The 13th Amendment 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.”
An increasing number of prisons in the U.S. are run by corporations, using their prisoners as workers and selling their labor to corporations. Federal safety and health standards do not protect prison labor, nor do the National Labor Relations Board policies. The corporations do not even have to pay minimum wage.
“J.C. Penney, Victoria’s Secret, IBM, Toys R Us and TWA are among the US corporations that have profited by employing prisoners. Put together long mandatory sentences for minor drug offences, a strong racial bias, prisons run by corporations for profit, the sale of convict labor to corporations, and a charge for prison room and board and you have a modern system of bonded labor – a social condition otherwise known as slavery.” [from Take It Personally: How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World edited by Anita Roddick, p.75]
I’m trying to find out if Victoria’s Secret or their subcontractors still use prison labor and plan to cut my “Victoria’s Secret Angel” credit card in pieces – inside one of their stores – if they do. I will not support slavery.
MetaGrrrl 
please give the prisoners the jobs of the necessary illegal aliens that currently do the work and we will all have more to go around
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people are already kidnapped for organs. do you really believe so many children can go missing forever because of perverts? If you have a stroke you will probably be given a medicine for $3,000 per shot made from baby male kidney etc., etc., etc…
predators should not cost the tax payer money. Make them work as provided by the 13th ammendment.Many criminals are born into criminal families and have not been taught to work and love it when they learn to work and read and write.They take pride once real dues are paid. Taxpayers paying $58,000 per year for a criminals crimes, to keep them in prison does not make a predator pay his dues. THe predator gets room and board, daily sex and comraderie. THE PREDATOR PAYS NO DUES. THE TAX PAYER PAYS THE PREDATORS DUES. The 13th ammendment should be more adaquately taught in the law schools.
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you also neglected to mention that Texas prisons give their prisoners “good conduct time” and “work time” as a form of payment for the work the provide while incarcerated, but take it away when they get out, forcing them to do parole time based on their flat time. I served 7 years myself, and in fact served under two of the for profit corporations CCA, and MTC. Conditions were horrible, food was scant and inedible usually. It is a huge racket in Texas
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If you wanna whine about people in prison having to work you are just being ignorant. They SHOULD have to work and contribute to society. They wouldnt be there in the first place if they werent degenerates to begin with. It isnt slavery its over crowded prison systems taking tax payer money trying to fix these screw ups with behavior more congruent to living an honest life outside prison.
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They may have a choice of working or not but problem is the salary received (they aré only país cents per hour), the conditions and food they must rely on if they don’t work for the prison industries, and their is nothing paid into Social Security or any form of a retirement plan or pension for these inmates that are eventually released.
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When 12% of the population is represented by a 90% incarceration rate, you have a targeted population. There is no ‘appearance’ of racism. Racist policy is the lynchpin for the American way – a way that seems to have depended almost exclusively on the maltreatment of this we making the most effort with the least expectation for reward. America was built on black backs, honey, and we – the blackest Americans – are clearly still the fuel for this raggedy ass engine.
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You are simple. You think simply. I should hope you never have to eat your foolish talk. When the rules by which a society operates are largely secret from the people or worse, imposed upon them without their consent and applied hit-or-miss to different subsets of said society, there is a problem. What prisoners should or could be doing while incarcerated is really not for the majority of us to speak to. Why? Well, imprisonment makes far more money than is spent whether these people work or not. Also, as prisoners locked away under subhuman conditions – and they ARE that – they have much more to do in seeing to their safety each day than you or I could ever imagine. Moreover, when these individuals speak to the conditions under which they live and are expected to work – and to hell with anyone who equates a cents per hour wage system with anything but slavery – they are opposed at every turn regarding every detail as if they, as incarcerated persons, are not to be taken seriously when they address particular concerns about their imprisonment. What lies the general public are told about imprisonment – education and rehabilitation opportunities, free room and board/healthcare – stand in such stark opposition to myriad more testimonials about the hell on earth that prison is. Only a sucker cant see it for the racket it is. In short, we who on the outside have no place dictating terms to those inside ESPECIALLY when we won’t TOUCH the wage slavery and corporate subsidies that this machine operates on. Hell they know they are slaves while there and that little is going to change for them upon release; compounded with the poor nutrition, beyond hostile work environment, absent healthcare, arbitrary management of inmates by personnel who are often every bit as criminal as their charges are supposed to be. You are a hot mess to have even made any suggestions. Face facts: these folks are ‘going’ to prison, they are being put there.
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And if they don’t want to work? What work? Grown men sewing panties? Ditch digging by shovel? Oh! Cleaning toilet bowls! Stirring a slop jar in the chow hall – you know the ingredients are shit. Pressing license plates. Wiping the asses of other inmates while they recover from God only knows what kind of violence? All great gigs. Only thing is…outside of prison they aren’t going be able to make use those ‘skillz’ in any marketable way. Not one. Felons aren’t considered for caregiving, food prep (outside of Taco Bell), maintenance jobs. Can’t get apartments no matter how short the sentence or innocuous the charges. These are overwhelmingly men with families. Are you kidding?!? Prisons don’t get the truly dangerous off the street. They get a lot of broke people, undereducated people, but not legitimately dangerous. They are re-education facilities for folks who haven’t gotten the message – Uncle Sam wants you, boy…in chains.
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Pissed off society…another hot mess. Which portion of society decides that it’s okay to jail a black man for life for crack but set the average white child molester free in 11 mos. (a real stat, bro – IF they go, 11 mos. is the average, and often to be re-arrested on like charges within the NEXT year)? When policemen set up constant surveillance in some neighborhoods but not others and tell people that they aren’t allowed to sit on their porches, what do you call that? You know, when black people buy drugs we buy from black people just like when Johnny Yiteboy buys his meth in his subdivision. But, small wonder, the police don’t station themselves in perpetuity in Johnny’s neighborhood. Guess who’s going in? Johnny will have to beat up his Dad, rape his sister and turn into a dman MethMonster before he so much as SEES a judge. You have to wonder about the justice meted out by a justice system that allows for the unchallenged murders of black men suspected of carrying guns in OPEN CARRY states or the acquittal of murderous, drunken white teenagers on grounds like fucking ‘affluenza’ – which, if you didn’t know, is now a substantiating legal precedent for and acknowledgment of white privilege with the central premise being that a wealthy WASP identity is sufficient to so damage one intellectually and socially that other people don’t factor. In fact you could kill these ‘lessers’ – lots of them, it seems – and expect to skate. So the obvious question is, if excess privilege is sufficient to make you a base murderer how could excess, pervasive generational impoverishment (particularly the type spawned by the fundamental American policy of non-existent non-white humanity) not have similarly deleterious effects of one’s character? And, even better, how is the latter any less reasonable a defense. Phuck that.
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Define peer. Trial by jury is illegitimate if the jury is not of one’s peers. You know, persons usually of similar age, background, and social status, with whom a person associates and who are likely to influence the person’s beliefs and behavior (direct quote). When do you EVER see that type of jury? If you knew squat about criminals, justice or criminal justice you might have realized that JURY SELECTION is the tool attorneys use to mitigate the peer aspect of trial by jury of your peers. American society came together under them idea that some of us were just more equal than others, and that was the beginning. When you sit on that type of foundation, you need repairs, or everything else you build will crumble, incomplete. Historically, having been discouraged from viewing blacks as equal in humanity and simultaneously encouraged by class/caste privileges derived directly from being white as opposed to black has damaged – perhaps beyond repair – our society’s ability to incorporate black people into the American peer group. How can we trust the character evaluation of a jury of peers who learned about us from tainted TV propaganda and family/friends who as little as 2 generations back (boomers, folks) were unprepared to recognize us a fellow humans? Lies, by the way, that whites have been willing to overlook almost immediately when dealing with Indians, Hispanics, Asians, middle easterners (hell, they can even identify as white here!) – there doesn’t seem the same white compulsion with these peoples toward absolute disenfranchisement. In short, it IS personal.
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No one can make you do anything as long as you got pride conviction and stubborness which all Americans are supposed to be born with I mean your already in prison just do like I did say what are you going to do about it put me in jail moron
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Before you comment I was in a high medium in Oklahoma for 4 years and never had a prison job even though it is required they say but the only thing required is to stay in the fence for your sentence
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This guy knows his shit all a job I prison is for is so they don’t have to pay someone to do that even though they charge tax payers for it and pocket the proceeds how many of you haven’t heard of CCA corrections corporation of America yeah corporate that means profit prisons are a failed relic that drags on cause it’s a money maker and there’s no reforming happening they institutionalize young people in purpose so they are never out of assets but on average for food water electricity and every thing required for human rights to a point is about .87 a day and doc alots $80-$120 a day per inmate tax payers are being gouged for things they don’t need or understand so that someone who has never been of any use can make another million by letting you give it to the lazy no good politician and ceos
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About the criminal justice system shit be surprised that average citizens don’t know anything that’s going on around them and for some dumb ass reason don’t care that there narrow minded and oblivious while the world crumbles around them I mean people still think the American dollar still has value and that there votes count
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Look up Oklahoma state industries OSI
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OK social studies lesson time police and the DA are civil service not one of the the three branches the president and cabinet is executive Congress is judical and the Senate is legislative got nothing to do with the justice system unless it’s a superior court justice our supreme Court that would be Federal dude if you don’t know what your talking about don’t confuse people by spreading uneducated opinions as facts that kinda shit is the reason were in the mess were in now since the first person adopted the idea knowledge is power people have been miss lead and flat out lied too if you think back to the dawn of history that’s a long time of half truths and miss direction hell the truths the hold onto are just lies that have been accepted as truth and then lied about and covered up more and now any more they don’t know what’s true or a lie but all your truths ae made up
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No not the UN educated there all here insulting people they don’t know for reason no one with any sense would understand about subjects that are none of there concern
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