This is one of the peculiarities mid-term elections in the United States: in addition to renewing all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 seats for senators and the governors of 36 states out of 50, 132 local referendums are organized this year in 37 states.
These relate to education, infrastructure, abortion, health, the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes… and for voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont – one of the first states to abolish slavery, in 1777 – on the removal from their respective Constitutions of references to “ I’eslavery » and at the “involuntary servitude”.
Because the drafting of XIIIe amendment to the United States Constitutionwhich put an end to slavery, left an exception: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime the culprit of which shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or in any place subject to its jurisdiction. » It is this breach that the local referendums propose to fill.
Prisoners, labor without rights
The final abolition of slavery, in 1865, was accompanied in particular by racial discrimination by the police and the judicial system, one of the consequences of which was a rate of imprisonment of African-Americans almost five times higher than that whites, as recalled in a study published at the end of 2021 the research and defense center The Sentencing Project. However, in the penitentiary system, prisoners undergo a double punishment: deprivation of freedom and compulsory work, practically without remuneration.
According to a report from theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), of the roughly 1.2 million inmates in federal and state prisons, about 800,000 are forced to work for very low pay. According to the group’s database Worth Rises, an NGO that advocates for the dismantling of the prison industry and an end to the exploitation of prisoners, thousands of companies use this labor at very low cost: from 13 cents to 1.30 dollars a hour, when the hourly minimum at the federal level is 7.25 dollars. In three states – Texas, Georgia and Arkansas – prisoners are not even paid at all.
The ACLU points out that these incarcerated workers produce more than $2 billion a year in goods and merchandise and contribute to the upkeep of prisons to the tune of more than $9 billion a year. On the West Coast, they sometimes fulfill public service missions: thewashington state uses them to fight forest fires. Just like the yet very democratic California… which has rejected a proposal vote to end forced prison labor, used as auxiliary firefighters.
Prisoners strike against their exploitation
During the summer of 2018, the US prison inmates went on strike. Supported by several associations for the defense of civil rights, they made their demands known, including “the immediate improvement of conditions” ownership and the right to vote for all of them.
In the process, during the 2018 midterm elections, Colorado banned forced prisoner labor, followed in 2020 by Utah and Nebraska. And so perhaps the turn this year of five other States.
If the battle is waged State by State, it is because of the difficulty of abolishing it at the federal level. A amendment to this effect was indeed presented in 2021 by Democratic senators in order to amend the Constitution and include in it an article stipulating that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime”. But its adoption requires a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate, as well as a ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures, which is virtually impossible.
Pending the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, slavery remains enshrined in the constitutions of Oregon, Nevada, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. The notion of “involuntary servitude”it is found in those of the states of California, Kansas, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana.