Juneteenth, the day the U.S. celebrates the ending of slavery, is just around the corner. But the celebration always rings false for advocates and those who have lived experience of being forced to work for little or no pay under slavery-like conditions in prisons across the U.S. 

The line between free prison labor and forced prison labor is difficult to define. The International Labour Organization (ILO) lists several indicators of free prison labor which could point to conditions of modern slavery if absent. These include the right to written consent forms, wages and working hours comparable to those of free workers, and standard health and safety measures. The ILO states that these factors must be considered “as a whole” to determine if prison labor is forced or voluntary. 

Even in democracies like the U.S., where most people see slavery as being a thing of the past, forced prison labor is still taking place. If you search the Human Trafficking Search database or read some of the articles on the Prison Labor page, it is undeniable the American prison system still has a long way to go to really end slavery in the U.S.. The United States aimed to abolish slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865. But the Thirteenth Amendment echoes the ILO’s definition by allowing involuntary servitude—in the form of forced labor—“as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Meanwhile, American labor laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act exclude those incarcerated by classifying their working relationship as penal, not economic. Incarcerated people are thus unprotected from forced labor. Activists have further pointed out that mass incarceration and racial profiling in the United States has led to African Americans being incarcerated at far higher rates than their white counterparts. 

The U.S. has the world’s largest prison population. And with forced labor remaining legal as punishment for a crime, the legacy of slavery and racism persists in the U.S. industrial prison complex. In fact, organizers of a 2018 prison strike called their labor exploitation “prison slavery,” with those incarcerated being farmed out to local governments and companies to perform labor for just pennies a day. Commentators have called the exemption of prison labor a “fatal flaw” in the 13th Amendment. Tellingly, almost immediately after its passing, states began to take advantage of the exception provided in the 13th Amendment to continue to exploit black and brown communities. Today, many major corporations remain complicit in using the free, cheap, or exploitative prison labor in what has come to be known as the prison-industrial system. 

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) discusses prison labor in its so-called Nelson Mandela Rules, which outline minimum standards by which to treat those incarcerated; rule 97 states that those incarcerated “shall not be held in slavery of servitude” and that they must be covered by the same wage, health, and safety standards as free citizens. The ILO’s own Forced Labour Convention, 1930 explicitly excludes those incarcerated from its definition of forced labor, allowing “any work or service exacted from any person as a consequence of a conviction in a court of law” as long the labor is enforced by a public authority. But in the U.S. over 11 billion in goods are made using prison labor each year. Over the last 158 years this clause has allowed the institutional racism inherent in the current justice system to legally enslave predominantly Black Americans as well as many others under the rubric of prison labor for generations. Organizations like Freedom United and politicians like Senator Jeff Merkley, among many others, have been working to eliminate this clause at the Federal level and leave legal slavery in the past. Due to a failure to stop this form of legalized slavery at the federal level, the issue has been on the ballot in multiple states in the U.S. to try and end the exception at the state level with mixed results. 

Colorado, Utah, and Nebraska have voted in favor of removing the Punishment Clause from their state constitutions. Nevada also had a victory in 2024 and followed similar actions in Vermont, Oregon, Alabama, and Tennessee, where state constitutional changes ended exceptions for slavery and involuntary servitude in prisons. If more states remove the Punishment Clause from their state constitutions, it will hopefully create a domino effect for other states to follow their lead. It will also increase the chances of the Abolition Amendment passing through Congress and finally ending legalized slavery in the U.S.. Currently, there are 19 states with constitutions that explicitly permit either slavery, involuntary servitude, or both as punishment for a crime and unpaid labor for inmates is still allowed in Alabama and a few other states. And of course, The 13th Amendment still contains the Punishment Clause allowing for the same at a Federal level.  

Removing all constitutional exceptions to slavery at a state and federal level for incarcerated individuals is imperative for America to finally turn the page on the ugly legacy of legal slavery in the U.S. and truly be able to celebrate Juneteenth. Exploitation and coercion are inexorably intertwined with the current prison labor system. It becomes undeniably labor exploitation and modern slavery when refusing to work can result in the loss of privileges, solitary confinement, or the denial of parole.  As Dyjuan Tatro, former prisoner and now the senior government affairs officer at the Bard Prison Initiative and an #EndTheException ambassador said in an article for The Guardian: 

“I had no choice in whether I went to work or not – and there were no sick days. If I didn’t go, I would be locked in my cell for 23 hours a day. There’s a misleading narrative pushed by officials about prison labor, one that falsely frames prison jobs as rehabilitative. Nothing could be further from the truth. In prison, my work was meaningless and dehumanizing. It conveyed no new skills, taught me no life lessons and earned me next to nothing. It did not build my résumé, prepare me to navigate workplace relationships or teach me how to budget. It served only to devalue my labor and person.” 

This Juneteenth help end the exception and join us and Freedom United in demanding all states and the federal government to explicitly outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime in the US and state constitutions — put an end to the Punishment Clause in the United States! You can also write directly to your legislator urging them to support the Abolishment Amendment here. 

By Human Trafficking Search Program Director, Rebekah Enoch