[delecti]

The text of the 13th amendment makes a direct equivalence between the chattel slavery it outlawed and the incarcerated forced labor that it left unaffected:

> 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

The plain reading of that text is that slavery remains a permitted punishment in the US.

[Anthony-G]

I’m not an American or a constitutional expert but my plain reading of that text is that the exception is for “involuntary servitude”. You could read it both ways but that’s how I’d understand it.

[_9ptr]

I don't know much about constitutional law, either german or american, but I know you often can't just "plain read" the text.

[stirfish]

Maybe some additional context would help.

Right after the civil war,

1. slavery became illegal, except as punishment for a crime

2. a ton of vague laws sprung up, like "malicious mischief". Look up "Jim Crow" or "black codes" to get a sense of these.

3. States started "convict-leasing" out prisoners as a source of income, often right back to the plantations that slaves were liberated from before. The convicted were not paid for this labor.

Additional context: Virginia Supreme Court rules that inmates are slaves to the state in 1871: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/slaves-s... Virginia held the capitol of the Confederacy - the states that tried to leave the USA to retain their slaves.

I forget why the crime exception was added to the 13th amendment, but I assume it was to make it more palatable to the states that still wanted slaves