No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.
Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state’s inmates — who are disproportionately Black — can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry. But more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, the AP determined.
How much more ethical is confining people in a small room against their will for years or decades? - Let alone executing some of them?
There are distinct differences between prison and slavery. With slavery you're kidnapped with no justification and no trial, somebody literally owns you, and you have fewer rights than farm animals. Prison is a punishment for a crime. Miscasting anything involuntary as "slavery" to make an argument have more dramatic impact is what loses the plot - it misappropriates the experiences of millions of people who were shipped across the ocean and actually enslaved.
Oh so you're fine with slavery as long as there's a thinly veiled justification then.
"Crime" is whatever the state deems a crime, it is selectively enforced, and in the US the system is so set up that the vast majority plea out, because they are penalised for fighting back in a trial.
The laws are arbitrary, racist and politically targeted:
https://www.unharm.org/the-racist-truth-behind-the-war-on-drugs/
Back in the days of chattel slavery they had thinly veiled justifications too, called race science.
Anyone with an interest in the matter and no moral compass could fall back on that and explain why chattel slavery was good for those other races, and it was the "white man's burden" to deliver them to civilisation, ignoring how convenient it was that it also made them into slaves.
I'll let you think about which side of the argument you'd have been on back then, based on how you've swallowed the modern day version of it.
No, I'm not "fine with slavery" or with people putting words in my mouth. My position is that prison labor is NOT slavery, and that misrepresenting it as such devalues people who actually live in in slavery, for the sake of having a good buzzword for prison rights arguments.
you’re fine with a system that has the same look smell taste violent and racist enforcement and oppressive outcomes as slavery. you’re fine with slavery. sorry babes.
Arrest is just a legally allowed kidnapping.
Why do accept the justification of legality? Chattel slavery was legal.
We've already been over the fact that most inmates never see a day in court.
Hard to see how that's different to prison, except for the "literally owns you", although inmates are essentially bought and sold, and quotas are maintained for private prison contracts. It's not exactly ownership but that's a very marginal difference.
So do you accept that anyone the state deems a criminal somehow deserves involuntary servitude? Why?
EDIT: Since you haven't replied and I assume you haven't seen this yet: involuntary servitude IS slavery, it just isn't necessarily chattel slavery. The language of the bill even prohibits involuntary servitude, but it seems pretty clear to me that that wasn't to say that involuntary servitude and slavery are somehow distinct, but to say that some future narrow definition of slavery as only chattel slavery such as you are doing right now couldn't be used to justify some other form of technically but not meaningfully different kind of slavery. With the aforementioned exceptions.
It is slavery. I wasn't putting words in your mouth, I was simply maintaining that the words you said were wrong.
Okay let's just redefine words then to pretend to be right - work is an involuntary activity most people only do to avoid homelessness, therefore "slavery" is magically just another word for "normal" - ta-daaaa!
Uh, yes? That's called wage slavery, and it very much is normalised in our sick system. Did... did you think that would stump me? What?
Doesn't matter if you aren't smart enough to see it. If slavery is the normal state of living, that makes prison slavery just slavery with free room and board. You can't be homeless in prison. This whole conversation is pointless so go ahead and continue it by yourself.
So like, you're okay with slavery then? Is that the practical upshot?
You are just doing black & white thinking. There's no room here for the idea that some forms of slavery are worse than others, even if they are all bad. This is pants-first-then-shoes basic stuff, and you're tripping and falling flat on your face because you can't get it right.
And thank you for laying out that as long as some paper-thin justification is given, you're fine with slavery. Hell, you went as far as to say they're better off in prison because they're kept. That's literally one of the old defences for chattel slavery.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but someone looking for excuses for prison slavery isn't going to be a very nice person, or very good at reasoning. People with your level of miseducation are unfortunately far too common.
No, The practical upshot (apart from reading comprehension) is that prison labor is being mis-defined as "slavery" to make objections to it sound stronger. IMO that devalues people who have experienced real slavery. There's nothing wrong with objecting to prison labor, just don't call it "slavery" because it isn't. That's my point, my whole point and my only point here. No need to turn it into anything else.
Okay, you are wrong for the reasons I have outlined and you have failed to address.
You could address them, but that would require you to engage your much-vaunted reading comprehension to understand what I have written, which you don't seem interested in doing.
You are correct. I didn't read past, "So like, you’re okay with slavery then? Is that the practical upshot?" We are having two different conversations, and I'm not interested in the one where you start off putting words in my mouth. I won't be replying to you anymore.
Solitary confinement is also unethical.
If being too poor to afford a home is illegal, then it’s legal to make the homeless slaves. Is that ok with you? No one should be forced into slavery, even actual criminals, period.