No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.
Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state’s inmates — who are disproportionately Black — can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry. But more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, the AP determined.
Mama Kamala’s specialty.
Literally slavery
Trump’s “black jobs.” We all knew what he meant.
I wonder how the other me is doing in the timeline where Kamela Harris said on election night
“What’s a black job? President of the United States! You’re Fired you son of a bitch!”
Really de-incentivises paroling inmates when they’re a source of revenue…
Slavery never ended.
just has more steps now
You can hate other empires as well, and I do, but the US has the largest prison population on Earth, and that isn’t even per capita. 2 million prisoners. We should all be ashamed of that.
I’m pretty sure you can say it’s the largest prison system in history. This documentary from 2015 is named that: https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/biggest-prison-system-history/
O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave,
O’er the Land of the free and the home of the brave?
(Emphasis mine)
America was founded on contradictions.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.[…]”
(Emphasis mine)
Written by a slave owner that had a sexual relationship with his enslaved sister in law. Her father was also the father of his late wife. Both had such affairs after their wives died. He even knew that he held incompatible views. Some say he had moderate views on slavery for the time and wanted it abolished some time in the future but the fact is he profited from slavery including child slavery (also his own children), bought slaves and encouraged slaves to procreate (children born would also be his slaves). His “solution” to slavery was to establish African colonies of American freedmen believing that no joint government would be possible.
“Safe enough to work” bruh half of them are probably there for parole violations for petty crimes 9 years ago
“Work makes free”, was written on the german concentration camps entries.
Yeah and Lucky got taken to the farm!
And you know that small businesses and independent establishments aren’t seeing one minute of that free prison labor under their roof. It’s all going to large companies with connections to government.
I’m not arguing that either should benefit from effective slave labor, but the fact that the biggest players get this insane advantage just rubs extra salt in the wound.
Last year I have been learning we are doing everything from the slavery era. It only got renamed.
It had a PR campaign, but it’s still here. That 13th amendment needs to be amended anew
I thought slavery was bad for capitalism? is this a way to pay people less and have the government pay for their life instead of them?
How is slavery bad for capitalism?
Slavery is amazing for capitalism.
Slavery is cheap labor.
Capitalism loves cheap labor.
Slaves don’t consume much, less people that buy stuff the less income a company would make
Publicise costs, privatise profits!
Government has provide the bare minimum for the gulag slave so that a corporation can extract nearly all of that sweet surplus value of labour.
Yep. And it’s perfectly legal, because the US never banned slavery.
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.
I think we’re one of the only countries in the world who still has legal slavery. Pretty awful.
Anytime you see one of those “silly laws” - stuff about not being able to ride a horse on Sunday or whatever - that’s why. “Vagrancy” laws were basically put in place to funnel black men into legal enslavement.
Why do they call it “land of the free” again?
Cognitive dissonance. Discrimination is illegal, so obviously anyone who experiences it is crazy or lying. Clearly, they should have just followed the law against selling loose cigarettes if they didn’t want to die.
Sounds like gaslighting.
For the same reason narcissists like to say they’re the best.
Because if you buy a double cheeseburger, fries, and a drink you get another double cheeseburger free.
“They Thought They Were Free: [German society 1933-1945]”
It’s something to do with guns I think.
There are a few sharia lands and a bunch of not-yet-sharia lands with like half the population dreaming of it.
Taken together - a huge chunk of the globe.
There are also a few countries where the Western concept of slavery wouldn’t work, but with pretty feudal-despotic cultural legacy, like, ahem, Japan and Thailand and what not, which may have something similar to slavery again in future.
So I wouldn’t say USA is that different.
And in Russia there are whole small towns functional because of prison colony facilities there where prisoners work.
Still, prisoners working for private companies with prisons collecting their wages, - seems kinda uncomfortably close. Because, yes, if they are safe enough to be let out into society, they are safe enough to not be prisoners.
The accurate term for prison labor is involuntary servitude - and it’s right there in your quote - but nobody ever gets internet points for using it.
If you’re arguing whether something is involuntary servitude or slavery, you’ve lost the plot. Both are unethical and inhumane, and involve coercing someone to work against their will to benefit another.
How much more ethical is confining people in a small room against their will for years or decades? - Let alone executing some of them?
There are distinct differences between prison and slavery. With slavery you’re kidnapped with no justification and no trial, somebody literally owns you, and you have fewer rights than farm animals. Prison is a punishment for a crime. Miscasting anything involuntary as “slavery” to make an argument have more dramatic impact is what loses the plot - it misappropriates the experiences of millions of people who were shipped across the ocean and actually enslaved.
Oh so you’re fine with slavery as long as there’s a thinly veiled justification then.
“Crime” is whatever the state deems a crime, it is selectively enforced, and in the US the system is so set up that the vast majority plea out, because they are penalised for fighting back in a trial.
The laws are arbitrary, racist and politically targeted:
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
- John Erlichman, advisor to President Nixon
https://www.unharm.org/the-racist-truth-behind-the-war-on-drugs/
Back in the days of chattel slavery they had thinly veiled justifications too, called race science.
Anyone with an interest in the matter and no moral compass could fall back on that and explain why chattel slavery was good for those other races, and it was the “white man’s burden” to deliver them to civilisation, ignoring how convenient it was that it also made them into slaves.
I’ll let you think about which side of the argument you’d have been on back then, based on how you’ve swallowed the modern day version of it.
No, I’m not “fine with slavery” or with people putting words in my mouth. My position is that prison labor is NOT slavery, and that misrepresenting it as such devalues people who actually live in in slavery, for the sake of having a good buzzword for prison rights arguments.
you’re fine with a system that has the same look smell taste violent and racist enforcement and oppressive outcomes as slavery. you’re fine with slavery. sorry babes.
With slavery you’re kidnapped
Arrest is just a legally allowed kidnapping.
with no justification
Why do accept the justification of legality? Chattel slavery was legal.
and no trial
We’ve already been over the fact that most inmates never see a day in court.
somebody literally owns you, and you have fewer rights than farm animals.
Hard to see how that’s different to prison, except for the “literally owns you”, although inmates are essentially bought and sold, and quotas are maintained for private prison contracts. It’s not exactly ownership but that’s a very marginal difference.
Prison is a punishment for a crime.
So do you accept that anyone the state deems a criminal somehow deserves involuntary servitude? Why?
EDIT: Since you haven’t replied and I assume you haven’t seen this yet: involuntary servitude IS slavery, it just isn’t necessarily chattel slavery. The language of the bill even prohibits involuntary servitude, but it seems pretty clear to me that that wasn’t to say that involuntary servitude and slavery are somehow distinct, but to say that some future narrow definition of slavery as only chattel slavery such as you are doing right now couldn’t be used to justify some other form of technically but not meaningfully different kind of slavery. With the aforementioned exceptions.
It is slavery. I wasn’t putting words in your mouth, I was simply maintaining that the words you said were wrong.
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Solitary confinement is also unethical.
If being too poor to afford a home is illegal, then it’s legal to make the homeless slaves. Is that ok with you? No one should be forced into slavery, even actual criminals, period.
It’s legal per the 13th Amendment.
Doesn’t make it right, and it says a lot about how little both parties value human rights that it’s allowed to stand.
Oh, that’s nothing. Ever wonder who tough on crime legislation actually benefits, and who’s lobbying for it?
Government: "WELL ACHSHUALLY, They aren’t slaves because they consented…
under the threat of 23 hour solitary confinement with zero amenities and nothing to do and shitty food and absolute boredom, and practically psychological torture"
Oh no that’s most states. Alabama is straight up sentencing them to labor. There’s not even a fiction of them volunteering.
Genuine, semi-passive psychological torture, right?
Depends…
Under project 2025, they could remove all the cameras then do some ol’ fashioned “Enhanced Interrogation”
Yeah it was written that way in order to have slaves with extra steps
That’s how success is made, boy
“both” parties…sure
Cmon buddy. I get that the “both sides” argument is lame and tired when it comes to things like abortion and women’s rights but this is a perfect example of it being true. I know you identifying as a Democrat believe that they couldn’t possibly support slavery but they do. Slavery as punishment for a crime is universal in American politics as a policy neither side would ever go against. This is a real example of capitalism triumphing over morals that is prevalent in neo liberalism. The first step to making sure your party is better is to acknowledge that they ain’t being better when its pointed out. Aka, don’t defend the slavers
First, I didn’t say the Democrats didn’t support slavery for felons, I called out the fact that you think there’s only 2 sides. So, you know, maybe take a breath before making assumptions and responding next time
Seconably, there’s a huge political cost to amending the constitution. You think the political party that just lost to a convicted rapist and multi-felon has the kind of clout to amend such an obviously terrible thing when they’re too busy trying to prevent anyone younger than 70 years old from fighting against billionaires? GTFO with that!
Long story short: we know “one side” would do it if they had the power, but they don’t, because they suck up to the same billionaires the “other side” does…
First, the words you said have meaning. They have cultural history. It’s not assumptions it’s called context. Ain’t my fault if you didn’t mean what you was saying. Typically the response to that is “sorry, let me try again”
Second. Slavery apologist in the year of our Lord 2024. You ain’t a strategist. Your a person. Have a soul. Be angry. That gives the “political capital”. Christ alive, don’t do slavery apologia
First, you have a tenuous grasp of words and language, at best, based on your assumptions and then your pitiful response when your false assumptions were called out as such. So please don’t try to lecture others on the subject. It is 100% your fault that you made bad assumptions, and the fact that you aren’t willing to own up to that proves that you don’t deserve a “sorry, let me try again” but instead a “hey dummy, why don’t you try again”.
Second. It’s not “apologist” to call out the Democrats as failures. You’re showing your tenuous grasp of language again. I hope that you asked for some books from Santa Claus this Christmas, because you are sorely in need of some education, kid
Yes, convict leasing was designed to be a direct replacement for slavery. It was used that way right after slavery ended when you could arrest a black person for anything you could think of. No job? Arrested, leased. No home? Arrested, leased. Etc…
So slavey never ended! Cool cool. Totally not a corporate dictatorship masquerading as a democracy…
the laws never pretended it ended. the thirteenth ammendment very plainly allows it:
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.
emphasis mine. it never said you can’t have slavery any more, it just said if you’re gonna do slavery you have to convict someone first.
That’s how propagandized Americans are. lmfao They act as if this is some shadowy hidden part of our culture
It’s not like you’d expect people to be closely acquainted with an obscure legal document like the constitution.
Oh, wait…
Not saying it’s not true, but it was pretty much in the spirit of English legal tradition. This probably even wasn’t a huge point of contention when written.
If that part is changed, no kind of convict labor (or “public work” or whatever it’s called in Europe and elsewhere) will be legal. All the convicts will do is rot in the same building for many months and years.
Without some deep prison reform you’ll have an increase in suicides and mental health cases. I’ve spent only 10 days in a mental hospital (from medical commission for conscript service, I live in Russia), and every opportunity to go do something unusual was happiness there. Even to help nurses with carrying somewhere some vaguely piss-smelling bed sheets in bags. It was nothing like prison. It was nothing like a usual mental hospital even. Still boredom gets you.
Like I said, without a deep reform. With said deep reform - convict labor being allowed only with competitive wages somehow limited in use (say, only available upon release?), so that these wouldn’t go to overpriced prison goods or something like that to indirectly reproduce slave labor, - then yes.
Actually, about prison goods - I think prisons can afford to provide inmates with a free delivery service, while what they buy they pay for themselves. Prisons in general shouldn’t sell anything to inmates or buy anything from them, the power imbalance is unacceptable. Or maybe it won’t be a free delivery service, just prison authorities will be obligated to accept those deliveries.
couldn’t you just like, make work voluntary?
I’m already talking about that. Voluntary work in the situation where inmates will spend their wages on overpriced goods in prison is slavery with additional steps.
Yup, it never ended, it just rebranded
I believe it’s called neoslavery, I think the last privately (legally) owned slave was released in 1946 if i recall correctly, now the only legal slavery is prisonsSlavery lite!
Dylan roof got Burger King and Luigi is facing terrorism charges and the death penalty.
I guess it became more egalitarian and less racist though? One can say they failed to end slavery, but they managed to end exclusively black slavery.
So it turns out that USA is actually not land of the free, but land of the equal. Seems what they like to accuse USSR of. Those damned commies.
If by “more egalitarian” you mean “less blatantly racist”, the sure.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/2023-demographic-differences-federal-sentencing
And if you want to get more details, watch like any episodes of John Oliver.
America is not “the land of the equal”.
I was joking
It was hard to tell the tone of your voice from a piece of text.
“damned commies” probably could work as a clue though
Oh this is delicious. Keep in mind they hate abortion and hate sexual education. It’s not a conspiracy any more. They want the poor to be uneducated and reproductive to have a jailed bottom slave minority.
Bingpot
Bingpot, indeed!
Wait, could I move to the US and rent a sexy inmate for my mansion? To parade in front of my geek friends? And play video games with?
(I mean I’d cruelly punish him of course, being in the US, like I wouldn’t put any toppings on his ice cream, or something unusually painful, or whatever the law says you have to do).
i’ll do it for free
