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The 13th amendment specifically allows slavery of prisoners. Edit: I don’t mean to imply the author isn’t paid fairly by Turso. A few posts down, the CEO of T
by wffurr 1y ago
The 13th amendment specifically allows slavery of prisoners.
Edit: I don’t mean to imply the author isn’t paid fairly by Turso. A few posts down, the CEO of Turso asserts that they do pay fairly. The OP in this thread might reasonably wonder about this because several states do in fact use prisoners as unpaid slave labor.
- mkoubaa 1y agoIf I was a prisoner one day I think I'd rather spend my days in slave labor than weird ethno-status games.
- code_for_monkey 1y agofinally, someone who took a humanities class!
- shermantanktop 1y agoThere are dozens of us. Dozens!
- code_for_monkey 1y agohacker news: a collection of the smartest tech minds on the internet, but only for code!
- pyuser583 1y agoIt's unclear whether the carve out for prisoners applies to just "involuntary servitude" or "slavery and involuntary servitude." In practice, only "involuntary servitude" has been used. "Community service" - unpaid - is a very common low level sentence. The eighth and fourteenth amendments almost certainly forbid enslavement - permanently becoming human property - as a criminal sentence. Even before the 13th amendment, enslavement as a punishment not common, if it happened at all. There is almost no case law on the 13th amendment. There are no legal slaves in the US today, and there have not been since the 19th century.
- tristan957 1y agoIf we pay people 40 cents an hour just to say they aren't slaves, they they are slaves for all intents and purposes. They are put in poor working conditions working for for-profit companies, making much less than minimum wage. How is it legal for the State to not provide sunscreen or shade for inmates doing outdoor manual labor? https://theappeal.org/louisiana-prisoners-demand-an-end-to-modern-day-slavery/ https://theappeal.org/louisiana-prisoners-demand-an-end-to-m...
- freedomben 1y agoI don't disagree that 40 cents an hour is ludicrous and is only one notch above slavery, but I do think it worth pointing out that the work for 40 cents per hour is voluntary (i.e. they can quit or choose not to accept the work), whereas "slavery" is very much not.
- larkost 1y agoIn many cases the work is not really voluntary, there are sanctions for not taking it. Prisoners in some states are regularly put into solitary confinement for not "volunteering" to work these jobs (a punishment that some areas deem torture). With that amount of coercion I can't see them as voluntary, and so the slavery label is awfully close to the mark.
- freedomben 1y agoIn those situations, I would agree that is pretty damn close to the slavery mark. I've worked with a lot of prison facilities though in many states across the US and a few international, and have never seen that. That's not to say it doesn't happen of course, but out of curiosity do you (or anyone else) know of any facilities/jurisdictions that do that?
- tristan957 1y agoThere is an example in this NPR article. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1210564359/slavery-prison-forced-labor-movement https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1210564359/slavery-prison-for...