Mass Incarceration

Kentucky still reaps slavery’s bitter fruit as prisons and jails swell with ‘indentured servants’
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Kentucky still reaps slavery’s bitter fruit as prisons and jails swell with ‘indentured servants’

Kentucky resisted the end of slavery, refusing to certify the 13th Amendment at the time and only freeing people six months after June 19, 1865, the day celebrated as the Juneteenth holiday. Legislators finally ratified the amendment in 1976. And to this day, the state Constitution endorses slavery for one group of citizens: inmates. Reads…

Your child’s glasses may have been made with forced prison labor
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Your child’s glasses may have been made with forced prison labor

When Sovannarie was 3 months old, her parents noticed something unusual about their daughter: white opacities in both pupils. Without cataract surgery — and soon — doctors predicted irreversible vision loss. Even if that procedure went perfectly, Sovannarie would need glasses to rehabilitate her eyes and prevent blindness. A decade and many operations later, Sovannarie…

How a Jim Crow-era strategy blocked 4.6 million people from voting in 2022
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How a Jim Crow-era strategy blocked 4.6 million people from voting in 2022

Reading Time: 8 minutes A type of law first created after the end of slavery to prohibit Black men from voting prevented more than 4.6 million Americans from participating in the 2022 midterm elections. Forty-eight states strip voting rights from people convicted of felonies, no small decision in the country with the highest incarceration rate…

The Case For Taxing Prison Labor
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The Case For Taxing Prison Labor

Stephanie Hunter McMahon of the University of Cincinnati College of Law discusses why labor performed by incarcerated workers should be subject to tax. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. David D. Stewart: Welcome to the podcast. I’m David Stewart, editor in chief of Tax Notes Today International. This week: prisoners’ dilemma. On…

End of slavery exception in state constitutions could reform prison labor
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End of slavery exception in state constitutions could reform prison labor

In the days when the COVID-19 virus was new, less understood and more deadly, officials in Louisiana turned to state prison inmates to produce essential but scarce products to slow the rapid spread of the virus. There were occupational hazards and health concerns for the imprisoned people mixing chemicals to create hard-to-find hand sanitizer. For…

Voters in five states have the chance to wipe slavery and indentured servitude off the books
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Voters in five states have the chance to wipe slavery and indentured servitude off the books

When slavery was outlawed in the U.S. in 1865, the 13th Amendment included one exception. “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 amendment reads. The penalty has remained on…

The Perils and Promise of America’s Third Reconstruction
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The Perils and Promise of America’s Third Reconstruction

Credit – Illustration by Ajubel Studio for TIME W.E.B. Du Bois is perhaps best known for introducing the term “double consciousness” into the lexicon of the Black experience. The term described the duality of being a Black American—neither fully African nor completely American, an enduring “problem” to be fought over in times of war and…

‘A vestige of slavery’: Why advocates are fighting to make prison labor voluntary
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‘A vestige of slavery’: Why advocates are fighting to make prison labor voluntary

Prisoners making license plates is a popular stereotype, but most of the nation’s 800,000 incarcerated workers hold jobs more similar to those on the outside: They cook and serve food, mop floors, mow lawns, and cut hair. Unlike other workers, though, the incarcerated have little say, if any, in what jobs they do. They face…

The 5 states with ballot initiatives to abolish slavery in 2022
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The 5 states with ballot initiatives to abolish slavery in 2022

(Getty Images) Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio. It’s 2022, and five states have ballot initiatives to abolish slavery. Yes, you read that right. In the “land of the free,” the states of Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont have an opportunity to…

Why unions can’t ignore incarcerated workers
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Why unions can’t ignore incarcerated workers

An estimated two thirds of the more than one million prisoners in the United States today are incarcerated workers. With many prisoners earning less than a dollar an hour, and those who refuse to work often facing vicious retaliation in the form of punitive solitary confinement, labor exploitation is an important part of what makes…