Voters in five US states will soon go to the polls and decide whether they will close certain loopholes that led to the acceleration of slavery in the form of forced labor for certain convicts. This comes more than a century after the United States abolished slave labor.
Though the proposals would not force any immediate change inside prisons across the country, they could lead to legal consequences for prisons on how they use prison labor.
The move is part of previous efforts by numerous advocacy groups to push for an amendment to the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution that abolished slave treatment or involuntary servitude but allowed it to continue as a form of criminal punishment. That particular exception in the 13th Amendment has been used to exploit labor from convicted felons.
Bianca Tylek, the Director of Worth Rises, one of the advocacy groups working hard to remove the amendment clause on slave labor exemption for convicts, said that it was heartbreaking when a clause in the constitution starts the sentence with, “Slavery is okay when…”
Almost 20 states in the United States now permit slave labor and involuntary servitude as a way to punish certain criminals. Colorado was the first state to remove the clause from its laws in 2018. Two years later, Nebraska and Utah followed suit and removed the language by voter pressure.
In November, voters in Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Oregon, and Vermont will choose to either retain the language in their state laws or remove the clause like the three other states.
State Senator Raumesh Akbari from Memphis said she was shocked to hear about the slavery exemption in Tennessee’s constitution, and she immediately started working on a way to replace the language. She said that the constitution in Tennessee should reflect the state’s values and beliefs.
Changing the constitution is not an easy task. Senator Akbari’s proposal had to go through several steps before people could vote on it. She proposed the changes in 2019, but the proposal had to pass the General Assembly by a majority vote the first time, and then again for the second time with at least a two-thirds vote. After passing the General Assembly, the Amendment would be voted on in the next gubernatorial election, which will be happening this year.
Senator Akbari also made sure to include language in the proposed Amendment that would not prohibit inmate labor. She said that even though convicts should not be forced to work without getting paid, it was important for them not to create a situation where they would be unable to work at all.
California previously rejected a similar proposal saying that abolishing slave labor as a criminal punishment would force the state to pay billions of dollars to inmates if they started paying all of them minimum wage.
Although many inmates hardly make anything and the proposals will not change that, it will change how inmates who refuse to work are treated, like being denied family visits and phone calls, taken to solitary confinement, or denied parole.
All five states are asking voters to decide if they want to remove any racist language from their constitutions and abolish the forced labor as a form of criminal punishment.
