Afrasianet – Forced labor of prisoners has restored slavery, with some prisoners even working on the same plantations where slaves had previously toiled to harvest cotton, tobacco and sugar cane crops, such as Arkansas, Texas and Parchman farms.
More than a century and a half after the constitutional abolition of slavery in the United States, forced labor in US prisons remains a lasting legacy of this phenomenon, with nearly two million sentenced persons living under a contemporary form of slavery, including the Constitution itself, which abolished the country's traditional system of slavery.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on December December 6, 1865, provided that "slavery or forced service shall not be permitted except as punishment for a crime of which the party has been duly convicted, within the United States or anywhere under its jurisdiction."
Following the cessation of the civil war, the exclusion clause served as a legal cover for the arrest of thousands of black men, especially young men, under various pretexts and negligible charges, such as loitering, vagrancy, etc., or even attaching false charges to them, and then hiring them to work, for farm owners, large companies and industrialists, including coal mines and railroad companies, thus establishing a system of renting convicts in the United States completely legally.
Forced labor restored the system of slavery, and some prisoners even worked on the same plantations where slaves had previously toiled to harvest cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane, such as plantations in Arkansas, Texas, and Parchman's farms, and many were flogged on a daily basis for not being able to do the cruel and lethal work they were forced to perform.
Arduous conditions and low wages
Prisoners are forced to perform various jobs, detainees may sometimes be employed even before they are convicted, and many of the work assigned to convicts is related to tasks such as prison maintenance, laundry, kitchen work, and construction. Many prisoners, especially in the south of the country, do farming, harvesting crops and animal husbandry, and prisoners are hired to work in the industrial sector and large companies.
In the course of their work, convicts are forced to endure difficult conditions, dangerous and sometimes life-threatening conditions, and do not receive special training in the sectors that require it, and with a lack of experience, limited protective equipment, many of them are exposed to harm or mutilation, serious injuries, lifelong disabilities, or even death, and women are sometimes sexually harassed or abused by their civilian supervisors, or by prison officers and staff inside facilities. In disasters and emergencies, prisoners may be exploited in Fight fires, dispose of contaminated animal carcasses, and clean up hazardous materials.
Prisoners are not considered employees in the eyes of the law, so they are not treated in accordance with occupational safety and health laws, are unable to form unions, are often unable to protest or file formal complaints about poor working conditions, are denied many benefits of labor protection laws and fair labor standards, and federal safety standards, and cannot sue for workplace accidents or compensation.
Moreover, prisoners receive low wages, often not exceeding a few cents an hour, and may not receive anything at all at other times, states such as Arkansas, Texas, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia do not pay anything for most types of work, and some prisons pay small wages in kind such as toilet paper, toothpaste and so on. Few get jobs in the government industrial sector, with a wage of up to a dollar in clock.
Some inmates prefer jobs that fall outside prison boundaries because they often provide a better financial return, and although many companies only pay the minimum wage, some states withhold more than half of the salary in exchange for a prisoner's needs, such as accommodation, food, and court fees.
Under these circumstances, prisoners do not have the option of refusing the work required of them, and those who refuse or do not produce enough face serious consequences, their chances of parole may be jeopardized, and they may face penalties such as being sent to solitary confinement, in addition to losing privileges, such as restricting access to electronic devices and preventing family visits and telephone communication.
Hidden workforce
Prisoners in the United States represent a huge invisible workforce, linked to the supply chains of hundreds of famous restaurants, giant food companies and the most famous brands globally, prison is not only used for punishment or rehabilitation, but is a sustainable treasure that generates enormous profits annually for prison and state administrations, where convicts work to produce a wide range of goods and merchandise, which tops the shelves of supermarkets across the United States.
U.S. prison work, which spanned a plethora of sectors, has formed a multibillion-dollar economic empire, and agriculture absorbs only a limited portion of the total prison workforce, with many working in severely underserved industries and doing some of the country's most dangerous work.
In many states, prisons have farms to raise chickens, cows and pigs, as well as their own processing plants and dairy and canning plants. In other prisons, prisoners perform functions such as landscaping, greenhouse care, beekeeping and fish. Many states also benefit from hiring prisoners to do the same work in large private companies, and more than 150 years of convict rentals have helped build American business empires.
The goods produced by prisoners are not limited to domestic consumption, but some are exported through international companies to all parts of the world, including countries whose products have been banned from entering the United States because of their production through forced labor or convict labor.
Members of Congress condemn this type of forced labor, however, federal, state and municipal agencies, as well as public schools and universities, are required to purchase goods, such as furniture and other equipment produced by prisons, and in many states, goods made in prisons are freely available.
Relentless attempts at change
Since the second half of the last century, vigorous attempts by human rights organizations and associations began to work to free prisoners from contemporary slavery, as the prisoners' rights movement in the late sixties and early seventies called for an increase in prisoners' wages, and later calls escalated by several parties to abolish the exception clause, and to completely eliminate prison slavery.
Efforts in seven states — Colorado, Utah, Nebraska, Vermont, Oregon, Tennessee and Alabama — have succeeded in passing amendments banning slavery without exception, including forced labor in prisons, and the exception clause is being repealed in about 20 states, and at the federal level, attempts to pass a joint law through Congress to ban forced labor have been underway since 2020.
The constitutional amendments were met with resistance from some state administrations, and the material cost seems to be the motive for this opposition, especially after the Ministry of Finance announced that the cost of paying the minimum wage will amount to $ 1.5 billion, which raised the concern of state administrations about their ability to bear those burdens.
On the other hand, it is estimated that this step in its entirety will support the national economy by up to $ 20.3 billion annually, as the state will be able to eliminate health care, housing and unemployment services, which are spent on people who come out of prison completely financially incapacitated.
Constitutional amendments banning forced labor on prisoners are reportedly being violated in some states, notably Colorado, and current and former prisoners in Alabama have filed class-action lawsuits, saying they were forced to provide cheap or free labor, and that imprisoned workers were exploited for financial gain, and described these practices as slavery.
Every day, throughout the United States, those sentenced behind bars are forced to work under sometimes dangerous conditions and often for low pay, and this cruel exploitation of prisoners is a flagrant violation of fundamental human rights and unacceptable under the norms of international law.