Being convicted to slavery is justice now?
Slavery was the capturing of innocent human beings and then forcing them and their progeny to do labor in perpetuity. It was utterly dehumanizing and undeserved treatment. We do a disservice to the meaning of slavery in the USA by calling everything slavery: taxation, prison work, marriage, etc.
I do agree about the overuse of the term in other situations however
That part, at least, is not technically correct.
Ah, justice, that famously objective thing we can measure scientifically and which is not subject to any sort of sociopolitical bias.
I'm arguing that here in the US, which is a very relevant context for a HN discussion on US/CA prisons, the term slavery has special meaning and we shouldn't water it down by using it to describe every perceived slight.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The 13th amendment specifically calls it slavery and specifically allows that kind of slavery. The abolitionists who pushed through the 13th knew the meaning of slavery when it was more than a distant memory and still decided that it was the correct term.
Must they have to work on a cotton plantation for you to make it count?
Oh wait, we call these prison farms and there are dozens of them...
The point about the treatment being dehumanizing and undeserved is that this is a completely orthogonal issue. It mostly was, but then, most current prisoners aren't treated that well either.
Prison labor so sufficiently meets the definition of slavery that the authors of the 13th Amendment, ending chattel slavery, excluded prison labor as still allowed.
Why the word "innocent"? Its irrelevant if they committed a crime or not, or if they were convicted of a crime or not.
Enforced prison labor is slavery, no ifs ands or buts. It must be stopped. This is an Americanized version of Stalin's gulags.
If you're a member of a society and you break the law, then you aren't innocent. If the laws of the society are unjust then that's a different argument entirely. Africans who were not even members of the American colonies were kidnapped and forced into labor. They were completely innocent but regarded as sub-human and not deserving of rights. To equate their plight with the plight of those who knowingly break the law in the USA and are forced to do labor is to demean the situation of Africans who were enslaved. IMO, that's not the argument we want to make regarding US prison problems.
Enforced prison labor is slavery
Then I guess we can't fine people either. People perform labor to make money. Fining people forces them to provide labor.
Enforced prison labor is just a fine to be paid through labor. Like any penalty, it can be punitive or it can be recompensatory. It is not "slavery".