One of the things that made our prison system make sense as a machine for me was the explicit carve out in the 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.
Emphasis mine. If you’re on the outside looking in, and you don’t understand why the US prison/LE system is the way that it is, it’s because we never actually abolished slavery. We just gave it justification and some window dressing.
And to be clear, I don’t agree with any of it. But it is a thing that bears mentioning in the context of law and justice in the US.
One of the things that made our prison system make sense as a machine for me was the explicit carve out in the 13th Amendment:
Emphasis mine. If you’re on the outside looking in, and you don’t understand why the US prison/LE system is the way that it is, it’s because we never actually abolished slavery. We just gave it justification and some window dressing.
And to be clear, I don’t agree with any of it. But it is a thing that bears mentioning in the context of law and justice in the US.