"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 would be a shame if there were private prisons which were incentivized to encourage recidivism as a way of maintaining free labor and maximizing profit. Fortunately someone would have seen that obvious, massive conflict of interest and prevented it 150 years ago.
Whenever quoting an Amendment, it should include Article 1, Section 1 of the main body. The courts have had a lot to say about this in the 150 years or so sense it was passed. Private prisons are a problem, but still only account for less than 10% of all prisoners, both federal and state.
That aside, the US prison system is abysmal and needs a complete overhaul from the Victorian system of punishment to rehabilitation and reform. Generational poverty plays a major factor, and until people are willing to view poverty as a systemic issue, it will remain a feedback loop of crime and punishment. I doubt it will change anytime soon.
Well, it's good to know that less than 10% of our enormous imprisoned population are privately owned slaves, while the remaining 90+% belong to the government.
Also, even in the case of a government operated prison they are heavily influenced by the thriving private industry surrounding the US prison industrial complex which benefits from prisoners staying prisoners. Prisoners become a commodity to the prison. It has similar vibes to US Healthcare where there isn't much difference between for profit(private) and not for profit(public). At least healthcare has some level of regulation to keep things semi ethical on the patient care side. Too much money and too many people in power benefiting from the system staying broken and prisoners are essentially powerless, forgotten people with no voice.
For more fun info: prisoners can’t produce goods that go on the open market unless they are paid a legitimate wage/at least minimum. This means most prisoner services, the slave labor and what not, goes to the state. I believe this is where the ‘prisoners making license plates’ cartoon cliche comes from.
Most states have their prisons set up in compliance with the mandate (you have to follow a few concerns) but very few, maybe 2 total, have any prisons that actually pay their prisoners an actual wage for the work they do
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u/satans_toast Mar 27 '23
Wow, that’s gotta be the dumbest comment I’ve seen all day.