4 ms·

Forced labor in prison is not "slavery", as that term is generally understood. It may be bad, and that labor benefiting private companies may be worse, but tha

Forced labor in prison is not "slavery", as that term is generally understood. It may be bad, and that labor benefiting private companies may be worse, but that doesn't mean it's "slavery". Also, people duly convicted of crimes lose many of their civil rights. This is not new, and there's nothing wrong with it per se. (It happens in every country.) Seriously people, you're not being clever or radical. You're just being foolish and/or dishonest. People who are against forced prison labor are trying to convince other people that it's "slavery" because they want to get rid of it (or pare it back, or stop private companies from benefiting from it, or whatever). It is very much an Orwellian tactic.

ceejayoz 3y ago
Forced labor is indeed slavery, which the Thirteenth Amendment unfortunately permits. > 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 may not be chattel slavery.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  For most of the world's history, life ran on one motto: "If you don't work (or someone who loves you doesn't work for you), you don't eat." The alternative is manifestly unjust: A prisoner who might have killed 20 people gets to just live life, and can't be ordered to even keep the cell doors clean.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    "Most of the world's history" was shitty and brutal. It is good to move past outdated concepts.
  - throwway120385 3y ago
    Why not keep going and just start selling prisoners directly into indenture? You could call them "servants" and sell them on blocks to the highest bidder. Require as a condition of purchase that a percentage of the purchase price be delivered into their hands when their indenture ends.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      If we cannot punish prisoners for their crimes by being required to do even a modicum of labor (it's certainly not brutal anymore), why even put them in jail in the first place? We're restricting their right to free movement, which is de-facto slavery. If we want to abolish slavery fully, prisons themselves cannot exist.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        > why even put them in jail in the first place? To keep them separate from the society they're having trouble safely engaging with. > We're restricting their right to free movement, which is de-facto slavery. No; imprisonment and slavery are not the same thing. You can't just redefine words to make your strawman argument work.
- nycticorax 3y ago
  Forced prison labor is very clearly not chattel slavery. And chattel slavery is what 99.9% of people mean when they talk about slavery in the US. And I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" qualifies "involuntary servitude", not "slavery". And in any case, lawyers like to err on the side of ruling out any possible misinterpretation, no matter how ridiculous. If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. You're being either daft or disingenuous, or both.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > Forced prison labor is very clearly not chattel slavery. But it is, if unpaid, slavery. > And I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" qualifies "involuntary servitude", not "slavery". And in any case, lawyers like to err on the side of ruling out any possible misinterpretation, no matter how ridiculous. No. The distinction between the two is that involuntary servitude covers being forced to work while being paid or otherwise compensated; a slave, in contrast, doesn't get paid. Both are forced labor, but one is slavery. US prison labor may be one or the other, depending on payment. (An English teacher would also sigh at you for your parsing of the clauses, I suspect. Your interpretation would require a different arrangement of the commas, i.e. Neither slavery COMMA nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted COMMA shall exist within the United States...) > If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. Correct, because at a glance, you don't know if it's forced labor. Some states do voluntary work gangs; in some scenarios it's even considered a perk.
    - nycticorax 3y ago
      > No. The distinction between the two is that involuntary servitude covers being forced to work while being paid or otherwise compensated; a slave, in contrast, doesn't get paid. Do you have a citation for this claim? > > If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. > Correct, because at a glance, you don't know if it's forced labor. Some states do voluntary work gangs; in some scenarios it's even considered a perk. What if the adult in the scenario happens to know that the prisoners are not being paid? Then you think the correct answer to the child's question is "Yes, those are slaves"? With no further qualification necessary?
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  By that definition, forcing a dad to work for child support (which happens sometimes, and I fully understand why) is slavery. That definition can apply to a lot of stuff if you stretch it, or if you remove context. Obviously having to work when you put yourself in a situation through the consequences of your own actions, with a sentence and due process, is not slavery. Having to work to provide for your children (legally so) is not slavery either. Now you can totally be against prison labor, I myself don't think it is beneficial for anyone, but you don't have to say it's "slavery" just to frame it as a pro or anti slavery debate lol. By the legal definition of kidnapping, putting someone in jail could be considered to be kidnapping yet everyone knows very well that it just isn't the same
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > By that definition, forcing a dad to work for child support (which happens sometimes, and I fully understand why) is slavery. We don't force deadbeat dads to work; we force them to make payments. You can sell assets, use savings, beg/borrow/steal, but you're obligated to make the payments. If we assigned a job to deadbeat dads, that would be involuntary servitude. (Certain levels of avoiding child support payments being a crime, this is currently Constitutionally permissible, but uncommon.) > By the legal definition of kidnapping, putting someone in jail could be considered to be kidnapping yet everyone knows very well that it just isn't the same No. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1201 The second word in the definition is unlawfully. Putting someone in jail via due process is not unlawful. I know we all like to think of Congress as entirely feckless, but the interns writing the regs typically aren't idiots.
dvngnt_ 3y ago
how is it not? > With the passage of the 13th amendment in 1865, slavery was deemed unconstitutional. Involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, was still explicitly allowed.
- nycticorax 3y ago
  See my response above. When people talk about slavery in the US, they mean chattel slavery. Forced prison labor is clearly not chattel slavery. To pretend otherwise is to be either silly or disingenuous, or both.
mdgrech23 3y ago
I don't see why you're attempting to mitigate this horrible shitty thing.
- nycticorax 3y ago
  Because it pisses me off when people try to 'argue' by stretching the commonly-understood meanings of emotionally-charged words like "slavery". Argue the merits, don't attempt cheap rhetorical legerdemain.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  It can be shitty without being slavery. You don't have to frame every debate like this just to strengthen your point.
Viliam1234 3y ago
> people duly convicted of crimes lose many of their civil rights. This is not new, and there's nothing wrong with it per se. The wrong part is when you connect "X loses many of their civil rights" to "Y makes a greater profit", and now Y has a lot of money and an incentive to spend a fraction of it on lobbying for legislative changes that will send even more people to prison... which means even more money for lobbying, etc. A few iterations of this feedback loop and you get a system which routinely sends people to prison for trivial things, which routinely sends innocent people to prison, heck even a system where the innocent people are officially advised to "confess" and accept a plea bargain rather than insist on their rights and risk 10x greater penalty if they are falsely convicted.
vintagedave 3y ago
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 to labour. It's slavery. It's right there in that US consitutional amendment. There are different types of slavery. You may be thinking of chattel slaves, where a person is owned. A prisoner is not owned. That does not mean that someone who is not owned by another human, yet who is forced to labour, is not a slave: it's called de facto slavery or state imposed forced labour slavery. See https://www.antislavery.org/what-we-do/state-imposed-forced-labour/ https://www.antislavery.org/what-we-do/state-imposed-forced-...

ceejayoz 3y ago

Forced labor is indeed slavery, which the Thirteenth Amendment unfortunately permits. > 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 may not be chattel slavery.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
For most of the world's history, life ran on one motto: "If you don't work (or someone who loves you doesn't work for you), you don't eat." The alternative is manifestly unjust: A prisoner who might have killed 20 people gets to just live life, and can't be ordered to even keep the cell doors clean.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  "Most of the world's history" was shitty and brutal. It is good to move past outdated concepts.
- throwway120385 3y ago
  Why not keep going and just start selling prisoners directly into indenture? You could call them "servants" and sell them on blocks to the highest bidder. Require as a condition of purchase that a percentage of the purchase price be delivered into their hands when their indenture ends.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    If we cannot punish prisoners for their crimes by being required to do even a modicum of labor (it's certainly not brutal anymore), why even put them in jail in the first place? We're restricting their right to free movement, which is de-facto slavery. If we want to abolish slavery fully, prisons themselves cannot exist.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      > why even put them in jail in the first place? To keep them separate from the society they're having trouble safely engaging with. > We're restricting their right to free movement, which is de-facto slavery. No; imprisonment and slavery are not the same thing. You can't just redefine words to make your strawman argument work.
nycticorax 3y ago
Forced prison labor is very clearly not chattel slavery. And chattel slavery is what 99.9% of people mean when they talk about slavery in the US. And I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" qualifies "involuntary servitude", not "slavery". And in any case, lawyers like to err on the side of ruling out any possible misinterpretation, no matter how ridiculous. If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. You're being either daft or disingenuous, or both.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > Forced prison labor is very clearly not chattel slavery. But it is, if unpaid, slavery. > And I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" qualifies "involuntary servitude", not "slavery". And in any case, lawyers like to err on the side of ruling out any possible misinterpretation, no matter how ridiculous. No. The distinction between the two is that involuntary servitude covers being forced to work while being paid or otherwise compensated; a slave, in contrast, doesn't get paid. Both are forced labor, but one is slavery. US prison labor may be one or the other, depending on payment. (An English teacher would also sigh at you for your parsing of the clauses, I suspect. Your interpretation would require a different arrangement of the commas, i.e. Neither slavery COMMA nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted COMMA shall exist within the United States...) > If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. Correct, because at a glance, you don't know if it's forced labor. Some states do voluntary work gangs; in some scenarios it's even considered a perk.
  - nycticorax 3y ago
    > No. The distinction between the two is that involuntary servitude covers being forced to work while being paid or otherwise compensated; a slave, in contrast, doesn't get paid. Do you have a citation for this claim? > > If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. > Correct, because at a glance, you don't know if it's forced labor. Some states do voluntary work gangs; in some scenarios it's even considered a perk. What if the adult in the scenario happens to know that the prisoners are not being paid? Then you think the correct answer to the child's question is "Yes, those are slaves"? With no further qualification necessary?
mardifoufs 3y ago
By that definition, forcing a dad to work for child support (which happens sometimes, and I fully understand why) is slavery. That definition can apply to a lot of stuff if you stretch it, or if you remove context. Obviously having to work when you put yourself in a situation through the consequences of your own actions, with a sentence and due process, is not slavery. Having to work to provide for your children (legally so) is not slavery either. Now you can totally be against prison labor, I myself don't think it is beneficial for anyone, but you don't have to say it's "slavery" just to frame it as a pro or anti slavery debate lol. By the legal definition of kidnapping, putting someone in jail could be considered to be kidnapping yet everyone knows very well that it just isn't the same
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > By that definition, forcing a dad to work for child support (which happens sometimes, and I fully understand why) is slavery. We don't force deadbeat dads to work; we force them to make payments. You can sell assets, use savings, beg/borrow/steal, but you're obligated to make the payments. If we assigned a job to deadbeat dads, that would be involuntary servitude. (Certain levels of avoiding child support payments being a crime, this is currently Constitutionally permissible, but uncommon.) > By the legal definition of kidnapping, putting someone in jail could be considered to be kidnapping yet everyone knows very well that it just isn't the same No. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1201 The second word in the definition is unlawfully. Putting someone in jail via due process is not unlawful. I know we all like to think of Congress as entirely feckless, but the interns writing the regs typically aren't idiots.

dvngnt_ 3y ago

how is it not? > With the passage of the 13th amendment in 1865, slavery was deemed unconstitutional. Involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, was still explicitly allowed.

nycticorax 3y ago
See my response above. When people talk about slavery in the US, they mean chattel slavery. Forced prison labor is clearly not chattel slavery. To pretend otherwise is to be either silly or disingenuous, or both.

mdgrech23 3y ago

I don't see why you're attempting to mitigate this horrible shitty thing.

nycticorax 3y ago
Because it pisses me off when people try to 'argue' by stretching the commonly-understood meanings of emotionally-charged words like "slavery". Argue the merits, don't attempt cheap rhetorical legerdemain.
mardifoufs 3y ago
It can be shitty without being slavery. You don't have to frame every debate like this just to strengthen your point.

Viliam1234 3y ago

> people duly convicted of crimes lose many of their civil rights. This is not new, and there's nothing wrong with it per se. The wrong part is when you connect "X loses many of their civil rights" to "Y makes a greater profit", and now Y has a lot of money and an incentive to spend a fraction of it on lobbying for legislative changes that will send even more people to prison... which means even more money for lobbying, etc. A few iterations of this feedback loop and you get a system which routinely sends people to prison for trivial things, which routinely sends innocent people to prison, heck even a system where the innocent people are officially advised to "confess" and accept a plea bargain rather than insist on their rights and risk 10x greater penalty if they are falsely convicted.

vintagedave 3y ago

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 to labour. It's slavery. It's right there in that US consitutional amendment. There are different types of slavery. You may be thinking of chattel slaves, where a person is owned. A prisoner is not owned. That does not mean that someone who is not owned by another human, yet who is forced to labour, is not a slave: it's called de facto slavery or state imposed forced labour slavery. See https://www.antislavery.org/what-we-do/state-imposed-forced-labour/ https://www.antislavery.org/what-we-do/state-imposed-forced-...