“Prison labor is slave labor. Pass the #AbolitionAmendment.” Congressional Democrats on Monday marked the 156th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th …

The 13th Amendment is having a moment of reckoning. Considered one of the crowning achievements of American democracy, the Civil …

It is 2022 and slavery and involuntary servitude is still legal in the United States. Passed by Congress on January …

When many people think of prison labor, they get an image in their head of convicts stamping license plates for pennies an hour. …

Two dozen conspirators forced workers to pay fees for travel and housing while forcing them to work for little to …

Curtis Ray Davis II was wrongly convicted of murder. He served nearly 26 years in Louisiana’s Angola State Prison before …

Ancient Mogilev, a former city of the medieval Duchy of Lithuania and now part of Belarus close to the border …

The state of Florida allows for unpaid prison labor, but that could change if a Tampa-based Democratic lawmaker’s joint resolution …

In May 2018 after an exhaustive one and a half years of investigative research on prison labor, I published a …

Efforts by States to Eliminate the Exception Allowing Slavery or Involuntary Servitude as Punishment for a Crime The Thirteenth Amendment ...

Within the debate of penal labor, one commonly ignored aspect is the use of labor in contract facilities, also known …

Around the country, correctional industries are quietly furnishing our public universities with beds, desks, bookshelves, and more. These businesses, born …

Public universities are much more likely to buy goods made by incarcerated people because they can (and are sometimes required …

As the world contends with the coronavirus, and the United States reckons with systemic racism, the West Coast is being …

This is the first in a three-part blog series authored by Polaris to introduce the issue.  Read part two here, …

Most people assume that in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment slavery in the United States was abolished. However, forced labor still exists in the United States today through the exception built into the Thirteenth Amendment for those who have been “duly convicted of a crime”. This exception made it legal and permissible to continue slavery within prisons in the United States. This is commonly known now as prison labor.

This is the final part in a three-part blog series authored by Polaris to introduce the issue.  The first two …