Leasing inmates
Leasing inmates
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.
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?
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
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.
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".
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.
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.
"dates back more than 150 years"
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Interesting timeframe
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
America calling slavery slavery challenge impossible!
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.
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!
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.
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
If you don't want slavery, then make it illegal. Maybe even make a constitutional amendment.
This is how states fight wildfires
And then they don't qualify to work as firefighters after they are released.
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!"
please be satire, please be satire, please be satire
I'm sorry to say the Prison-Industrial Complex is a huge problem, and part of why this country has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world 🙁
Companies like Bob Barker (not the tv one) and Sysco are quietly making mountains of cash to supply all those “leasable” inmates with the lowest possible quality food and toiletries. I would love to see a political candidate campaign on repealing the 13th amendment, I doubt it’ll happen any time soon but one can hope.
"Work makes free", was written on the german concentration camps entries.
Yeah and Lucky got taken to the farm!
"Safe enough to work" bruh half of them are probably there for parole violations for petty crimes 9 years ago
Really de-incentivises paroling inmates when they're a source of revenue...
I put it to you that this might, with a few tweaks, actually be a step in the right direction. I'd rather be at work than in prison. Community service is a thing. This is clearly coming at it backwards on pretty much every count, but there's a kernel of a good idea in there.
To back you up: In Norway (and quite a few other countries I assume), job training and/or education are typically included in a prison sentence as a way to re-integrate inmates into society. Norway also happens to have one of the lowest repeat offender rates in the world.
Of course, this has to be voluntary on the inmates part, and they have to be paid some compensation for the work they do. I believe a part of the system involves inmates being placed for job training in some company that's willing to employ them, but the government pays their salary, because the employing company is expected to spend resources training them. This also incentivises the company to hire them once they finish doing time, as they've now been trained in the job.
Inmates that are regarded as too dangerous to be outside the prison can typically get jobs within the walls. In Norways highest-security prison, there's a Gardening businesses, where inmates grow all kinds of flowers, and inmates run a shop where people from outside can buy them. It's regarded as a huge success in helping the inmates prepare for an ordinary job.
Fair enough, but for this to be just it must be voluntary for the prisoner and it must not be used as a motivation to deny parole.
Here, they let you learn for a job instead in prison. Seems the better option, imo.
Do you trust not being put in jail for anything they come up with?
Goodness no, I'd more or less expect it. The whole model is upside down.
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?
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.
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
Mama Kamala's specialty.