US midterm elections: Why five states have slavery on the ballot in 2022

Unbelievable and totally disgusting.

By Max Matza
BBC News, Seattle

It's 157 years since the US constitution banned chattel slavery - in which one person is the legal property of another - but left in place an exemption for convicted prisoners.

Throughout most of the US, slavery or involuntary servitude are still legal as punishment for a crime.

But on 8 November, voters in five states - Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont - will decide whether to remove these exemptions from their state constitutions and ban slavery entirely.

The outcome could enable prisoners to challenge forced labour. Some 800,000 currently work for pennies, or for nothing at all. Seven states do not pay prison workers any wage for most job assignments.

Supporters of change say it's an exploitative loophole that must be closed.
But critics argue that the move is unaffordable and could lead to unintended consequences in the criminal justice system.

The roots of the modern system originate in the centuries of enslavement of African-Americans, human rights researchers say.

In the years after slavery was outlawed, laws were passed that specifically aimed to suppress black communities and force them into prisons where they would be required to work.

Now, some imprisoned black Americans are still forced to pick cotton and other crops on the southern plantations where their forefathers were kept in chains.

"The United States of America has never had a day without codified slavery," says Curtis Ray Davis II, who spent over 25 years serving hard labour in a Louisiana prison for a murder that he did not commit, before he was pardoned in 2019.

Mr Davis held a variety of jobs at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary - nicknamed Angola after the country from which many of the African slaves in the area were brought.

"I worked for 25 years and came home with 124 dollars," says Mr Davis, who was never paid more than 20 cents per hour for his work, which he says was "against my will and at gunpoint".

Around 75% of prisoners at the penitentiary are black, according to the Innocence Project, a group that works to exonerate wrongly convicted prisoners.

They argue that Angola is essentially a place where American slavery never ended.

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