End use of prisoners for unpaid hard labor, ABA House of Delegates urges
Female prison laborers fill sandbags in Florida ahead of Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.
At the 2023 ABA Annual Meeting in Denver on Monday, the ABA House of Delegates called for the end of using prisoners to conduct unpaid hard labor.
Resolution 503, submitted by the ABA Criminal Justice Section, urges governments at all levels to repeal laws that provide an exception to the 13th Amendment that prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude through prison labor. Additionally, it asks for enacting legislation to eliminate hard labor as punishment, emphasizing that involuntary labor be eliminated.
It passed overwhelmingly.
“In 1865, when the [13th] Amendment was passed, quickly ‘Black Codes’ were passed … that criminalized conduct that ordinarily would not be crimes—loitering, walking on grass, failing to have proof of employment,” said Cynthia Orr, the Texas delegate for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in presenting the resolution.
“Just as expected, prison populations grew exponentially. So did private prisons and private corporations profiting from free labor in prison,” Orr added. “Over $2 billion in goods and $9 billion services are provided by essentially slave labor in our prisons.”
Black Americans are incarcerated in prisons and jails at nearly five times the rate of white Americans, according to the Sentencing Project.
Follow along with the ABA Journal’s coverage of the 2023 ABA Annual Meeting here.
Resolution 503 follows attempts during the last two sessions of the U.S. Congress by Democratic lawmakers to introduce a joint resolution to amend the 13th Amendment to prohibit the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
“That was a long overdue, a vestige of our history of shameful discrimination,” Orr said.
The resolution amends the third edition of the ABA Standards for Criminal Justice on the treatment of prisoners, she said. It adds, “Jurisdictions should not impose involuntary labor programs to Standard 23-8.4(a) Work Programs,” according to the report that accompanies the resolution.
“Involuntary servitude remains a systemic problem in the United States. Incarcerated workers, like all others, should be permitted to work voluntarily, under safe conditions, in exchange for fair compensation, and in jobs that are beneficial to their reentry or development,” according to the report accompanying Resolution 503. “To those ends, hard labor should be eliminated as a legal form of punishment.”
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Voters ban slavery as a form of punishment in 4 states; what is the impact?”
