Laws passed during the era of the New Deal prohibited the use of prison labor with the exception of state institutions. However, lobbying by corporations eventually allowed them to use prison labor by 1979, and by 1995 businesses won exemptions from minimum wage laws which permitted them to exploit prison labor for, according to Elizabeth S. Anderson, “mere pennies an hour.” She adds that “many are forced to work in unsafe conditions without protective equipment, because workplace health and safety laws do not apply to prison workers.”[39]
Except to work in service of the society one committed a criminal act against.
Yeah . . . the horror.
a Black man earning 8 cents an hour flipping burgers separated from his family for most of the rest of his life because he was caught with drugs once under Reagan’s racist policy reading this: oh hell yeah i find this to be totally fair
get real.
Perverse Incentives. The US has the largest incarcerated population in the world almost directly because of this carve-out. Mandatory minimums, the three-strike law, overpolicing, etc. find some of their reason for existing because it allows for more legal slaves.
throws you into prison for a crime you swear you didn’t commit
Yeah . . .
When the state has every incentive to “find a criminal” then the meaning of “criminal act” becomes fungible.