While I think there is a definite issue with prisons being used as a source of labor, I also don't see how you can have prison without it being slavery. At the very core, putting someone in a limited area they do not want to be in, forcing them to stay there under threat of violence, and forcing them to behave seems to be a form of slavery.
Even if we were to consider a nice prison focused around rehabilitation and not exploitation, there are still things the prisoner is forced to do. They are forced not to leave. They are forced to follow certain rules. They are forced to move between locations at certain times of the day.
They may be forced to attend classes or do specific types of labor like cleaning their rooms or common areas. Unlike a job where you might be 'forced' to clean, but you can always quit, quitting is rarely a choice for the prisoner and will result in worse punishment. Even if the prison does not directly profit off the labor of the prisoner, this level of control seems to be a form of slavery. Rarely do I see slavery defined as requiring profit to be made off the slave, though slavery rarely happens where it isn't found to be profitable by the person doing the enslaving (based on the enslaver's own view of what counts as profit).
If we were to fully ban slavery even for prisons, then for even nice prisons to continue to exist we would have to define some other non-slavery action which would include having control of where a person lives, how they live, when they sleep, and all the other powers of a prison. In such a case, it would then be possible for a state to allow this non-slavery even for people not convicted of a crime, because it isn't slavery and thus isn't a violation of the 13th amendment. Generally things like kidnapping laws as they currently exist would prevent any private entity from doing this, but exceptions might be carved out. On realistic example would be teen rehabilitation camps which already can border on the legal limits of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and slavery. Some stories from these places already sound like they might be crossing the line, though that might only be allowed as long as they are dealing with minors with parental approval. I could reasonably see a state extending such treatment until the teen is 21 or such.
Oh defining a framework that defines incarceration is hard so we should just have slavery. Got it.
Random anecdote. Slavery means NO days off. If you are sick, you have to get up at 5:30am and go wait in line outside in the freezing snow for sick call (you also have to do this for 'pill line' if you have any meds, though you aren't charged the $5 a pop for that). Sick call costs $5 a visit. You make $5 a month. Then the doctor says 'drink water and take an aspirin' and clears you to go to work. Aspirin is only available from the commissary in large overprices bottles about to expire. You are REQUIRED to throw the bottle away when it is expired or you will get a shot for 'contraband'. You can not share aspirin with others. Hopefully you planned ahead and saved your $5 for 2 months to afford a bottle of aspirin in case you got sick, and it hasn't expired before you get sick. When you get to work, sick, no exception is made for your physical condition. If you work HVAC you're still climbing ladders in the snow to the roof.
Slavery means I was forced to shovel the compound with a shovel with a broken handle so exposed fiberglass that cut me up. I was issued a 'navy uniform' which is what we wear in the feds. So short sleeve shirt, thin khaki slacks, thin socks. And you get a light non-waterproof jacket. You want long underwear? Commissary purchase (4X monthly pay, $20 pants OR $20 shirt). Gloves? Commissary purchase (2 months pay $10). Hat? commissary purchase (1 months pay $5). So I shoveled snow for hours, soaked to the bone, in whiteout conditions, no hat, no gloves, with my hands bleeding. That is slavery. And I had it good. I was able to get the shovel fixed through connections, boy was the cop that made me do that pissed when next time I pulled the shovel out of the locked tool closet and somehow it was fixed even though he kept 'forgetting' to put in a work order.
>Oh defining a framework that defines incarceration is hard so we should just have slavery. Got it.
That is not my argument.
My argument is that incarceration is a subset of slavery. Accepting one specific subset of slavery doesn't mean bringing back chattel slavery or legalizing sexual slavery. You ideally want to prevent any loopholes and keep a very specific limit on what is allowed for prisoners to avoid horrible things we see in modern day prisons and in prisons for the past.
>Slavery means NO days off. If you are sick, you have to get up at 5:30am and go wait in line outside in the freezing snow for sick call (you also have to do this for 'pill line' if you have any meds, though you aren't charged the $5 a pop for that). Sick call costs $5 a visit. You make $5 a month. Then the doctor says 'drink water and take an aspirin' and clears you to go to work. Aspirin is only available from the commissary in large overprices bottles about to expire. You are REQUIRED to throw the bottle away when it is expired or you will get a shot for 'contraband'. You can not share aspirin with others. Hopefully you planned ahead and saved your $5 for 2 months to afford a bottle of aspirin in case you got sick, and it hasn't expired before you get sick. When you get to work, sick, no exception is made for your physical condition. If you work HVAC you're still climbing ladders in the snow to the roof.
Even if you banned any labor, you could still have prisons who have extremely unreasonable charges for goods and services due to the, quite literal, captive audience. Imagine your same situation, except there is no work to get paid. You either have to have an external source of money from before being put in prison, have someone sending you money, or this gets added to a bill that eventually the government will have you repay once you are out of prison. No labor for profit, but still all the problems you point out.
>Slavery means I was forced to shovel the compound with a shovel with a broken handle so exposed fiberglass that cut me up.
Conditions of tools provided in prison are also independent of any notion of labor from profit. You can have a prison where people are given horrible tools for their daily rehabilitation tasks even though there is no profitable labor occurring. If you have people running the prison seeking to torture prisoners, they can do so even in a situation where there is no labor for profit. These are obvious bad things as well, but I don't see how these things being bad relate to my question.
Even if we were to consider a nice prison focused around rehabilitation and not exploitation, there are still things the prisoner is forced to do. They are forced not to leave. They are forced to follow certain rules. They are forced to move between locations at certain times of the day. They may be forced to attend classes or do specific types of labor like cleaning their rooms or common areas. Unlike a job where you might be 'forced' to clean, but you can always quit, quitting is rarely a choice for the prisoner and will result in worse punishment. Even if the prison does not directly profit off the labor of the prisoner, this level of control seems to be a form of slavery. Rarely do I see slavery defined as requiring profit to be made off the slave, though slavery rarely happens where it isn't found to be profitable by the person doing the enslaving (based on the enslaver's own view of what counts as profit).
If we were to fully ban slavery even for prisons, then for even nice prisons to continue to exist we would have to define some other non-slavery action which would include having control of where a person lives, how they live, when they sleep, and all the other powers of a prison. In such a case, it would then be possible for a state to allow this non-slavery even for people not convicted of a crime, because it isn't slavery and thus isn't a violation of the 13th amendment. Generally things like kidnapping laws as they currently exist would prevent any private entity from doing this, but exceptions might be carved out. On realistic example would be teen rehabilitation camps which already can border on the legal limits of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and slavery. Some stories from these places already sound like they might be crossing the line, though that might only be allowed as long as they are dealing with minors with parental approval. I could reasonably see a state extending such treatment until the teen is 21 or such.