When I left you last, I asked you to check your state’s constitution to see if it contains the “Exception Clause” or “Punishment Clause”, and if it did, to contact your state legislator. Don’t think you can make a difference? Since 2018, voters by overwhelming majorities in the following states have removed these clauses from their states’ constitutions; Colorado, Utah, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont. Nevada voters will have the opportunity during the 2024 election.
As a member of the Humanism Collective at my last housing facility, I conducted a letter campaign writing dozens of members of the North Carolina General Assembly to remove the ” Exception Clause ” from the state’s constitution. While I never received a response to any of my letters, on April 19, 2023, House Bill 822, “An Act to Make Absolute the Prohibition Against Involuntary Servitude in the State” was introduced. It will amend Article 1, Section 17, to read, “Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this Section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.” The last I was able to find was that the bill was in committee. Not a complete victory. It does nothing to ensure state labor laws are followed in state prisons.

At the federal level, House and Senate Joint Resolution 53 and 21 respectively, were introduced on June 17, 2021. They will amend the Thirteenth Amendment or the United States Constitution to read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime.”
In support of this Amendment, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley stated, “Legalized slavery has bent the American criminal justice system, fanned the flames of mass incarceration, and stripped millions of people – particularly Black Americans and people of color – of their most basic human rights.” He went on to highlight, in part, “the fact that private and government prison corporations’ profit from forced labor, as do companies that sell their goods, which are made by forced labor from uncompensated or under compensated people.”
A June 2022 study produced by the ACLU and the University of Chicago Law School reported that “ninety – five percent of government prisons and ninety percent of private prisons have some type of work program to support and maintain the prisons.” The study showed “prisoners produce over two billion dollars in goods and perform nine billion dollars’ worth of support and maintenance of prison facilities.”
Next month I will introduce a United States Supreme Court case from 1872 that explained how the Thirteenth Amendment was “intended to prohibit all forms of involuntary slavery of whatever class or name.” With this explanation made one hundred and fifty years ago, it is hard to understand why we are still fighting this evil practice in all its forms.

Christopher Ridley #0809968 /cdridley611@gmail.com

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