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Slavery In America Essay

1516 Words7 Pages

Slavery, in the public eye, exists as nothing more than a distant bygone; however, the public often spreads misinformation and suppresses the truth. In fact, slavery thrives in the United States today. Slavery, in its most common form, subsists as prison slavery, or perhaps better known by its official name: penal labor. Penal labor involves the 13th amendment which abolished slavery but left a crucial loophole: “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…” Unfortunately, this loophole did not spawn from a simple mistake, but formed as a calculated ploy to return slaves to their shackles. By means of the 13th amendment, countless …show more content…

Prisons make profits by sending their residents to fill, usually physical, job positions for corporations which is known as convict leasing. The benefits of convict leasing for corporations include reduced wages, no requirement to provide workers’ rights, and a plentiful and essentially unlimited source of workers. Convicts hired out to corporations are paid much less than minimum wage, typically ranging from $0.93 to $4.73 per day, and they cannot unionize nor do they benefit from the usual constitutional rights that citizens benefit from, as they are owned by the state (Khalek). Furthermore, a number of convicts suffer consequences such as solitary confinement if they refuse to work for the prison. These factors combined lead to what is essentially slave labor, and the addition of penal labor to a corporation’s workforce eliminates job opportunities for free Americans. However, penal labor provides some benefits to prisoners. It instills within them practical and social knowledge which they can take advantage of upon release from prison. Unfortunately, this still occurs at the expense of the general population of the US. Perhaps if prisoners were employed to make the prison self-sufficient by only manufacturing goods for the prison and the US military, with no corporations involved, penal labor would be devoid of the more harmful consequences that have not yet been

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Slavery In The South Dbq Essay

1137 Words | 5 Pages

Known as the “peculiar institution” in the South, slavery was perhaps the most divisive issue America faced during its early days. Rapid westward expansion encouraged by the American idea of manifest destiny highlighted the issues that came with protecting the institution of slavery, resulting in various compromises drawn up by the government in an effort to qualm the intensifying division in the country. Moreover, movements like the Second Great Awakening revitalized America’s moral conscience, revealing the ugly injustice and dehumanization hidden in the institution of slavery. In the decades leading up to the civil war, economic and moral arguments were what fueled the growing opposition to slavery. Analyzing the differences between the

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The 13th amendment abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude “except as punishment for a crime”. The clause that left the prisoners

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It’s in many ways beneficial to society that inmates are used for cheap labor in exchange of shortened sentences or a work assignment that pays a small amount to their commissary. Inmates cost americans millions in tax dollars per year. Without knowing it, Americans spend their taxes on the increasing amount of “rehabilitated” inmates in the u.s. and by the average increase in those incarcerated the prison system essentially gains income based on the amount of inmates. This costs the real rehabilitation and reality of life after prison in exchange of mass incarceration. It’s certainly costly to house and feed nearly 2.3 million people in u.s. Prisons.

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The authors Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans, writers, and filmmakers, published "The Prison Industrial Complex." This text discusses how the government and private corporations increase mass incarceration for profit. The text states, "For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing.

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Slavery Dbq Essay

769 Words | 4 Pages

History Slavery DBQ Slavery is the ownership of a person or persons. Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement, primarily of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 1800's slavery was a key issue that divided our state into two territories. the government had ideas on how to deal with slavery but their ideas were different from individuals and groups. the actions taken by the federal government and the Abolitionist Movement helped shape our history and the freedom and rights of African-Americans.

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875 Words | 4 Pages

“Made In America”, should be connoted with patriotism, independence and liberty, conversely, “Made In America” accurately signifies the abuse of prison labor. It is an obligation for those who have committed crimes to owe a debt to society, but owing a debt should not be accompanied by the maltreatment of prisoner workers. The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term used to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems. The prison industrial complex has its roots in slavery and has spread its branches across American society, letting its leaves fall into pools of injustice and inequality.

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The Pros And Cons Of Prison Overcrowding

182 Words | 1 Pages

One of the hardest challenges for the United States, in terms of the criminal justice system, is the overcrowding of prisons. In fact, the problem has become so big that the U.S. has more people in jail than any other country on earth – about 2.2 million people, to be exact. To deal with this growing issue, governments and correctional administrations began to invent creative alternatives and policies to handle the overcrowding and to reduce the cost. One of these alternatives has been the use of private prisons, where the individuals in charge of the ownership, operation, and responsibility shifts from the public sector (the government) to the private sector (a third party contracted by a government agency). In order to make profits, private

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336 Words | 2 Pages

developed—the first institution in which men were both “confined and set to labor in order to learn the habits of industry” (LeBaron, 2012, p.331). Although prisons had been designed to enforce and promote punishment, retribution and deterrence, they have also fallen into the conceptual belief that they were in many instances, nothing more than a sweat shop for the socially-undesired. At this point in history, there was very little reform and an immense lack of regulation for prisons or for the proper way they should be ran. Finances. In modern-day calculations, prison labor has been rather beneficial to the U.S. government, bringing in an average of 1.6 billion dollars in 1997.

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833 Words | 4 Pages

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2830 Words | 12 Pages

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907 Words | 4 Pages

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