Penal labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Unconvicted detainees awaiting trial cannot be forced to participate in labor programs in prison as this would violate the Thirteenth Amendment. Penal labor is economically important due to it being a source of cheap labor, with base pay being as low as 60 cents per day in Colorado.
About Penal labor in the United States in brief
Penal labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Unconvicted detainees awaiting trial cannot be forced to participate in labor programs in prison as this would violate the Thirteenth Amendment. Penal labor is economically important due to it being a source of cheap labor, with base pay being as low as 60 cents per day in Colorado. Firms including those in the technology and food industries are often provided tax incentives to contract prison labor, commonly at below market rates. Some believe that boosting economic benefits at the expense of an incarcerated populace prioritizes personal financial gain over ensuring payment of societal debt or actual rehabilitation of criminals. Critics of the prison labor system argue that the portrayal of prison expansion as a means of creating employment opportunity is a particularly harmful element of the prison-industrial complex in the US. The current state of prison labor has distinct roots in the slavery-era economy and society. Immediately following the abolition of slavery, the slave labor-dependent economy of the South faced widespread poverty and market collapse. Southern lawmakers began to exploit the so-called ‘loophole’ written in the13th amendment and turned to prison labor as a Means of restoring the pre-abolition free labor force. By 1866, nearly all southern states had enacted individual sets of Black Codes effectively used the 13st amendment’s penal labor exception. The Black Code effectively used the 13rd amendment’s exception of penal labor to reinvent the economy to comply with federal law.
Between 1866 and 1869, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, and Florida became the first states in the S.C. to lease out convicts in the labor force to chattel out out the chattels of master and apprentice relationships. Inability to pay fees for vagrancy crimes resulted in imprisonment, during which prisoners labored in the very same wage-free positions held by slaves less than two years prior. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit serves as a federal tax credit that grants employers USD 2,400 for every work-release employed inmate. A wide variety of companies such as Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Target, IBM, Texas Instruments, Boeing, Nordstrom, Intel, Wal-Mart, Victoria’s Secret, Aramark, AT&T, BP, Starbucks, Microsoft, Nike, Honda, Macy’s and Sprint and many more actively participated in prison in-sourcing throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The program legalizes the transportation of prison-made goods across state lines and allows prison inmates to earn market wages in private sector jobs that can go towards tax deductions, victim compensation, family support, and room and board. The program was approved by Congress in 1990 for indefinite continuation, the program legalized the Transportation of Prison-made Goods across statelines and allows them to work in the private sector. It was first authorized under the Justice System Improvement Act of 1979. It is currently being expanded to include more states.
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This page is based on the article Penal labor in the United States published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
