Washington, June 16 (FN Agency) US Senators Cory Booker and Jeff Merkley and Congresswoman Nikema Williams issued a press release announcing that they have jointly introduced a resolution to remove the so-called “slavery clause” from the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, which currently allows slavery as a punishment for crime in the United States. “In 2023, we still have legal slavery in the United States because Congress left this institution in place for ‘punishment for a crime’ when it passed the 13th Amendment,” the release said on Thursday. The loophole is at odds with the nation’s foundational principles of liberty, justice and equality for all our people and it is time that the Abolition Amendment is passed to finally end the practice of slavery, the release said.
“We must ensure that all people are treated with fairness and dignity to truly live up to our nation’s promise,” the release also said. The slavery clause was used immediately after the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 to lease out imprisoned individuals to work landowners’ fields, which in some cases included the very same plantations where the prisoners had previously been enslaved. “This [exception] has allowed our government to exploit individuals who are incarcerated and to profit from their forced labor – perpetuating the oppression of Black Americans, mass incarceration, and systemic racism,” Booker said. The United States leads the world with the number of incarcerated people, amounting to 2.3 million, and spends more than $80 billion per year to imprison more of its citizens than any other developed nation.