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The Thirteenth Amendment: Slavery, Involuntary Servitude, and the Convict-labor Exception
- Parent Category: Criminal Justice and Racism
- Category: Prision Industrial Complex and Mass Incarceration
- Andrea C. Armstrong
- Hits: 1889
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Andrea C. Armstrong
Excerpted from: Andrea C. Armstrong, Slavery Revisited in Penal Plantation Labor, 35 Seattle University Law Review 673 (Spring, 2012) (97 footnotes omitted)
Not only does the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibit involuntary labor writ large but it also includes an exception for penal servitude. Specifically, the Thirteenth Amendment states: "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 The Punishment Clause or "prisoner-labor exception clause" is often misinterpreted to allow both conditions of slavery and involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.
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