this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.

Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state’s inmates — who are disproportionately Black — can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry. But more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, the AP determined.

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-alabama-3b2c7e414c681ba545dc1d0ad30bfaf5

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 95 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Yep. And it’s perfectly legal, because the US never banned slavery.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

I think we’re one of the only countries in the world who still has legal slavery. Pretty awful.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

There are a few sharia lands and a bunch of not-yet-sharia lands with like half the population dreaming of it.

Taken together - a huge chunk of the globe.

There are also a few countries where the Western concept of slavery wouldn't work, but with pretty feudal-despotic cultural legacy, like, ahem, Japan and Thailand and what not, which may have something similar to slavery again in future.

So I wouldn't say USA is that different.

And in Russia there are whole small towns functional because of prison colony facilities there where prisoners work.

Still, prisoners working for private companies with prisons collecting their wages, - seems kinda uncomfortably close. Because, yes, if they are safe enough to be let out into society, they are safe enough to not be prisoners.

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Anytime you see one of those “silly laws” - stuff about not being able to ride a horse on Sunday or whatever - that’s why. “Vagrancy” laws were basically put in place to funnel black men into legal enslavement.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 14 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Why do they call it "land of the free" again?

[–] frostysauce@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Because if you buy a double cheeseburger, fries, and a drink you get another double cheeseburger free.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 3 points 17 hours ago

It's something to do with guns I think.

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Cognitive dissonance. Discrimination is illegal, so obviously anyone who experiences it is crazy or lying. Clearly, they should have just followed the law against selling loose cigarettes if they didn’t want to die.

[–] gaael@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Sounds like gaslighting.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

For the same reason narcissists like to say they're the best.

[–] beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago

“They Thought They Were Free: [German society 1933-1945]”

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world -4 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

The accurate term for prison labor is involuntary servitude - and it's right there in your quote - but nobody ever gets internet points for using it.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

If you’re arguing whether something is involuntary servitude or slavery, you’ve lost the plot. Both are unethical and inhumane, and involve coercing someone to work against their will to benefit another.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world -2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

How much more ethical is confining people in a small room against their will for years or decades? - Let alone executing some of them?

There are distinct differences between prison and slavery. With slavery you're kidnapped with no justification and no trial, somebody literally owns you, and you have fewer rights than farm animals. Prison is a punishment for a crime. Miscasting anything involuntary as "slavery" to make an argument have more dramatic impact is what loses the plot - it misappropriates the experiences of millions of people who were shipped across the ocean and actually enslaved.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 hours ago

Solitary confinement is also unethical.

If being too poor to afford a home is illegal, then it’s legal to make the homeless slaves. Is that ok with you? No one should be forced into slavery, even actual criminals, period.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Oh so you're fine with slavery as long as there's a thinly veiled justification then.

"Crime" is whatever the state deems a crime, it is selectively enforced, and in the US the system is so set up that the vast majority plea out, because they are penalised for fighting back in a trial.

The laws are arbitrary, racist and politically targeted:

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

  • John Erlichman, advisor to President Nixon

https://www.unharm.org/the-racist-truth-behind-the-war-on-drugs/

Back in the days of chattel slavery they had thinly veiled justifications too, called race science.

Anyone with an interest in the matter and no moral compass could fall back on that and explain why chattel slavery was good for those other races, and it was the "white man's burden" to deliver them to civilisation, ignoring how convenient it was that it also made them into slaves.

I'll let you think about which side of the argument you'd have been on back then, based on how you've swallowed the modern day version of it.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world -2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

No, I'm not "fine with slavery" or with people putting words in my mouth. My position is that prison labor is NOT slavery, and that misrepresenting it as such devalues people who actually live in in slavery, for the sake of having a good buzzword for prison rights arguments.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 2 points 6 hours ago

With slavery you're kidnapped

Arrest is just a legally allowed kidnapping.

with no justification

Why do accept the justification of legality? Chattel slavery was legal.

and no trial

We've already been over the fact that most inmates never see a day in court.

somebody literally owns you, and you have fewer rights than farm animals.

Hard to see how that's different to prison, except for the "literally owns you", although inmates are essentially bought and sold, and quotas are maintained for private prison contracts. It's not exactly ownership but that's a very marginal difference.

Prison is a punishment for a crime.

So do you accept that anyone the state deems a criminal somehow deserves involuntary servitude? Why?