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[-] yeather@lemmy.ca 73 points 1 month ago

The 13th amendment specifically allows slavery when incarcerated.

[-] Maddier1993@programming.dev 92 points 1 month ago

Doesn't mean you're not an asshole if you are pro-slavery

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 35 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole if you are pro-slavery

Someone disagreed with this enough to downvote it. Someone alive in 2024. Edit: Now 2!

[-] fubbernuckin@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

It could mean they think it's irrelevant or doesn't add to discussion, which i could honestly see being the case.

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

It's no less relevant than the comment it was in reply to.

[-] nickwitha_k 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This is absolutely true. And, despite being a pacifist, I must say that the only thing that slavers deserve is a free, shallow, public latrine.

[-] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 46 points 1 month ago

Legal ≠ Right.

[-] balderdash9@lemmy.zip 42 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This literally happened en masse after slavery was abolished in the South. They would just charge black people for minor offenses (e.g., "looking at a white woman"), jail them, and lease them to middle-class landowners who treated them worse than slaves. This country was built on slave labor and the legacy of slavery still continues to this day.

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yep, slavery was largely re-instituted (in a less dominant form) during the reconstruction era.

The US still has a significant portion of its economy based on slave-labor, including at least 54 state-run prison farms, and US-state-run companies like Federal Prison Industries which operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories, where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies. 1, 2, 3

The US also has the highest incarceration rates in the world, with states like Louisiana basically being slave states. Most individual US states outrank all other countries.

[-] Maeve@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago

That last link..."freest country in the world" just means "most indoctrinated country in the world, and also slavers."

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Not to diminish how messed up prison labor is, or how private prisons shouldn't be a thing at all, to say that prison labor makes up a significant portion of the US economy is a pretty big stretch.

FPI/UNICORE only has about a half billion in gross revenue, and the entire private prison sector is around ~$8 billion.
The US economy is in the $25 trillion range. Arby's is about half the size of the private prison industry, and eight times larger than FPI. ($4 billion)

Neither should exist in the modern era, and getting rid of them would be an almost unnoticeable impact on the economy.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 3 points 1 month ago

"neither" you mean prison labour and Arby's, right?

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

I suppose I should have said "none".
Even though Arby's has personally hurt me more than private prisons, I still think that privatized cruelty that somehow manages to be worse than our already pretty shitty penal system is worse that the gastrointestinal nightmare that Arby's has given me.

[-] Illuminostro@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago

SCOTUS just made being homeless illegal. There's about to be a lot more sla... er, prisoners.

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago

It's not a great ruling, but it doesn't serve to be hyperbolic. They said that fines or punishment for "camping" (existing while homeless) on a cities public lands aren't de facto unconstitutional.

Not forbidden to fine or evict the homeless isn't the same as making homelessness illegal.

[-] MantisTobogganMD@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

and they teach us in school (ohio) that it’s totally great and makes sense that slavery is legal for prisoners. they make no mention of the record our. nation has for jailing people on bullshit charges.

[-] FarFarAway@startrek.website 29 points 1 month ago

And there is the real reason they made it OK to make homelessness illegal.

After they realized deporting illegal immigrants left fields to rot (see Florida, Georgia, and Alabama) they had to come up with a plan to make up the loss of labor, somehow.

I'm sure they figure 2 birds, 1 stone. Clean up the streets and make sure they have enough slaves to tend the fields. If you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps, we'll tie those straps to your feet and drag you with em.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago

I mean, yes. The constitution explicitly carves out one exception to the “no slavery” rule. People who proudly proclaim America was the “first country to abolish slavery” don’t even realize America didn’t abolish slavery. So even if they were right, they’d still be wrong.

[-] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

And only as recently as 2022 did we have a few states (four) abolish, without exception, the state constitution version of "except as punishment for a crime". For the first time in US History!

[-] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

I don't understand, in that article it points out that Alabama allows this without pay, but then later in the article said Alabama is one of four that doesn't allow this...?

[-] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Yes, it's odd. I think this snippet from the second article about the four states might shed light:

"The approved measures will not immediately change the states’ prison systems, but they could lead to legal challenges about prisoners being forced to work or facing sanctions or loss of certain privileges if they don’t."

[-] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

Meanwhile the conservatives complain the IlLeGaLs are taking all their jobs.

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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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