Should the United States Eliminate all Slavery in the Constitution?

Travis of the Cosmos wrote:Yes. Next question.

State Sen. Michael Webber (R-Rochester Hills) and Rep. Mark Tisdel (R-Rochester Hills) introduced measures that would eliminate from the Michigan Constitution slavery as a punishment for crime.

Senate Joint Resolution G and House Joint Resolution G would remove an exception for slavery or involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime. In its current state Section 9 of Article 1 of the Michigan Constitution, reads, “Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this state.”

“This is a commonsense update to something that doesn’t belong in the Michigan Constitution in the first place,” Webber said. “I am confident this important correction will receive support from all sides of the aisle and in both chambers.”

Zurn wrote:So prisoners shouldn't have to work?

Zurn wrote:

Trapper Gus wrote:

Not involuntarily and they should be paid the going wages for the work they do voluntarily.

Are you really defending slavery?

Of course I am not defending slavery.   Don't be a tool.

I have never heard that prisoners "duly convicted of a crime" stamping out license plates while incarcerated was slavery until today.  

Zurn wrote:

Trapper Gus wrote:

I forgive your total lack of knowledge of how the southern states make "being black" a felony and proceeded to "legally" incarcerate their black populations back into slavery. .

Please educate me as to these felony laws in southern states that make being black a felony.

Zurn wrote:Gus, we all recognize the failure of Reconstruction and the evils of the Jim Crow era.   Your link is interesting but the last time reference is 1941.   Convict leasing may well have been cruel and unusual punishment.   But note the use of past tense.  

I have no problem with prisoners being required to work.  I see people cleaning up the highways as part of their DUI punishment.  Are you against that too?   Are those people slaves?

There is some merit to the "can't to the time, don't do the crime" mantra.

Some workers are not paid at all, including the majority in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.

Many workers report discrimination in how jobs are assigned. “Any job outside the kitchen is given mostly to white inmates,” said Jesus, who is incarcerated in Illinois. An anonymous inmate at the same facility reported that “white inmates get the plumbing, electrician, and carpentry jobs,” which are higher-paying and help them acquire skills and experience to improve employment prospects upon release, while people of color get “none of the jobs that can actually train us to get a good job on the outside.” Such practices contribute to systemic inequities that disproportionately impact communities of color.

Throughout the nation, people of color are far more likely to enter the nation’s justice system than the general population. State and federal governments are aware of this disparity, and researchers and policymakers are studying the drivers behind the statistics and what strategies might be employed to address the disparities, ensuring evenhanded processes at all points in the criminal justice system. This primer highlights data, reports, state laws, innovations, commissions, approaches and other resources addressing racial and ethnic disparities within our country’s justice systems, to provide information for the nation’s decision-makers, state legislators.

ANGOLA, La. (AP) — A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.

Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest food companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation into prison labor that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.

They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.

Prisoners have been made to work since before emancipation, when slaves were at times imprisoned and then leased out by local authorities.

But after the Civil War, the 13th Amendment’s exception clause that allows for prison labor provided legal cover to round up thousands of mostly young Black men. Many were jailed for petty offenses like loitering and vagrancy. They then were leased out by states to plantations like Angola and some of the country’s biggest companies, including coal mines and railroads. They were routinely whipped for not meeting quotas while doing brutal and often deadly work.