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The Diarrhea Lettuce Company Has Been Linked to Forced Labor (futurism.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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In reporting from 2023 that was resurfaced this week on social media, the publication Prison Legal News revealed that Taylor Farms was contracting labor from the Arizona Department of Correction, Rehabilitation, and Reentry for the low, low price of just $4.75 an hour — far below the cost of a non-incarcerated worker the federal minimum wage. (And to be clear, that’s not the hourly wage paid to the inmate, which is capped at $1.50 in Arizona.)

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[–] 115 points 3 months ago (8 children)

And if anyone is wondering how this is legal (yes, it is 100% legal), I hereby direct them to the US Constitution, 13th Amendment, Section 1,

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.

In other words, slavery or involuntary servitude is fair game if you've been convicted of a crime.

Which is very fucked-up in my opinion. "Land of the Free", my ass...

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  • [–] 32 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    So coincidental that the US has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world, one that just happens to skew heavily non-white. Land of the free indeed.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    I mean, it’s not a secret. That’s what the clause was almost explicitly for. Slaves freed, vagrancy or similar becomes a crime, former slaves become prisoners because people won’t give them jobs so they don’t live in a house (also at the judgement of legal/judicial officials as to what counted as housed), many go back to the same plantations/workhouses they were already at.

    It didn’t slip through, it’s not a conspiracy theory, and it isn’t the quiet part being said out loud. It was always loud.

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  • [–] 47 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    The article mentions some portion of the enslaved people having been detained by ICE, which doesn't seem like quite the same thing as having been duly convicted of a crime

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    Tbf, many if not most of the people convicted were already poor people, especially minorities, who were railroaded by the prison slavery industrial complex even BEFORE ICE existed, let alone became one of the top 15 military forces in the world by funding.

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