US Prison Labor Slavery
The cluster focuses on debates about how US prison labor constitutes modern slavery due to the 13th Amendment's exception allowing involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes, with discussions on low wages, forced work, and constitutional implications.
Activity Over Time
Top Contributors
Keywords
Sample Comments
The US still permits slavery (as punishment for a crime):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
This user is referring to slave labour in prisons, explicitly allowed by the 13th amendment to the USA constitution.
Interesting it's allowed for by the 13th amendment.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.edit: don't be so harsh on yourself, establishing a comparison between penal labor and slavery is an interesting point, even if you did so in a non chalant manner
Because US constitution forbids slavery except as a punishment. A lot of prisoners doing labour right now are compensated literally pennies.
At least in the US, slavery is alive and well. 13th amendment abolishes slavery except as punishment for a crime, and prisoners all over the country perform forced labour for a small fraction of federal minimum wage.
From the source link it's hard to tell if these prisoners are even working voluntarily. Prisoners can be enslaved under the 13th amendment.
Forced labour _is_ slavery, by definition. If your rights are taken away and you are forced to work, you are a slave.The US 13th amendment says,> either 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."Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted". Ie, you're in prison, and required t
Prison isn't volunteer labor. Its compulsory. I.e. Slavery and the exception built into the constitution.
Being tossed in solitary confinement because you won't work for $0.40/hr sounds like slavery to me. It's right there in the language of the 13th amendment. Maybe has something to do with the US having the largest prison population in the world. Larger than China even, an authoritarian nation with 4x the population. Does that happen in a vacuum?
It isn't clear to me that prison labour in the US is meaningfully distinct from slavery