[coddingtonbear]

If you give the 13th amendment a read, it contains this clause:

> except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted

It does otherwise end slavery, but provides the above loophole for continuing similar practices.

[kthielen]

Do you object to the “duly convicted” part? What do you think should happen to convicted criminals instead?

[boomboomsubban]

Your question was "How did the 13th amendment codify slavery?" They answered it, the first mention of slavery in the constitution legalized it for convicts in the 13th Amendment.

Why are you now changing your argument to "they deserve slavery?" Didn't you just say the Civil War ended slavery?

[kthielen]

No I’m not changing my question, but I think this gets to the misunderstanding that there must be in rejecting the idea that the 13th amendment ended slavery.

We didn’t fight the civil war to end the concept of incarceration for duly convicted lawbreakers. It’s pretty easy to understand and accept that right?

And the people who fought the civil war believed that they were doing it to end slavery.

So perhaps your definition of slavery is inconsistent with theirs, and also out of step with the letter of the law.

[shadowofneptune]

https://theconversation.com/prison-records-from-1800s-georgi... Across the US but most flagrantly in the deep south, you see huge spikes in the black prison population starting after the civil war. Many were contracted out to mines, farms, etc. Conditions were poor, many died in that labor. There's little else it can be called once you move out of the abstract.

[boomboomsubban]

Incarceration isn't slavery, we could still have prison without treating people like property.

And again, the 13th Amendment is the first time slavery was mentioned and it explicitly allowed some form of it. Maybe the Civil War vets were fine with that, but the amendment still codified slavery.

[beebmam]

I think there's a big difference between Chattel slavery, and the kind of slavery that the 13th amendment allows for. There's also "wage slavery", which even Abe Lincoln and the republican party agreed was comparable to chattel slavery unless the wage slavery eventually led to self-employment.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> the people who fought the civil war believed that they were doing it to end slavery

For many Northerners, it had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with states rights vs. federalism. And keeping the Union together. Revisionist history makes it 100% about slavery.

[kthielen]

While it’s true to say that some northerners had other interests in fighting the civil war, there’s no clearer evidence of the cause and purpose of the civil war than the reasons cited by secessionist states for leaving the union. Yes it was about “states rights”, but specifically (as they themselves said) it was about the right of states to continue slavery.

You can say that people in the north weren’t angels, they certainly weren’t, and that there were other issues that motivated people to enter the war and fight for their side, there certainly were.

But the central issue of the civil war was slavery. If it was any other issue, the seceding states would have said it, and surely a compromise would have been reached (as in fact even today states have “rights” if not just the “right” to hold slaves).

[TedDoesntTalk]

> seceding states would have said it

They did. I get the feeling we’ve read different history books. So many reasons. What about the industrial north and the agricultural south? Played no part in the war, I’ve suspect you’d say. It was all slavery.

[abvdasker]

> it had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with states rights

"states rights" to do what?

[travisjungroth]

> No I’m not changing my question

Come one, you totally changed your question!

[markdown]

The same thing that happens in any other civilised nation; they serve time in jail.

They shouldn't become slaves. US prison slaves produce $11B worth of products and services and are paid 11c to 52c per hour.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-wo...

[mushbino]

Some states such as Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas pay them nothing at all and additionally, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and South Carolina allowed unpaid labor for at least some jobs.

[abvdasker]

I think they object to the continuing to allow slavery part.

[kthielen]

But “slavery” for incarcerated criminals? What exactly do you want to do with them?

Like, after you’ve convinced everyone that you’re morally superior to everyone else, do murderers get to walk free?

[abvdasker]

There's no reason for scare quotes given the specific carveout for slavery which exists in the Constitution. If you have an issue with that verbiage, take it up with the 38th United States Congress and Abraham Lincoln.

> do murderers get to walk free?

You're arguing against an extreme position that nobody actually holds. Most reasonable people would probably point to criminal justice as implemented in many European countries as exemplifying a more humane model which produces better long term results.

The carveout for the enslavement of incarcerated people also created a perverse incentive which played out predictably in the wake of Reconstruction's failure. If you're interested in the long and painful history of this fact here's a useful resource:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA

[kthielen]

Europeans and European countries have done all kinds of ridiculous things. Just because someone in Europe does something like you describe (if they even do, I doubt it), it doesn’t mean we should do it.

People in the South after the civil war grasped for any excuse to disenfranchise black people. Big surprise. That’s not an argument to treat prisoners any differently than we do today.

Are people incarcerated unfairly or are they convicted under unjust or unconstitutional laws? That’s a reason to agitate for change.

Are duly convicted criminals forced to do things they don’t want to do? Oh well, sounds like a good idea to me, I will invest in continuing that practice as long as the laws are fair!

[bryanrasmussen]

The 13th amendment does not end incarceration it ends slavery and involuntary servitude. Thus it allows you to enslave criminals and force them to work for you without in any way taking away from the obvious ability to incarcerate them.

[betwixthewires]

Not who you're responding to, but I will take a crack at your question. I think that incarceration and forced labor are barbaric and ineffective, and an enlightened society should not engage in those sorts of behaviors.

I believe in corporal punishment and fines. Petty crimes get fines, say some number larger than the average payout per crime divided by the chances of getting caught, so that on average criminals lose money. And for violent crimes, lashing, flogging, something quick, painful, that doesn't destroy families and take years from someone, and that doesn't maim or disable (so things like cutting off hands are out). And for repeat violent offenders and extreme cases like murder and torture and things, death, the reasoning being this is not punishment, it is corrective action, and if the corrective action doesn't work, the offender must be removed from society as they are a danger.

I can see exile making some sense in some cases but I haven't explored that really.

All this is predicated on the society being one where victimless crimes don't exist. Nothing should be illegal that involves no unwilling participants. Drugs, sodomy and things like that should not be crimes, social pressure and social sanction are enough to deter things a society doesn't want but that doesn't violate rights of others, and punishments for them should not be codified into law.

I know my opinion on this is not a commonly held view, and would be considered extreme by many, but I do think it is more humane and productive than incarceration.

[imtringued]

The slave loophole creates a motivation to wrongfully convict people or more aggressively convict people for petty crimes.

[mushbino]

That's exactly why the Jim Crow laws came around making almost anything illegal (if you were black). They rounded people up and put them right back on chain gangs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws