buying them you were only leasing them. Being in the convict leasing system was lethal.
I wouldn’t call it a huge step, the 13th amendment was terribly written. It was just the first step in the right direction, making it look a lot larger than it was.
The primary driver of disproportionate incarceration rates is for-profit prisons, not the legality of involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Most states don't allow involuntary labor to be forced on convicts. Only voluntary and deeply underpaid labor.
The issue is deeper and more fundamental than that - the fact that the drive of right-wing loons to make everything profitable, whether pro forma 'for profit' or not, has created a sick system of incentives to incarcerate individuals, regardless of whether it can extract economically useful labor from them, simply because it can extract rent for each person so incarcerated from state governments subject to severe regulatory capture.
The fact that it's disproportionately minorities is just because the country is still deeply fucking racist.
There are not as many for profit prisons as you think. Regular state prisons are used for cheap labor to benefit people politically, and for racists to hold power over minorities
If we got rid of private prisons right now we would still have disproportionate incarceration and many prisoners forced to labor even if someone didn't make a profit off of it. Yes, it is part of the problem and for profit prisons should be abolished, but doing that only fixes a small part of the problem.
You may be right, I may be overestimating the effect of for-profit prisons. I would have sworn it was closer to 25%, but my memory is like swiss cheese.
The other point, that the exact form of labor exploitation performed by most states on the incarcerated is not addressed by the 13th amendment, still stands.
I mean, for-profit prisons make a LOT of their money from forced servitude which is made legal by the 13th amendment, so it's not like they're wrong either.
Again, most states don't allow involuntary servitude in their prisons. It's more like setting the minimum wage outrageously low. It's exploitative and must be ended, don't get me wrong - but it's not something that the 13th Amendment addresses.