Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill…
I honestly think people read too much into that portion of the 13th, a reasonable reading of the ammendment yields a concession that the 13th ammendment wasn’t intended to make imprisonment impossible.
It’s only over time that challenges to the legal system have extended that definition from self-hygiene and prison activities to being forced to be a full time employee without recompense.
That all said, the damage is done and we need to revise that ammendment - at the very least companies must be forced to expend the equivalent to payroll and ideally those funds are either immediately disbursed or held in trust for the prisoner’s release.
What? My guy, it literally says “no slavery, unless it’s used as a punishment for someone duly convicted of a crime”. It straight up makes an exception for when slavery is okay.
My suspicion is that law makers were concerned that they might accidentally open a door for prisoners to sue America for unjust involuntary servitude using that ammendment as a justification.
It could definitely be a lot clearer written, though.
lmao, no.
It was specifically written after the civil war so that the South could still technically have slavery, they just have to criminalize and convict a person first. It’s how we get the ‘war on drugs’ where even though black and white populations smoke around the same amount, black populations were criminalized FAR harsher, and sent to prison far more often. It’s exactly “Rules for thee, but not for me” on a grand scale where white people would likely ‘get a pass’ for their first arrest. That grace was not extended to black populations, and so we’re back at having slavery with extra steps.
It’s a nice thought that it just happened over time by accident, but in reality it was planned like this.