1. EDITORIAL ON PRIVATIZED PRISONS
The following is an excerpt from an Essay on Subliminal Slavery by Hiram R. Johnston, Jr. One of
the primary objectives of our Legal Awareness Program is to focus Nationwide Attention upon
perceived “Un-American Activities” engaged in by the government on a routine basis, which will
ultimately result in creating de facto policies and practices not intended by law. We regard these types
of Focal Concerns as Public Interest Issues.
PUBLIC INTEREST ISSUE ON DE FACTO SERVITUDE
In this era of “privatization” the bureaucratic matrix is operating a penal system slave trade right
before the eyes of the American public. Since 1984 hundreds of thousands of prisoners throughout the
United States have become commodities like goods and chattel on the stock market exchange. For this
reason state and federal legislators, prison officials and parole authorities are engaged in concerted
participation and conspiracy to put more people behind bars and keep them confined for longer periods
of time by various de facto means and methods.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction." Apparently, the bureaucracy has
interpreted the language of the Thirteenth Amendment to imply that the wording prohibiting slavery
nor involuntary servitude “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted” is an exception or legal loophole which authorizes the bureaucracy and private sector of the
establishment to legally perpetuate neo-slavery under the guise of the “criminal justice system.”
“Private prisons also mimic their public counterparts in one interesting aspect: prison labor. As in state jail, prisoners
confined by the state to a privately owned facility must perform menial tasks for little to no pay. ‘The point of such work,
consequently, is reformation and rehabilitation. By doing such work in the private context, however, prisoners directly
contribute to the profit-making function of the corporation. ‘At the very least, therefore, inmate labor in private prisons
constitutes ‘involuntary servitude.’ If the state is characterized as ‘contracting out’ inmates to these corporations who
subsequently aid the prison in earning corporate revenue, the system begins to resemble a modern day form of slavery.”3
This practice of neo-slavery is ignored and suppressed by the news media and it is doubtful
whether more than 1% of the American public is even aware that tens of thousands of prisoners
throughout the United States are commodities like goods and chattel on stock market exchanges around
the globe.
3
Repository Citation: Ryan S. Marion, Prisoners for Sale: Making the Thirteenth Amendment Case against State Private Prison
Contracts, 18 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 213 (2009), http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol18/ iss1/10. The relevant aspect of
2. this excerpt is the fact that the so-called public “penological objective” of a “lawful sentence” is compromised through the
capitalistic prostitution of prisoners for private profit. (Marion, 2009)
The present day penal system slave trade is absolutely no different than the outlawed practice
of peonage4 which flourished throughout the south and parts of the north following the ratification of
the Thirteenth Amendment. Southern lawmakers instituted and enforced a series laws designed to
target the freed slaves for arrest on the pettiest of charges like vagrancy. The accused would be taken
before a magistrate or justice of the peace, found guilty, sentenced to jail and issued fines they could
not pay. Thereafter, wealthy plantation owners, mining companies, railroad companies, farmers, etc.
would immediately pay their fines and the falsely imprisoned victims would be leased by State counties
to those employers to work off a debt they never owed. Many freed slaves were tricked, conned and
manipulated through their own ignorance to sign contracts submitting themselves into peonage. Tens of
thousands of entrapped freed slaves were subjected to slavery all over again. Despite the anguished
outcry of hundreds of thousands of politically voiceless freed slaves this illegal practice lasted seventy-
four years after peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867.5 Essentially, the de facto institution of
peonage survived a full generation beyond chattel slavery because it was practiced under the illusion
that the entrapped peons owed a debt to society or their former slave masters.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a Washington, D.C. based public policy
organization that supports conservative legislators. (Democracy, 2015) ALEC’s members include over
40% of all state legislators. One of ALEC’s primary functions is the development of model legislation that
propagates conservative principles, such as “lock um up and throw away the key.” Under their Criminal
Justice Task Force, ALEC has developed and helped to successfully implement “tough on crime”
initiatives including “Truth in Sentencing” and “Three Strikes” laws in many states. They are the moving
force and promoter of the National Council of State Legislatures who privatize criminal statutes for
financial profit and gain. They are promoting public policy in regard to prize and capture law under the
War Powers Act: an emergency law that increases Federal power during war time. The act was signed by
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and put into law on December 18, 1941. ALEC’s primary objective is
to insure the passage of legal statutes which put more people in prison for longer periods of time to
increase the profits of privatized industries like the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). CCA owns
most of the privatized prisons and sells its stock and shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the major
stock holder is the Paine Webber Group. (Takei, 2014) Privatization of prisons is the transfer of assets
and service delivery: leasing prisoners for profit from the governmental to the private sector.
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4
Peonage is a condition of enforced servitude by which a person is restrained of his or her liberty and compelled to labor in
payment of some alleged debt or obligation.
5
THE PEONAGE ABOLITION ACT OF 1867. (42 U.S. Code § 1994 - Peonage abolished, 1867)
