Abolish Slavery as Criminal Punishment
Please click below to sign this petition to the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate:
We call upon you to propose a constitutional amendment to abrogate the "exception clause" which, since the 1865 passage of the 13th Amendment, has watered down the abolition of slavery, allowing that practice to continue being applied to individuals convicted of a crime. From the beginning, that clause was shamelessly used as a device to re-impose conditions of slavery on persons who had supposedly been released from bondage. In the present-day system of mass incarceration, it continues to legitimize the exploitation of prison labor under the most draconian conditions and, more generally, to perpetuate a culture in which incarcerated people are deprived of basic human rights and in which economic opportunities and political rights are withheld from them even after their release.
