Neither Slavery nor Involuntary Servitude # 13

The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

Section 1. 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.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Now note the “Legal Definition” of Slavery!

“Slavery”; A civil relationship in which one person has absolute power over the life, fortune, and liberty of another.

Make a note of the emphasis that it is purely a “Civil Relationship”, not punitive. Now the Registry is continually presented as a Civil Relationship or Scheme and not Punishment.

The Registry has given the State total power over our lives, controlling everything from where we live, to our family lives. Our fortunes, the Registry has deprived those of us who once had good jobs and standing in the community to poverty and exile, and those trying to build lives any opportunity to fortune or social standing. And Liberty need no explanation at all, just try to move or travel anywhere without telling the state or asking permission.

I think for some, the definition of “Slave” fits all to well….all to well….I imagine in Florida a Good Lawyer might make this point stick.

So now let’s take this to a new level in a recent article 21st-Century Slaves: How Corporations Exploit Prison Labor — In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit.   http://www.alternet.org/story/151732/21st-century_slaves%3A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor#.Vb1kDKuhjwY.gmail`

the author pointed out    “There is one group of American workers so disenfranchised that corporations are able to get away with paying them wages that rival those of third-world sweatshops. These laborers have been legally stripped of their political, economic and social rights and ultimately relegated to second-class citizens. They are banned from unionizing, violently silenced from speaking out and forced to work for little to no wages. This marginalization renders them practically invisible, as they are kept hidden from society with no available recourse to improve their circumstances or change their plight.”

They are the 2.3 million American prisoners locked behind bars where we cannot see or hear them. And they are modern-day slaves of the 21st century.

“If they refuse to work, they are moved to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges” along with “good time credit that reduces their sentences,” reports Chris Levister. To top it off, Abe Louise Young reports in The Nation that the federal government subsidizes the use of inmate labor by private companies through lucrative tax write-offs.

and of course there’s this article here How for-profit prisons have become the biggest lobby no one is talking about https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/?postshare=1921439508729732 within that article we find this statement

With the growing influence of the prison lobby, the nation is, in effect, commoditizing human bodies for an industry in militant pursuit of profit. For instance, privatization created the atmosphere that made the “Kids For Cash” scandal possible, in which two Pennsylvania judges received $2.6 million in kickbacks from for-profit juvenile detention centers for sending more kids to the facilities and with unusually long sentences. The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom, often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children, immigrants and the poor.

interestingly we find a definition for human trafficking in the article on Polaris https://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview

Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery where people profit from the control and exploitation of others.

Although slavery is commonly thought to be a thing of the past, human trafficking still exists today throughout the United States and globally when traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to control other people for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex or forcing them to provide labor services against their will. Traffickers use violence, threats, deception, debt bondage, and other manipulative tactics to trap victims in horrific situations every day in America. All trafficking victims share one essential experience – the loss of freedom. when you take prison industries and look at him through this lens. It is quite obvious that corporations are participating in human trafficking

so where does that leave us as a country who abolished slavery. When actually all we did is move it to a hidden place that only affects politically undesirable persons who have no voice to speak out. Even, if anyone would be willing to listen again, this country is shown for its hypocrisy.

It is one thing to be denied a person’s constitutional right to freedom, because of a criminal conviction. It is another thing entirely to be coerced, threatened or forced to work in substandard conditions for little or no pay, because of a conviction, when this happens it then obviously becomes a violation of both the eighth and 13th amendments.