Some are probably thinking — “Wait, what about the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?” Well, that historical 1865 edit technically only abolished involuntary servitude and chattel slavery, where an individual is considered the personal property of another.
However, thanks to a loophole, slavery is still very much alive and can be imposed as a punishment for a crime. Now, if you’re calling into question the correlation between slavery and prison, you’re not alone. As an attempt to address this very thought and the aforementioned loophole, an initiative has been created, posing as a main reason as to why slavery is headed to the voting block for November’s midterm elections.
In the five states of Louisiana, Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont, voters will have to decide whether to officially abolish slavery. Again, this decision is a part of a larger criminal justice reform movement aimed at current U.S. prison policies around prison labor. It’s reported that about 1.2 million people in the prisons across the U.S. can be and are often legally enslaved.
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