Why American Prisons Owe Their Cruelty to Slavery
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Angola Prison
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A Louisiana penitentiary, sometimes referred to as “America’s bloodiest prison;” it is the largest maximum-security prison in the nation. It sits on land that used to be a plantation where enslaved people were forced to labor. Although the 13th Amendment abolished the institution of slavery in 1865, there is a provision in that amendment allowing for “involuntary labor” if a person is convicted of a crime. As a result of this provision, Angola operates as a penal plantation, with inmates forced to pick cotton and punished if they do not pick enough. Cotton picking quotas and punishment for not reaching them are not new to this prison; those practices are borrowed from plantation owners who kept a meticulous accounting of the productivity of their enslaved workers. Stevenson writes that one client of his was punished with solitary confinement if he did not meet cotton-picking quotas set by the prison.
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