«The Dystopian Underworld of South Africa’s Illegal Gold Mines» | The New Yorker. #SouthAfrica #MineSafety #WorkingConditions #HumanExploitation

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/27/the-dystopian-underworld-of-south-africas-illegal-gold-mines

TN passed an amendment about slavery yesterday. Turns out the law wasn't as innocuous as claimed.

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Unfortunately, this was a win for private prisons. “What?” you say? Let me explain.

Look at the language of the law.

This is the old language:

article I, section 33: Slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a person who has been duly convicted of crime, are forever prohibited in this State.

This is the new language:

Section 33. Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.

Did you catch the sneaky trick? The original language legally defines involuntary servitude when convicted of a crime as slavery. The new language legally separates involuntary servitude for criminal acts from the legal act of slavery. Tennessee voters were just tricked into improving the legal standing of the private prisons by an amendment claiming to “ban all forms of slavery.” Now, in Tennessee, they’ve cleaned up a legal loophole.

The biggest one, CoreCivic, keeps facing lawsuits over this and other terrible worker treatment.

Inmates at a for-profit facility in San Diego sued CoreCivic for forcing them to clean their own jail for less than a dollar a day. According to the lawsuit, “In some instances, CoreCivic pays detainees $1 dollar per day, and in other instances detainees are not compensated with wages at all, for their labor and services.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/17/core-a17.html

They’ve paid for this amendment so they can be legally protected. Prisoners didn’t win any rights or signity. They just got fucked.

#TNPOL #POLITICS #Slavery #HumanExploitation