The Ambiguity of the 13th Amendment
Alicia Ward '22 Social Justice Project
My social justice topic addresses the hidden ambiguity of the 13th Amendment, and the repetition of slavery occurring inside innumerable prisons in the United States. The 13th amendment, passed on January 31st, 1865, states, “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.” The repudiation impacted many emancipated blacks soon after, as it states that slavery shall be abolished “except as a punishment for a major crime,” which led to a growth in mass incarceration and the legalization of continued slavery.
The U.S. prison systems are targeting Black Americans who are in poverty, which affects families as they are left to pay for bail, even as the average annual income a black family makes is about 30% less than that of a white family. As of 2014, the average annual income of incarnated people was $19,185 before being incarnated, which is 41% less than those who have never been incarnated. The average annual income of incarnated black men before being sent to prison was almost half as much as a black man who has never been incarnated.
With no money given to the inmates coming from families of poverty, there are only a few resources for prisoners and their children, and it becomes a never-ending cycle each time. As of 2009, 34% of defendants were denied pretrial release because they couldn’t afford bail. As the jail population has grown substantially over the past 30 years, the conviction rate has remained constant. This is because over 70% of those arrested are in local jails and prisons being denied pretrial release due to financial struggles.
A closer example of a prison allowing slavery is Louisiana’s Angola prison, which was named after slaves coming from Angola, Africa, and is one of the largest, and most predominantly black prisons even today. Many black men and even children are sent to prison in Angola and are often wrongfully convicted. At Angola, prisoners as young as 16 work for a few cents per hour and some even work for free, while private companies benefit by saving money and continuing prison labor. Prisoners are forced to work in fields while they are watched by guards on horses who carry shotguns. Sometimes, they are forced to even pick cotton in the fields. If they refuse or don’t pick crops fast enough, they are sent to confinement rooms with minimal food and sometimes even fill the rooms with tear gas. The prisoners are also blocked off away from other prisons. Because of the roots associated with picking cotton as black men, some prisoners prefer the confinement rooms known as “the hole” over being forced to pick cotton, because they are aware of how hard blacks had to fight to avoid the act of picking cotton.
Seriously, Slavery still exists in the United States?!
The root cause of this social justice issue is not the low-income prisoners filling prisons, but the fact that people feed off the money by preying on vulnerable low-income families who are wrongfully convicted. Prisoners are working for Private companies that make an annual profit of roughly $374 million more than public facilities as they hire less staff and offer less training, creating even worse environments for people in prison.