Maybe we should stop doing business with countries that allow slavery for any reason including punishment for a crime.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
It was with a balled up fist, covered up in a velvet glove that I described the phenomenon as "forgotten"
because you're completely correct with this, IMO. It absolutely does get flatly ignored for convenient (but nonetheless ethically atrocious) politicization of criminality.
The actual text of 13A makes involuntary servitude and or slavery a specific statutory exemption to the abolition of slavery. How can one read it, then say it's "not the same thing"?
I wasn't aware that the merits and table stakes of this particular discussion was whether or not other countries permitted slavery, when several grandparent comments ago, it was established that the criticism was levied against the United States-in a discussion about actions taken by two corporations that exist in the United States?
Is the whataboutism regarding other countries and their statutory frameworks on slavery really relevant here?
>Is the whataboutism regarding other countries and their statutory frameworks on slavery really relevant here?
Yes, because the comment was directed specifically at the US with a sorry attempt at comparing it with fascist countries like China. allowing If we're going that route then there is nowhere slavery doesn't exist and the entire argument about avoiding slave countries is moot.
To answer your first question... absolutely NO, "slavery" of imprisoned people is not the same and I think you know that, otherwise you would not care if the 13th amendment existed at all. You're presenting a disingenuous argument with a semantic word game. Any sane person knows imprisonment "slavery" and slavery blacks endured isn't the same.
In contrast, many, if not all, European countries disallow forced work for prisoners. They may still offer jobs to prisoners, but the prisoners are not compelled to take them, do not suffer punishment if they don't.
I think you know that though.
Want to hire some slaves for call center work?
https://unicor.gov/ContactCenterVideo.aspx
They've also got slaves fighting fires in CA.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/07/califor...
Want some slave milk?
As it is, using prison populations to provide lower-cost-than-otherwise-legal labor for private corporations creates a huge mountain of perverse incentives.
If you look specifically at people serving at least 1 year in a state prison (which is where most of the convicted prisoners are, as the link above shows), then it's a majority:
"However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that, as of the end of 2015, 54% of state prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year were serving time for a violent offense. 15 percent of state prisoners at year-end 2015 had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious infraction."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...
The vast majority of prison labor is for the direct benefit of the states or the federal government, not private companies. Still a huge mountain of perverse incentives, though.
This is more or less a myth, depending on how you define "violent" and how you define "prison population." No matter how you define those terms, "a significant percentage of the prison population is there for a serious non-drug crime" should be uncontroversial.
Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
Memes about mass incarceration have been almost too successful, so that people now have the wrong idea in the other direction. According to Wikipedia, "15 percent of state prisoners at year-end 2015 had been convicted of a drug offense as their most serious infraction." That is enough of a scandal on its own terms, but people have sort of inflated the claims beyond what's really supported by the evidence. It's 15%, not "most" and not a majority, etc. In fact most prisoners are there for serious non-drug offenses.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...