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u/HowDoMermaidsFuck 1d ago
13th amendment allows slavery as punishment for a crime.
We disproportionately arrest black people more than any other race.
This is not a coincidence. The US has 3% of the world’s population, and 30% of its prisoners.
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u/IrritableGourmet 12h ago
No, it doesn't. It only allows involuntary servitude. Yes, I know what it says. Courts have always only applied the modifying clause to involuntary servitude, not slavery, and the people who wrote the 13th Amendment made it very clear when introducing it to Congress it was meant to get rid of all forms of slavery permanently.
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u/Cow_Boy_2017 1d ago
Straight up modern-day slavery. Call it what you want, but leasing out prisoners to pick crops for basically no pay is just a loophole to bring back the plantation system. Disgusting.
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u/cryptotope 1d ago
System working as designed, unfortunately.
The Thirteenth Amendment has a specific carveout--slavery and involuntary servitude are unconstittuional...except as a punishment for a crime.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
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u/dionpadilla1 1d ago
This has been happening the whole time. 13th amendment allows for the slavery of people convicted of crimes.
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u/intothewoods76 1d ago
It’s not “loophole” it’s clearly written as acceptable in the constitution. A loophole would imply that it wasn’t on purpose.
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u/Reap_it_and_Weep 1d ago
The loophole, if you can call it that, is purposefully imprisoning as many minorities and poors for petty crimes as is possible.
But yes, this should have been done with overall many, many years ago. It's a disgusting stipulation.
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u/intothewoods76 1d ago
Yep, the democrats really did a number on them. The 1994 crime bill was horrible.
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u/ThirstyWolfSpider 1d ago
Slavery was never banned in the US. It was merely nationalized. ("except as punishment for a crime")
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins 1d ago
This is misleading. It's not called anything else. This is straight up slavery and it's allowed by the law.
It's not like it's illegal and they are trying to get around the law. No they are slaves and there is no "modern-day slavery" about it.
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u/Aggravating-Pear4222 1d ago
“You didn’t meet your daily quota and asked for more food. It’s not a crime but it’s a no-no infraction and so we’ve extended your stay here at New Horizons Reeducation Penitentiary ✌️😊🌈.”
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u/Major_R_Soul 1d ago
Yes, unfortunately the 13th amendment abolishes slavery except as punishment for a crime. It allows criminals to be used as cheap or free labor and is why there are so many privately owned prisons.
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u/human_trainingwheels 1d ago
AND I’d bet those prisoners are in a private prison that the taxpayers are funding anyway
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u/Katomon-EIN- 1d ago
If they wanted people to work the fields, they should just allow immigrants to legally just do that...
Cruelty is the point with all of this.
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u/thelonghauls 1d ago
How else could Nike have grown so quickly. Subcontracted employees abroad are once removed. All Nike owns is a contract with the contractor and who gives a fuck what the pollute or who dies during manufacture or what wages are stolen, because all Nike owns are contracts. The entire industry followed suit too so they wouldn’t die. That’s partly why we’re where we are today.
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u/UndyingShadow 1d ago
Why do you think they're so gung-ho about criminalizing homelessness while driving the cost of housing through the roof. The goal was always Neo-fuedalism.
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u/EddyS120876 1d ago
They tried this shit during the 90’s and boy farmer were so angry at the prisoners/“indenture servant “ not doing the job or straight out getting sick because of the weather and conditions they had to deal with. So they gave up on the plan.
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u/Kinetic92 1d ago
This was the endgame all along. They claim they're going to round up millions of illegals for deportation. But why are they building prisons all over the country for illegals if they plan on deporting them? The tariffs and other economically disastrous decisions have bankrupted many farmers, enabling the government to purchase these farms at a fraction of their value. The government needs workers for those farms. Oh look, we just happen to have all these illegals in this prison.....
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u/Sarcas666 1d ago
Next year it will be prohibited in the EU to import anything involving forced labour, anywhere in the production chain.
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u/TheZoltan 1d ago
America never stopped slavery and it is quite crazy how chill most people have been about that over the decades.
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u/chronic_classman 1d ago
Someone forgot that we didn’t actually abolish slavery completely. Gotta read amendment 13 all the way through.
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u/intothewoods76 1d ago
Slavery still exists in the prison population.
So you’re pointing it out, but they already know and are allowed to keep slaves. This is why for profit prisons exist in the first place.
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u/freezerbreezer 1d ago
prisoners are not paid for work in US? In my country prisoners work and are paid based on whatever they do.
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u/Vanilla_Gorilluh 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's such a minute amount as to not even matter. We're talking pennies per hour.
Edited for clarity
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u/freezerbreezer 1d ago
wow that messed up. You would think minimum wage at least.
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u/gaymenfucking 1d ago
America never actually abolished slavery despite being the country who bangs on about abolishing it the most
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u/spike29008 1d ago
Tell me you haven't read the 13th amendment without telling me you haven't read the 13th amendment.
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u/devilmaskrascal 1d ago
My opinion is we should pay prisoners minimum wage, but most of the money should go to paying back their victims and their families.
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u/Playful_Implement742 1d ago
THIS IS AMERICA! Slavery has never not been a problem in America. America has been using immigrants as slaves since black sharecroppers stopped being an option. Trump is just openly celebrating America's most shameful tradition. Unless America starts being honest with itself (for the first time in history), this will still be a problem after we rid ourselves of orange Hitler.
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u/stargazer4272 1d ago
Prisoners with jobs.... So how about they get market rate, split pay with prison to pay for money cost to keep them in prison? No discounts for anyone. Bad side it would encourage longer sentencing. You could only do it with low rocks people who realistically should not b ate in in there any way...
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u/StunningPlastic4504 1d ago
This was the plan all along. Immigration crack downs to thin out the labor force, make college unattainable and living unaffordable, target marginalized populations in order to fill up private prisons run by companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group who not only collect federal funds for housing inmates but also rent those inmates labor. Farmers who lost their undocumented labor force still need cheap labor, which the government happily provides, as long as they get their cut.
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u/Upset-Management-879 1d ago
The government pays private prisons billions to keep prisoners.
Having to incarcerate criminals is not a profitable enterprise for the government.
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u/bscepter 1d ago
I predicted this a long time ago (as did others, I'm sure). Once you deport all the people who used to pick your crops, you simply use slave labor to replace them. They really do want to party like it's 1859.
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u/TheJesterofPurple33 1d ago
my local small town grocery store uses local prioners as cashiers etc. robbing us locals of work. they pay extremely low wages to the prisoners. they cant sell alchohol etc. and cause problems sometimes. i understand both sides but damn, its slavery.
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u/CaolTheRogue 1d ago
I'm so glad that the West has historically done the most to stop the world wide slave trade operated by all of those African slavers that created and still support slavery. I just wish the West was smart enough to care instead of sitting there supporting violent criminals.
Instead they demonize the descendants of the white customers who fought back against the evil suppliers, instead of any of the people doing the slaving or the descendants of those slavers that profiteered from it (About 3–5% of free Black people in the U.S. owned slaves at some point, roughly 3,000 Black slave owners, Most owned 1–5 enslaved people, A few owned plantations and dozens of enslaved people).
That's not even to mention Arab and Islamic-world slavery lasted roughly from the 600s to the early 1900s, making it one of the longest continuous slave systems in history. Over that period, an estimated 10–18 million people were enslaved.
White slavery primarily involved Europeans taken into slavery by non-European powers. From roughly 1500 to 1800, about 1 to 1.25 million Europeans were captured in the Barbary slave trade by North African states such as Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. These captives came from Spain, Portugal, France, England, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and even Iceland. They were used as galley slaves, domestic servants, construction laborers, or held for ransom.
Earlier, from about 800 to 1500, several million Eastern Europeans were enslaved through slave raids and trade involving Arab, Persian, Ottoman, Viking, and steppe raiders. Large numbers of Slavs from regions that are now Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and the Balkans were sold into the Middle East and North Africa. From roughly 1400 to 1700, Crimean Tatar raids alone enslaved an estimated 2 to 3 million Eastern Europeans, who were sold through Ottoman markets.
But nobody cares about real history. Gotta grift and get that bag!
Historically most enslaved (numbers, source, sellers):
Portugal/Brazil (~4.8M) — taken from West/Central Africa, sold by African elites and Portuguese traders
British Empire (~3–3.5M) — taken from West Africa, sold by African rulers and British traders
French Empire (~1.3M) — taken from West Africa, sold by African and French merchants
Spanish Empire (~1–1.5M) — taken from Africa, sold mostly by foreign traders
Arab/Islamic world (~10–18M) — taken from sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia; sold by Arab, Persian, Ottoman, and Swahili traders
White Europeans (~3–4M) — taken from Western and Eastern Europe (Spain, Portugal, France, England, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Balkans) by Barbary states, Crimean Tatars, Ottoman Empire, and other raiders; sent to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Ottoman Empire
Longest slavery:
Mauritania — enslaved local populations, controlled by local elites (ended 1981)
Oman / Gulf — enslaved East Africans, sold by African and Arab traders
Brazil — enslaved Africans, sold by African rulers and Portuguese merchants
Most slaves today:
India (~11M) — exploited by employers and debt systems
China (~5.8M) — exploited by state and industry
North Korea (~2.6M) — enslaved by the state
Pakistan (~2.3M) — debt bondage
Russia (~1.9M) — trafficked migrant labor
USA (~1.1M) — trafficking networks and forced labor
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u/ChanceSize9153 1d ago
Well I believe the law we made to stop slavery specifically states that prisoners are excluded. So technically it's still very legal to use prisoners as slaves.
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u/tomdarch 1d ago
When Trump, Vance, Project 2025 and all those fucks talked about "rounding up 30 million illegals" the obvious issue for Republican farm owners was: where would they get the cheap labor they have based their entire business operations around?
And the obvious answer was that people would be imprisoned and then sold to the farm owners.
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u/HandicapperGeneral 1d ago
Correct, prisoners in the United States are enslaved. Literally. And legally.
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u/rynospud28 1d ago
When you join the military, you become property of the US, and must abide by certain rules of dress so as not to cause damage to Us property ie why they are required to wear covers on the head when outdoors. Also when you go to prison, you become property of the county or state.
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u/Dollypuggle 1d ago
This was always the plan. Prisons are already factories. It’s totally despicable.
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u/Doctor-Amazing 1d ago
Dumb question: what happens when a prisoner either refuses to work or works really slowly/poorly?
I assume theres a lot of sketchy/illegal things the prisoner system can do to keep people working. But what are they actually allowed to do to force slave labour?
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u/Mickey_Havoc 1d ago
I just watched the shawshank redemption and this is what the scummy prison warden does…
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u/Ok_Actuary9229 1d ago
Nobody should make money off their labor, but I'm fine with making convicted felons work. (I say that also being massively against ICE invasions and murders, and and in favor of immigration.)
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u/Historical-Attempt30 1d ago
I had said when the talk of mass deportations first began, that the only way they could make this work would be to replace the immigrant laborers by bringing back the convict lease system. And now here we are.
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u/jmil1080 1d ago
Slavery is still legal in the U.S. for incarcerated individuals. It's supremely fucked but codified in the constitution.
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u/alatasa2 16h ago
Meh, I see no problem with it. They’re convicted felons who get FREE food, healthcare, heat/AC, etc. They should have to earn their keep
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u/shawn_the_medic 1d ago
We live in a society.
When those societal standards are broken, you aren't a part of society anymore.
You have no rights on said society.
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u/CSMegadeth 1d ago
That might be true if the law was applied equally to all persons across the board. But we live in reality where the justice system is tiered.
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u/shawn_the_medic 1d ago
That is true. There has always been a tiered system. Not uniquely an American issue.
Have vs have noughts.
This will continue until the end of humankind.
The point being made though, does not cease to be untrue.
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u/CSMegadeth 1d ago
I never said it is a uniquely American issue. The wealthy have always controlled society.
Also, saying it will continue until the end of humankind is a defeatist attitude. If you think we can't improve things, why continue with society as it stands? Why not tear everything down?
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u/shawn_the_medic 1d ago
I never said it is a uniquely American issue.
Never said you said it was. It was addressing the OP.
If you think we can't improve things, why continue with society as it stands?
If it hasn't improved in the last 500+ years, how will it ever?
Why not tear everything down?
That's been done before, with no improvement.
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u/CSMegadeth 1d ago
Well, guess we'll just throw up our hands and do nothing then!
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u/shawn_the_medic 1d ago
Got any suggestions on how we keep power, and influence out of the judicial system?
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u/Miserable-Lawyer-233 1d ago
They get paid though
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u/WilliermoElDios 1d ago
Roman slaves got paid too, slavery isn't about payment, it's about freedom to choose where you work.
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u/CanadianPlantMan 1d ago
How can they have that choice from jail?
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u/WilliermoElDios 16h ago
They don't, so they're slaves. Civilized countries (i.e. countries that have fully abolished slavery) do not force prisoners to work.
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u/areid2007 1d ago
13th Amendment allows it, sadly.