[like_any_other]

> The US penal system is explicitly a continuation of the former slave system.

Penal labor is not exclusive to the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour

> It isn't coincidental that so many prisons were built on former plantation property, or that the incarceration rate of black men is so high.

32% of prisoners are Black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

56% of homicide perpetrators are Black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...

Using homicide as indicator of general criminality because it's hard to fudge the numbers or inflate them with over-policing. Granted the correspondence is surely not perfect, but given such a parsimonious explanation, we'd need strong justification to reach for conspiratorial alternatives.