Recylcling Slavery
Friday, May 5, 2006
By David Yeagley
Slavery is legal in the United States. According to the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, slavery and involuntary servitude can both be used as punishment for crime.
Amendment XIII, Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime of whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Slavery, properly understood, is a useful tool in the rehabilitation of criminals, and in the economic system in which they exist. Slavery is nothing but coerced labor. It differs from voluntary labor only in that the slave cannot quit just because he feels like it, or just because he'd rather be doing something else.
Slavery, properly understood, is not an evil at all. True, the 13th Amendment is known as the Amendment which abolished slavery, but that was only as a commercial institution. Yes, the Amendment was passed soon after the Civil War (December 6, 1865), and it was very much in response to the hysterical rhetoric about racially-based slavery in the South. Clearly, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Slavery itself was not barred from American society. Slavery and indentured servitude are both perfectly legal--as punishment for crime. That's what the Constitution says.
Sheriff Joe's female chain gang clean up the Warner-Elliott Loup in Ahwatukee. 7-03
So, America's prison problems await a Constitutional solution, not a political one. The prison population is in flux, but, at the end of 2002, there were over 2 million inmates. That's a lot of free labor. Federal, state, and even local governments have the right to access this labor. Tax dollars are used to house and feed the prisoners. Why is the criminal simply an expense? Why should he not be a contributor? The prisoners would be healthier, and recover psychologically much more quickly. Liberals have turned prisons into care-giver institutions, where reform is more of an indulgence of the academic theorists than the prisoners. And the care is not good quality, yet it suffices to actually attract the very wayward who are in search of some kind of stability. A mental hospital, a medical hospital, a therapy session, for anything that hard labor won't cure--no wonder prisons are expensive and growing more and more crowded. Their horrors seem less horrible than the street, and even more desirable than honest sweat.
And what about the masses of illegal aliens? The international tresspassers? Let's try slavery. They are criminals, and the federal, state, and local governments have the right to use them as coerced laborers. We needn't buy them a ticket home. (They came across the desert. We can make them just as determined to return via the same route.) Let them work--for the lowest wage in Mexico. When they have earned enough, they can buy their own tickets back. As criminals, they have no right any privileges of citizenship. They should expect only labor. Not necessarily hard labor, though they're good at that, but any labor that needs to be done.
Instead of massive centers for prisoners, we need numerous camps all around. And in those camps, good old fashioned CHAINS. Chain gangs, guards with rifles as well as compassion. Any prisoner who has to be locked up in solitary should be executed as an unworthy expense for all. Any prisoner who is so hopelessly violent isn't rightfully kept alive--anywhere in society. What is the point? An indulgence of compassion on the part of his captors? the jury? the judge? What about the people?
Robert Castel's The Regulation of Madness: The Origins of Incarceration in France (1976) offers some fascinating historical precedents of modern prison philosophy. France had contemplated (indeed, ordered) the institution of 'madhouses' as early as March 27, 1790, in Article 9 of the decrees of the Constituent Assembly. Putting all dependency of kind in the same place is akin to the ancient Persian idea of the hospital, where treatment was facilitated. Institutions for madness, sickness, or criminal behavior are about convenience--not only for the administrators of treatment, but for the recipients. Yet, prisons seem to be an unnecessary economic drain. The prisoners are generally capable of working, and thus of contributing to society.
Madness and sickness may be self-induced in many patients, such as the addictive type, but often these patience are not directly responsible for addicting themselves. They were victims from the start. However, prisoners present a different circumstance. Prisoners can be made into laborers, almost immediately from the time of their incarceration. Let should be allowed to earn their way out, by labor, if they are not sentenced to life. Time is a meaningless abstraction, and time in prison is generally aimless and wasteful. Rehibilitation is often improbable when not impossible. Prisoners are often morally destitute, and cannot thing straight for anger, resentment, and hatred. Perhaps getting their minds off themselves would be a spirituial relief. (Some seem never to learn, however.)
It's time to reconsider the chains, iron or electric. Some people are in jail for very little crimes. Micro chips might do for them. Labor without pay, isn't that a just sentence? Why sit in a prison room, endure useless psychological torture, then return to the crime scene when you're out? Couldn't labor in chains create a different outlook?
There's a dignity in chains. It comes from labor, not shame, not social isolation. Let the people see the prisoners, in chains, working. It might do everyone a world of good. The Constitution provides for it. The fathers saw a use in it. Slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment is an unexplored solution to prison reform in our modern times.
Finally, Harvey Klehr (Emory University) once taught a political science course that touched on the Platonic theory of slavery. I remember Dr. Klehr suggesting that slavery was basically a situation in which you had to work for a living. You had to do that which you would otherwise not want to do. Our graduate seminar members concluded that most of American society were already slaves, and only our college degrees would give us hope of having a choice.
The difference is that the prisoner has no choice, yet he doesn't work, either. That should be changed. The illegal Mexican work force is a perfect opportunity to change that. They should be made indentured servants, and earn their way--not to American citizenship, but back to Mexico. They have a beautiful country to save. It is their patriotic duty. Perhaps they can realize that, while working off debts in servitude.
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further information please refer to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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