Although the 13th Amendment seemingly outlawed slavery in 1865, its authors carved out an exception for people convicted of a crime. It’s time to put an end to this injustice.
By Erica Bryant
Eileen Maher was incarcerated for a year on New York City’s Rikers Island because she couldn’t afford bail. During that time, she cleaned bathrooms and showers for only $20 per week in addition to working as a food server, for which she was unpaid.
“The title of the person who is giving out the food is ‘feeder,’” she recalled. “In a restaurant, or even in fast food, they’re a ‘server.’ I’ve worked in veterinarians’ offices and animal shelters, and they don’t even refer to people who feed the animals as a ‘feeder.’ Every little word is kind of designed to dehumanize.”
The dehumanization of people who have been accused or convicted of crimes mirrors the dehumanization that facilitated slavery. As Juneteenth approaches, we must recognize 
that the chains of chattel slavery still rattle in modern-day mass incarceration. Nearly 2 million people face legal enslavement today. Decreasing the populations of jails and prisons and truly ending forced labor—for all people—should be a national priority.
A Loophole for Exploitation
Although the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery in 1865, its authors carved out an exception for people convicted of a crime. Racist lawmakers quickly exploited this loophole, expanding the definition of crime to include things like “walking on the grass” and being unemployed. Such laws, known as Black Codes, allowed the state to easily imprison Black people, who were then forced to work under “convict leasing,” a sinister rebranding of plantation slavery. Later, the War on Drugs was designed to further criminalize Black people and “hippies,” drastically increasing the number of incarcerated people whose labor could be exploited. In recent years, harsh sentences for minor infractions, along with the criminalization of behaviors rooted in poverty and illness, continue to fill United States jails and prisons with people who have no protection from forced labor.
Every day, incarcerated people fight fires, clean toilets, sew uniforms, serve food, and clear asbestos for pennies an hour or no pay at all. During the early days of the pandemic, incarcerated people in New York State produced hand sanitizer, yet were not allowed to use it to protect their own health. End the Exception estimates that more than $18 billion a year in wages is stolen from incarcerated people across the United States.
Indeed, school children in New York may well be sitting on chairs manufactured using enslaved labor when they learn about the horrors of chattel slavery in history class. Corcraft, the brand name for New York’s prison work program, is the state’s “preferred source” for classroom furniture. Corcraft’s website states that prison work is done voluntarily. However, Vera’s associate director of operations for advocacy and partnerships, Sean Kyler, who worked in Corcraft’s tailor shop in Clinton Correctional Facility, disagrees.
“The ability to ‘refuse’ an assignment in the New York State prison industry is really a Hobson’s choice,” said Kyler. “There is an illusion [that] one can refuse, but, in reality, the consequences for refusing are too high. It truly is the definition of coerced or forced labor. Instead of being ‘sold down the river,’ as written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Black and brown folks are being sent up the river to work for pennies on the dollar and bused even further throughout New York State to supply the cheap labor force for Corcraft’s multi-million dollar business.”
Although the U.S. Constitution only allows slavery as punishment for crimes, forced labor in correctional settings isn’t limited to people who have been convicted. Far too many people await trial behind bars because they can’t afford to buy their freedom through money bail. Indeed, of the more than 600,000 people who were held in jails in 2021, 71 percent were presumed innocent. A lawsuit against the sheriff of the Broome County Jail, located near Binghamton, New York, alleges that the jail enslaved people who were awaiting trial, forcing them to work and violating state labor laws. People who are held in civil immigration detention facilities awaiting the resolution of their immigration proceedings have also reported being forced to work for little to no pay. Vera’s Louisiana Locked Up data tool shows the clear connection between antebellum-era chattel slavery in the fields and forced labor in prisons today. Louisiana State Penitentiary, for example, is located on the land formerly occupied by Angola Plantation. The prison has even been dubbed “Angola,” and the people incarcerated there, who are disproportionately Black, are forced to produce cotton, sugar, and other crops that were produced on the land during the nightmare of slavery.
Echoing the injustice of the Three-Fifths Compromise, which determined that three out of every five enslaved people would be counted when determining a state’s population for taxation and legislative representation, many people who are incarcerated are counted for the U.S. Census as residents of the counties where they are imprisoned, rather than in the places where they are from. Prisons are often located in rural white communities, and filled with disproportionate numbers of Black people from urban areas who, in most states, cannot vote. This drains federal resources and political clout from majority Black communities, artificially inflating representation for rural and mostly white communities.
Ultimately, the United States must reduce the number of people who are held behind bars. Incarcerating so many people, especially prior to criminal or immigration court appearances, does not create safety. More municipalities should end money bail, decriminalize poverty, and invest in alternatives to incarceration that promote true public safety.
Ending Slavery Once and for All
It has been 161 years since President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and this is the fourth year that Juneteenth will be celebrated as a federal holiday. State and federal governments must protect those who remain incarcerated from forced labor by outlawing slavery without exception.
In the 2022 midterm elections, voters in four states—Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont—wisely voted to amend their state constitutions to end slavery for incarcerated people; prior to that, only three other states had done so. The Kentucky General Assembly is considering a bill that would remove slavery as a punishment for crime. In Michigan, lawmakers are trying to get a “crucial and long-overdue” constitutional amendment to end slavery on the ballot. In Nevada, voters will have the chance this November to vote for the Remove Slavery as Punishment for Crime from Constitution Amendment. And in New York, Vera supports 13th Forward, a coalition working to end exploitation and brutality in the state’s prison labor system by passing the No Slavery in NY Act and the Fairness and Opportunity for Incarcerated Workers Act. It is imperative that lawmakers and voters in these states and others vote to truly abolish slavery.
Vera has also endorsed a series of federal efforts, including the Abolition Amendment, an effort to amend the Constitution to end slavery, and the Fair Wages for Incarcerated Workers Act, which would offer labor and safety protections to incarcerated people. Amending the Constitution will be a difficult process—requiring ratification by three-fourths of the states—but it is a worthy political battle. No Juneteenth celebration will be complete until the United States ends slavery for everyone, once and for all.
Erica Bryant is Associate Director of Writing for Vera Institute of Justice. Article originally published by Vera Institute of Justice.
