"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 13th Amendment
Slavery in the US is no longer unpaid, beaten, raped, and unjustly murdered individuals colored by melanin; people that are forced to work in harsh conditions, and considered property. Modern day slavery exist in America through the prison system, more specifically private and corporate owned prisons. Through mass incarceration prisons have become overcrowded, and families have become broken. The prison industry benefits corporations, law enforcement, politicians, and stockholders. The public school system, low income families, and taxpayers are the people that suffer the most.
Corporations receive $2,400 for each prisoner that they employ, yet they only pay inmates 6 times less than the national minimum wage, $7.25. Corporations that benefit from prison labor include, but are not limited to: McDonald's, Whole Foods, Victoria’s Secret, Aramark, AT&T, and BP.
The War on Drugs benefits the privatized prison industry, law enforcement, politicians, and shareholders of those prisons. The War on Drugs was created by President Richard Nixon in June of 1971. Since the declaration of the War on Drugs, black men have been arrested 13 times more than white men. Blacks and Hispanics make up 29% of the US population, yet at the same time they are 75% of the prison population, even though drug use and sells are equally common throughout all races. Non-violent drug offenses make up for 46.3% of US prison population, while 31.8% accounts for murder, sex crimes, aggravated assault, kidnapping, robbery, and weapon charges. Through the War on Drugs, the federal government increases funding to local law enforcement agencies to encourage them to crack down on drug movement in lower income areas. Politicians are paid through lobbying from the prison industry, and as well as the pharmaceutical companies, to pass laws that keep the prisons full, and drugs illegal. Prisons, especially privatized, are companies; the warden is the C.E.O., the deputy warden is the vice president, then the administration of the many departments, then the workers. Also like many multi-billion dollar companies, prisons have stockholders, who make their money through buying and selling prison stock, which becomes more valuable with increasing the prison population.
With the ever increasing incarceration rates in the US, the middle and lower class are the ones that suffer most. Many people don't know that some states: Michigan, Oregon, Arizona, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Delaware, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Connecticut, actually spend more tax dollars on prisons than they do for their education systems. Due to a lack of funding, school systems are no longer able to afford valuable teachers, leading to the reason most schools have become daycares, and students are no longer motivated to do well, in turn many youth believe that there is no more hope in the future, so they turn to illegal activity, which starts them on a life journey in and out of prison. Many families that belong to the lower and middle class often suffer from the never ending cycle of prison. Sons are taken at a young age, and fathers, as well as mothers, are not in their children's lives, which weakens the family structure the most.
In North Carolina, the state government spends on average of about $8,000 per student, and $29,000. Taxpayers’ money are involuntarily funding prisons 3.6 times more than their children's education. Indirectly encouraging the youth to go to prison versus bettering their future.
Slavery still exist in the US, and it's not what we saw in Roots, Twelve Years a Slave, and Django. Slavery exist in ways that we see in Orange is the New Black and The Green Mile. The 13th Amendment only freed slaves in the sense of property, but not in the sense of the prison complex.
