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Is slavery still legal inside the US?
wipala
Member Posts: 11,068
quote:Section 1 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
Section2 Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Read this carefully. It is the entire 13th amendment. This supposedly ended slavery in the US. But please notice it states unless they are sentenced to it for crimes. Is slavery still legal?
"When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil."
- Max Lerner
Section2 Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Read this carefully. It is the entire 13th amendment. This supposedly ended slavery in the US. But please notice it states unless they are sentenced to it for crimes. Is slavery still legal?
"When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil."
- Max Lerner
Comments
Eric
allamericanarmsco@frontiernet.net
All American Arms Company
www.galleryofguns.com
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Veteran Owned and Operated
quote:Section 1 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
Section2 Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Read this carefully. It is the entire 13th amendment. This supposedly ended slavery in the US. But please notice it states unless they are sentenced to it for crimes. Is slavery still legal?
The point is under that amendment, criminals can still be sentenced to "involuntary servitude" (eg breaking rocks, etc).
Doesn't necessarily make slavery legal in any place since State law would still apply. Doesn't even necessarily make involuntary servitude by convicted felons legal either.
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A later case, Ruffin v. Commonwealth (1871) even went so far as to say state inmates were "slaves of the state" and lost all citizenship rights, including the right to judicial relief regarding complaints about living conditions.
Any wife might answer that question with a very loud
Yes........
tiny tee hee....[:o)][}:)][:o)]
Lil' Stinker's Opinion
quote:Originally posted by wipala
quote:Section 1 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
Section2 Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Read this carefully. It is the entire 13th amendment. This supposedly ended slavery in the US. But please notice it states unless they are sentenced to it for crimes. Is slavery still legal?
The point is under that amendment, criminals can still be sentenced to "involuntary servitude" (eg breaking rocks, etc).
Doesn't necessarily make slavery legal in any place since State law would still apply. Doesn't even necessarily make involuntary servitude by convicted felons legal either.
Actually Mississippi never ratified the 13th so unless eheir is a state law they could sentence someone to life and use them as one[}:)]
"When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil."
- Max Lerner
Mateomasfeo
"I am what I am!" - Popeye
Whether MS ratified it or not doesn't matter...it's still enforceable as the supreme law of the land.
I know it covers the whole country just responding to the state law statement by bts with the fact Mississippi never outlawed it AFAIK
"When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil."
- Max Lerner
Mississippi DID ratify the 13th Amendment.....in 1995
Not according to this
The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the Thirty-eighth Congress, on the 31st day of January, 1865, and was declared, in a proclamation of the Secretary of State, dated the 18th of December, 1865, to have been ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven of the thirty-six States. The dates of ratification were: Illinois, February 1, 1865; Rhode Island, February 2, 1865; Michigan, February 2, 1865; Maryland, February 3, 1865; New York, February 3, 1865; Pennsylvania, February 3, 1865; West Virginia, February 3, 1865; Missouri, February 6, 1865; Maine, February 7, 1865; Kansas, February 7, 1865; Massachusetts, February 7, 1865; Virginia, February 9, 1865; Ohio, February 10, 1865; Indiana, February 13, 1865; Nevada, February 16, 1865; Louisiana, February 17, 1865; Minnesota, February 23, 1865; Wisconsin, February 24, 1865; Vermont, March 9, 1865; Tennessee, April 7, 1865; Arkansas, April 14, 1865; Connecticut, May 4, 1865; New Hampshire, July 1, 1865; South Carolina, November 13, 1865; Alabama, December 2, 1865; North Carolina, December 4, 1865; Georgia, December 6, 1865.
Ratification was completed on December 6, 1865.
The amendment was subsequently ratified by Oregon, December 8, 1865; California, December 19, 1865; Florida, December 28, 1865 (Florida again ratified on June 9, 1868, upon its adoption of a new constitution); Iowa, January 15, 1866; New Jersey, January 23, 1866 (after having rejected the amendment on March 16, 1865); Texas, February 18, 1870; Delaware, February 12, 1901 (after having rejected the amendment on February 8, 1865); Kentucky, March 18, 1976 (after having rejected it on February 24, 1865).
The amendment was rejected (and not subsequently ratified) by Mississippi, December 4, 1865.
Last Updated: October 25, 1997
http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/amend13.htm
"When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil."
- Max Lerner
In March of 1995, Mississippi's Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 547 was adopted, thereby making Mississippi-albeit ceremonially-the final state to place its stamp of approval upon the 13th Amendment. And, with that, all 50 states in the Union are now on record in support of the 13th Amendment-with the understanding that as later states entered the Union, they did so by accepting the Constitution in its totality as it existed on the date of their admission.
Actually Mississippi never ratified the 13th so unless eheir is a state law they could sentence someone to life and use them as one[}:)]
It doesn't make any difference whether or not Mississippi ratified the 13th amendment (though apparently they did actually ratify it recently).
As an amendment to the Constitution, it has the full power of Federal law and would apply anyway to Miss, even if not ratified by that state. Miss isn't allowed to selectively reject parts of the Constitution. So there is no legal slavery in Mississippi.
But since there is a specific exception in the amendment permitting convicted criminals to be used for involuntary labor (ie as slaves), they could probably still force convicts to break rocks in chain gangs so long as there is no Miss. law against it (which there probably is NOT).
The prisoner work-release program isn't "involuntary" servitude, since I think those prisoners are given the choice whether or not they want to participate. They don't *have* to go work if they don't want to. Admittedly the choice is work for pennies or rot in jail, so one could argue whether or not its a real "choice", but I think the eagerness with which the people involved participate suggests that it is a choice.
Whether or not this practice violates minimum wage laws (or ought to), or might unfairly screw with the labor market by essentially underbidding more conventional workers are other issues altogether. Personally, I think giving prisoners the ability to work is not only a good idea, but it should be a model practice. Why *shouldn't* they work, if they can, and if they want to? Let them learn to do *something* productive in prison. That's a win-win for them, and for the rest of society when they come out.
Thousands of business's across this country do it so it must be legal.
I was just replying to the accuracy of the info, not the legality of non-state sanctioned slavery. Slavery still exists in this country on a large scale basis with smuggled immigrants.
The government agencies, Federal, State and Local all use inmate labor. This can be either in the form of just cooking, cleaning and doing laundry inside the institutions, but also as well as work outside i.e picking up trash on the roadside, and in the parks.
The county I work in replaced the employees in the print shop with inmate labor, with a civilian supervisor. They also do all the recycling pick-ups in county buildings, and manufacture and install street signs.
They are paid, depending on the job, anywhere from .05 per hour (dishwasher, floor-mopper) up to minimum wage (print-shop, signmaker). Part of this money goes back to the institution for room and board ($10.00 per day for the minimum wage employees), and it is also garnished for fines, costs and restitution.
The other incentive, in Virginia anyway, is that they can also recieve "Good Time". For short term inmates, they recieve 5 days off their sentence for every 30 days worked. For long term, they can get up to 15% off their total time.
I still find it ironic that New Hampshire prisoners are used to make license plates with the motto "Live Free or Die" [:D]
Could a person who breaks a law be asingned to be a slave of a private citezen?
I realize were are speaking theoretically here, but could a person unable to pay a dept be asigned to wirk it off to the lender?
"When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil."
- Max Lerner
Prisoners who agree to work for 5 cents an hour in exchange for reduced time in prison still aren't slaves. Neither are illegal immigrants who work for substantially less than minimum wage, so long as they aren't coerced to do so under threat of violence or personal recrimination. The morality of this sort of low paying job certainly can be debated, but by no stretch are those things slavery in the usual sense of that term.
Could a convicted criminal be made into someone's personal slave?
Not legally. The 1927 Slavery convention, to which the USA is a signatory effectively bans slavery worldwide. Simply put, despite the carve-out for prisoners in the 13th amendment, slavery is still illegal everywhere within the jurisdiction of the United States by international law. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, slavery is also against the law in every or almost every state by state law, and the 8th amendment to the constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment, of which slavery probably qualifies.
Here's an interesting question. . .If someone agrees to be a slave, can they still be a slave? That's sort of a semantic issue, since if the definition of slavery requires coercion, then by definition there can be no such thing as a voluntary slave. If someone can walk out of the deal at any time, they aren't really a slave.
I am aware that there is still slavery in the United States. Sometimes illegal immigrants are effectively held against their will and forced to work in sweatshops, etc. The CIA estimates that 50,000 persons per year are trafficked into the USA for these purposes.
Compare now to Saudi Arabia, and parts of Northern Africa where they still have chattel slavery: IE small children are literally bought and sold for cash on the open market. This is nominally illegal even there, but there is little to no enforcement.