this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Oh it's worse than that.
This is maybe not well known outside the US - the US Constitution specifically carves out an exception in the 13th amendment - the amendment which made slavery illegal* in the US - which allows convicted criminals to be used as slaves.
We also have in our fifth amendment that anyone can be deprived of their right to life, liberty or property via the due process of the law.
So, via these two aspects of these amendments, you can technically be deprived of any rights you might hold once you are convicted of a crime and placed in prison. Of course, that is not exactly true. You do still have rights and many lawyers make it their livelihoods to try to secure prisoners their rights. At the same time, though, it's really not much consolation, since we still absolutely do use prisoners as slave labor, and constantly overlook the unjust abuse and killing of prisoners.
* While Illegal on paper, slavery was still carried out for a century after. Emancipation happened in 1863, 13th amendment in 1865, but there were still cases of privately owned slaves as recently as 1963