No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.
Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state’s inmates — who are disproportionately Black — can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry. But more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, the AP determined.
And you know that small businesses and independent establishments aren’t seeing one minute of that free prison labor under their roof. It’s all going to large companies with connections to government.
I’m not arguing that either should benefit from effective slave labor, but the fact that the biggest players get this insane advantage just rubs extra salt in the wound.
Literally slavery
Trump’s “black jobs.” We all knew what he meant.
I wonder how the other me is doing in the timeline where Kamela Harris said on election night
“What’s a black job? President of the United States! You’re Fired you son of a bitch!”
“dates back more than 150 years”
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Interesting timeframe
Meet the new boss. 🎵
Same as the old boss🎵
Yyyyeeeeeeraaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!
Always has been.jpeg
Literally in some cases recently freed slaves were arrested for being black and leased back to the same locations where they were enslaved to the same people.
That’s where our tireless and dedicated police force got started, the racism hasn’t gone anywhere they just have better toys now
I bet there were cops before that.
I’m thinking that there were cops quite a while before America was a thing.
But thanks for the surprising lack of history.
Perhaps I should have specified I am an American talking about American police in America, to make it easier for you to follow along but thank you for the surprising and completely unnecessary rudeness on behalf of the pigs though, happy holidays and fuck off to lick laces 🙂
I put it to you that this might, with a few tweaks, actually be a step in the right direction. I’d rather be at work than in prison. Community service is a thing. This is clearly coming at it backwards on pretty much every count, but there’s a kernel of a good idea in there.
Here, they let you learn for a job instead in prison. Seems the better option, imo.
Fair enough, but for this to be just it must be voluntary for the prisoner and it must not be used as a motivation to deny parole.
To back you up: In Norway (and quite a few other countries I assume), job training and/or education are typically included in a prison sentence as a way to re-integrate inmates into society. Norway also happens to have one of the lowest repeat offender rates in the world.
Of course, this has to be voluntary on the inmates part, and they have to be paid some compensation for the work they do. I believe a part of the system involves inmates being placed for job training in some company that’s willing to employ them, but the government pays their salary, because the employing company is expected to spend resources training them. This also incentivises the company to hire them once they finish doing time, as they’ve now been trained in the job.
Inmates that are regarded as too dangerous to be outside the prison can typically get jobs within the walls. In Norways highest-security prison, there’s a Gardening businesses, where inmates grow all kinds of flowers, and inmates run a shop where people from outside can buy them. It’s regarded as a huge success in helping the inmates prepare for an ordinary job.
Do you trust not being put in jail for anything they come up with?
Goodness no, I’d more or less expect it. The whole model is upside down.
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Spending a year dead for tax reasons
Yes, convict leasing was designed to be a direct replacement for slavery. It was used that way right after slavery ended when you could arrest a black person for anything you could think of. No job? Arrested, leased. No home? Arrested, leased. Etc…
I guess it became more egalitarian and less racist though? One can say they failed to end slavery, but they managed to end exclusively black slavery.
So it turns out that USA is actually not land of the free, but land of the equal. Seems what they like to accuse USSR of. Those damned commies.
If by “more egalitarian” you mean “less blatantly racist”, the sure.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/2023-demographic-differences-federal-sentencing
And if you want to get more details, watch like any episodes of John Oliver.
America is not “the land of the equal”.
I was joking
It was hard to tell the tone of your voice from a piece of text.
“damned commies” probably could work as a clue though
So slavey never ended! Cool cool. Totally not a corporate dictatorship masquerading as a democracy…
Dylan roof got Burger King and Luigi is facing terrorism charges and the death penalty.
the laws never pretended it ended. the thirteenth ammendment very plainly allows it:
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.
emphasis mine. it never said you can’t have slavery any more, it just said if you’re gonna do slavery you have to convict someone first.
That’s how propagandized Americans are. lmfao They act as if this is some shadowy hidden part of our culture
It’s not like you’d expect people to be closely acquainted with an obscure legal document like the constitution.
Oh, wait…
Not saying it’s not true, but it was pretty much in the spirit of English legal tradition. This probably even wasn’t a huge point of contention when written.
If that part is changed, no kind of convict labor (or “public work” or whatever it’s called in Europe and elsewhere) will be legal. All the convicts will do is rot in the same building for many months and years.
Without some deep prison reform you’ll have an increase in suicides and mental health cases. I’ve spent only 10 days in a mental hospital (from medical commission for conscript service, I live in Russia), and every opportunity to go do something unusual was happiness there. Even to help nurses with carrying somewhere some vaguely piss-smelling bed sheets in bags. It was nothing like prison. It was nothing like a usual mental hospital even. Still boredom gets you.
Like I said, without a deep reform. With said deep reform - convict labor being allowed only with competitive wages somehow limited in use (say, only available upon release?), so that these wouldn’t go to overpriced prison goods or something like that to indirectly reproduce slave labor, - then yes.
Actually, about prison goods - I think prisons can afford to provide inmates with a free delivery service, while what they buy they pay for themselves. Prisons in general shouldn’t sell anything to inmates or buy anything from them, the power imbalance is unacceptable. Or maybe it won’t be a free delivery service, just prison authorities will be obligated to accept those deliveries.
couldn’t you just like, make work voluntary?
I’m already talking about that. Voluntary work in the situation where inmates will spend their wages on overpriced goods in prison is slavery with additional steps.
Yup, it never ended, it just rebranded
I believe it’s called neoslavery, I think the last privately (legally) owned slave was released in 1946 if i recall correctly, now the only legal slavery is prisonsSlavery lite!
Wait, could I move to the US and rent a sexy inmate for my mansion? To parade in front of my geek friends? And play video games with?
(I mean I’d cruelly punish him of course, being in the US, like I wouldn’t put any toppings on his ice cream, or something unusually painful, or whatever the law says you have to do).
i’ll do it for free
please be satire, please be satire, please be satire
You must not be American - the thirteenth amendment codifies slavery and involuntary servitude into the constitution.
I’m not, but I am familiar with that but I didn’t know it went this far. It’s so blatent.
edit: fellow canadian
Ya, I’m hyperbolizing a little bit… But not really. The 13th amendment is what outlawed black slavery in the United States… But also explicitly allows slavery in the United States:
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.
I’m sorry to say the Prison-Industrial Complex is a huge problem, and part of why this country has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world 🙁
Companies like Bob Barker (not the tv one) and Sysco are quietly making mountains of cash to supply all those “leasable” inmates with the lowest possible quality food and toiletries. I would love to see a political candidate campaign on repealing the 13th amendment, I doubt it’ll happen any time soon but one can hope.
But Soviet Union had a gulag system… Totally different!
USA and USSR are different flavors of the same patterns.
The only difference is an A or an R!
I was aware but I didn’t know it was this level.
I can only hope more and more Americans realise we’re looking over in horror.
Americans on average don’t think your looks of horror have weight. Clearly America is superior, so you’re just jealous and looking for something trivial to make yourself feel better, is the gut reaction. (Sad to say.)
#WE’RE #1
You can hate other empires as well, and I do, but the US has the largest prison population on Earth, and that isn’t even per capita. 2 million prisoners. We should all be ashamed of that.
I’m pretty sure you can say it’s the largest prison system in history. This documentary from 2015 is named that: https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/biggest-prison-system-history/
O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave,
O’er the Land of the free and the home of the brave?
(Emphasis mine)
America was founded on contradictions.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.[…]”
(Emphasis mine)
Written by a slave owner that had a sexual relationship with his enslaved sister in law. Her father was also the father of his late wife. Both had such affairs after their wives died. He even knew that he held incompatible views. Some say he had moderate views on slavery for the time and wanted it abolished some time in the future but the fact is he profited from slavery including child slavery (also his own children), bought slaves and encouraged slaves to procreate (children born would also be his slaves). His “solution” to slavery was to establish African colonies of American freedmen believing that no joint government would be possible.
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just has more steps now
America calling slavery slavery challenge impossible!
Really de-incentivises paroling inmates when they’re a source of revenue…
It’s legal per the 13th Amendment.
Doesn’t make it right, and it says a lot about how little both parties value human rights that it’s allowed to stand.
Yeah it was written that way in order to have slaves with extra steps
That’s how success is made, boy
“both” parties…sure
Cmon buddy. I get that the “both sides” argument is lame and tired when it comes to things like abortion and women’s rights but this is a perfect example of it being true. I know you identifying as a Democrat believe that they couldn’t possibly support slavery but they do. Slavery as punishment for a crime is universal in American politics as a policy neither side would ever go against. This is a real example of capitalism triumphing over morals that is prevalent in neo liberalism. The first step to making sure your party is better is to acknowledge that they ain’t being better when its pointed out. Aka, don’t defend the slavers
First, I didn’t say the Democrats didn’t support slavery for felons, I called out the fact that you think there’s only 2 sides. So, you know, maybe take a breath before making assumptions and responding next time
Seconably, there’s a huge political cost to amending the constitution. You think the political party that just lost to a convicted rapist and multi-felon has the kind of clout to amend such an obviously terrible thing when they’re too busy trying to prevent anyone younger than 70 years old from fighting against billionaires? GTFO with that!
Long story short: we know “one side” would do it if they had the power, but they don’t, because they suck up to the same billionaires the “other side” does…
First, the words you said have meaning. They have cultural history. It’s not assumptions it’s called context. Ain’t my fault if you didn’t mean what you was saying. Typically the response to that is “sorry, let me try again”
Second. Slavery apologist in the year of our Lord 2024. You ain’t a strategist. Your a person. Have a soul. Be angry. That gives the “political capital”. Christ alive, don’t do slavery apologia
First, you have a tenuous grasp of words and language, at best, based on your assumptions and then your pitiful response when your false assumptions were called out as such. So please don’t try to lecture others on the subject. It is 100% your fault that you made bad assumptions, and the fact that you aren’t willing to own up to that proves that you don’t deserve a “sorry, let me try again” but instead a “hey dummy, why don’t you try again”.
Second. It’s not “apologist” to call out the Democrats as failures. You’re showing your tenuous grasp of language again. I hope that you asked for some books from Santa Claus this Christmas, because you are sorely in need of some education, kid
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Genuine, semi-passive psychological torture, right?
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Oh no that’s most states. Alabama is straight up sentencing them to labor. There’s not even a fiction of them volunteering.
Oh, that’s nothing. Ever wonder who tough on crime legislation actually benefits, and who’s lobbying for it?
