A Constitutional Convention is closer than you think (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: A Constitutional Convention is closer than you think (2019)

#121

Post by prepend » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 11:25 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #109

prepend wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they did based on my reading of the 13th amendment “ 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.”

> I think they did based on my reading of the 13th amendment They didn't, and you quote the part that makes that clear: “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” A whole lot of current social issues can be traced back to things rooted in the way penal slavery, and targeted over-criminalization and policing to supply bodies for penal slavery, immediately replaced chattel slave…

When I mean slavery, I mean chattel slavery.

I don’t think imprisonment is slavery. There are many problems with the US prison system and it needs a lot of work to reform and correct. But at least it’s not chattel slavery.

Equating the two is not very helpful to the discussion because it distracts from a conversation about slavery by equating two different, but slightly similar topics.

Re: A Constitutional Convention is closer than you think (2019)

#122

Post by prepend » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 11:26 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #117

prepend wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they did based on my reading of the 13th amendment “ 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.”

> except as a punishment Anyone convicted of a crime in the US can be turned into a slave as punishment, and that happens every day. US prisons are filled with slaves right this minute. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/9/9/slavery-in-the-u... https://www.npr.org/transcripts/884989263

Technically I think you’re correct, but it’s a different form of slavery that isn’t nearly as bad as the slavery that was eliminated by the 13th amendment.

For example, the children of prisoners aren’t owned property to be sold and traded.

Re: A Constitutional Convention is closer than you think (2019)

#123

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Nov 30, 2021, 11:41 AM UTC

prepend wrote: post #121

dragonwriter wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they did based on my reading of the 13th amendment They didn't, and you quote the part that makes that clear: “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” A whole lot of current social issues can be traced back to things rooted in the way penal slavery, and targeted over-criminalization and policing to supply bodies for penal slavery, immediately replaced chattel slave…

When I mean slavery, I mean chattel slavery. I don’t think imprisonment is slavery. There are many problems with the US prison system and it needs a lot of work to reform and correct. But at least it’s not chattel slavery. Equating the two is not very helpful to the discussion because it distracts from a conversation about slavery by equating two different, but slightly similar topics.

> I don’t think imprisonment is slavery

Imprisonment is not slavery.

Penal slavery was very much a thing in much of the US for quite a while after the civil war (the federal government has since taken statutory and administrative steps to eliminate it, and may or may not have generally succeeded depending on exactly how you bound the term, but previously penal slavery in the US differed from chattel slavery only in that it had (often extremely corrupt) criminal conviction as an entry gate. And while penal slavery itself has been mitigated and arguably eliminated as a deliberate state practice (rather than an aberrant corruption of individual officials) subsequently (though still Constitutionally permitted) a whole lot of the over-criminalization and police and correctional culture built originally around the institution remains.