Prisoners have been used for labor in the United States
inmates in private, state or federal prisons have been branded the term, “modern-day slaves” of the 21st century. The Thirteenth Amendment has created a way for prisoners to perform mandatory essentially unpaid hard labor than there were in 1830, 35 years before American slavery was abolished. Having 25% of the world’s prison population, more than 80% of inmates are locked up because of victimless, non-violent crimes, with most of them being drug related (Hartney, 2011, p. 5). Prison labor helps produce…
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The United States sequesters the largest number of prisoners out of any country in the world.It has 2.3 million prisoners, which is close to as many as China and Russia have combined. The nation's prisons employ nearly 800,000 workers, more than the auto manufacturing industry. Handling these masses of miscreants was not a major problem for federal U.S. prisons before the 21st century until recently, when the system began to run out of funding as the population and crime rates in the United States…
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increased America's reliance on prison made goods. The increased prison population has created a much larger cheap labor force. The practice of forcing prisoners to work for below minimum wage has been defended by saying, “that work is central to rehabilitation, reform, and the effectiveness of prison time” (Kang, 2009 Pg: 147). However that explanation does not elucidate why labor laws do not protect prisoners. America is clearly using prisoners as a source of cheap labor and mandatory minimums have…
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DuVernay. Centered on race in the United States criminal justice system. The documentary is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery. The documentary begins with a quote from the President Barack Obama, “The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners”. This statistic stated by Obama sets the tone for what's ahead; a very overwhelming and straightforward look on the United States today. The cold hard truth…
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Although the Auburn prison served as a model for nearly ten years, it eventually began to be a financial burden to the State due to the threat of convict labor with the free labor market. As a result, a new model emerged in the 1820s. The Eastern State Penitentiary was built in response to the miserable conditions of earlier facilities. This penitentiary was capable of housing more inmates for longer sentences. The facility valued cleanliness as well as structure and order (Tarter and Bell 2012:107)…
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Introduction The United States is in the middle of a prison crisis. “From 1980 to 1997, the national correctional population rose from 1.8 million to 5.7 million, an increase of 217 percent. During the same period... the number of prisoners (rose by) 271 percent.” (Mackenzie 2001). The leading cause of this uptick in the prisoner population has been the implementation of mandatory minimums to fight a ‘war on drugs.’ Mandatory minimums are laws that require judges to give minimum sentences for specific…
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The United States was built on crime and now more than ever it is as though they benefit from making criminals. Now it seems like companies as well as the government are benefiting from prisoners going to jail, because they get criminals to work for less money than they have to pay other people who are not in jail. Often times criminals going into jail come out better criminals, leaving them less functional in todays society. This sometimes results with them going back to prison. The government…
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The history of prisons in the United States is a long and sorted one dating back to this country’s inception. The American colonies were originally used as penal colonies for the British Empire, much the way Australia was. Since then, correctional institutions in America have taken on many forms. In the paper, I will explain the history of prisons, and compare and contrast the various prison systems this country has seen over the centuries. Imprisonment as a form of criminal punishment became a…
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Purpose and History of Penitentiaries Penitentiaries originally began as an idea in the 1800s (Seiter, 2011). As time progressed the idea of a penitentiary evolved from an idea into a structure. During the late 1800s prisons began to develop. These structures are used to facilitate citizens who do not abide by the laws of the land. These citizens are known as criminals. These penitentiaries are used as a form of punishment to ensure criminals do not further aggravate…
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Inmate Labor in America: Sanctioned Slavery Imagine, if you will, laborers working on farms for less than a dollar a day or factory workers who do not receive any compensation for hours upon hours of tedious work. This is not happening overseas in some distant land, but right here at home. So it goes in the American prison system. In both government operated and privately run prisons, inmates are often times forced to work for extraordinarily low wages or for free, or, alternatively, face unpleasant…
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