# It seems that private prisons are violating the 13th Amendment
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [January 19, 2018, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980 "2018-01-19T16:38:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Kolak\_of\_Twilo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolak_of_Twilo)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2018, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/41 "2018-01-29T03:28:18Z")
> [@asahi](#):
>
> In Shodan’s world, accused and detained = convicted. Just as long as it’s not he who stands accused and detained.
The darker the complexion, the more likely your formulation holds up. That seems to always up the indignation for our resident Troll King.
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### Author:  [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2018, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/42 "2018-01-29T10:55:41Z")
UK prisoners consist of 3 types, convicted, unconvicted on remand and Illegals.
Only convicted prisoners can be required to work, the others are offered the choice.
It has long been a wheeze for prisoners on remand to draw out their time as much as possible and remain in prison under the conditions that apply to unconvicted prisoners. This is because they know they will get convicted and be given a prison term, and the time they serve on remand is then deducted from their award.
For those prisoners it is better to have unlimited visits, more private cash, more access to legal phones etc - in short the terms of imprisonments for remand prisoners are very much easier than for convicted prisoners.
There are also strict limits on solitary confinement, the punishment must be proportionate and reviewed regularly with assessments by health professionals - a prisoner absolutely refusing to work might initially be given solitary for refusal to work but this would not be endless, they would almost certainly be given limited access to ‘out of cell’ time on a normal wing location, and they would get a couple of gym sessions a week (gym time is extremely important to prisoners) This is far from solitary confinement.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2018, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/43 "2018-08-05T13:35:21Z")
I think private prisons are also violating the 1st Amendment. May I piggy-back on this thread?
[Diane Jones mailed a birthday card to her son, serving a 30-year prison term](https://www.wired.com/story/jpay-securus-prison-email-charging-millions/) for a juvenile offense. (Yes, they’re black people — did you really need to ask?)
Anyway, contrary to the First Amendment — which should give Mrs. Jones the right to wish her son Happy Birthday, I think — \*\*\*the birthday card was NOT delivered. \*\*\* That would conflict with the “right” of [JPay to profit from its monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPay) on e-mail services, etc. for the prison. A two-page letter with eight photos will be $4.70 please. Add another $1.50 for a short video clip. (Do these seem like “normal” 'Net prices?)
> [@](#):
>
> This year, Jones decided against choosing from the 24 electronic birthday card designs that JPay offers. Instead, she waited for her son to call, paying 21 cents a minute to JPay’s parent company Securus, which provides phone services to Louisiana’s prisons. “I just talked to him on the phone and cried,” she says.
I guess there’s two sides to the story. JPA is “empowering” prisoners by denying them distracting hand-made cards, etc.:
> [@Jade Trombetta](#):
>
> “Part of JPay’s mission is to provide technology…[that] empowers those individuals with access to educational tools and assists in their overall rehabilitation process… We have nothing more to say on the matter,”
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### Author:  [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2018, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/44 "2018-08-05T13:56:08Z")
> [@Lemur866](#):
>
> Dude, what crime have these detainees been duly convicted of?
>
> It is not a crime to overstay your visa. Yes, you can be kicked out of the country and not allowed to come back, but it’s still not a crime.
>
> And these people haven’t even been adjudicated to not have the right to stay in the country, that’s why they are being detained, so that their status can be legally determined.
It’s also not a crime to come here, looking for asylum. And these people are not convicted of anything yet. And besides… don’t these crooked private prisons already make more money than they really deserve???
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/45 "2018-08-05T13:58:24Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> I guess there’s two sides to the story. JPA is “empowering” prisoners by denying them distracting hand-made cards, etc.:
“to assist in their rehabilitation process”
Right, someone working as a slave in a prison for 30 years is going to be rehabilitated - like how?
The US prison system and criminal justice system is not interested in rehabilitation; it’s interested in punishment, condemnation, and cheap labor. Always has been, and I doubt it changes anytime soon.
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### Author:  [@BigAppleBucky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigAppleBucky)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2018, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/46 "2018-08-06T00:42:12Z")
**ICE held an American man in custody for 1,273 days. He’s not the only one who had to prove his citizenship**
[http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html)
> [@](#):
>
> But Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents repeatedly target U.S. citizens for deportation by mistake, making wrongful arrests based on incomplete government records, bad data and lax investigations, according to a Times review of federal lawsuits, internal ICE documents and interviews.
>
> Since 2012, ICE has released from its custody more than 1,480 people after investigating their citizenship claims, according to agency figures. And a Times review of Department of Justice records and interviews with immigration attorneys uncovered hundreds of additional cases in the country’s immigration courts in which people were forced to prove they are Americans and sometimes spent months or even years in detention.
>
> Victims include a landscaper snatched in a Home Depot parking lot in Rialto and held for days despite his son’s attempts to show agents the man’s U.S. passport; a New York resident locked up for more than three years fighting deportation efforts after a federal agent mistook his father for someone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen; and a Rhode Island housekeeper mistakenly targeted twice, resulting in her spending a night in prison the second time even though her husband had brought her U.S. passport to a court hearing.
>
> They and others described the panic and feeling of powerlessness that set in as agents took them into custody without explanation and ignored their claims of citizenship.
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### Author:  [@Project\_Patahhh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Project_Patahhh)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2018, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/47 "2018-08-06T00:50:41Z")
> [@BigAppleBucky](#):
>
> **ICE held an American man in custody for 1,273 days. He’s not the only one who had to prove his citizenship**
> [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html)
That reminds me of the scene from Fun with Dick and Jane where Jim Carrey is out working with the undocumented immigrants and gets mistaken for one of them in an ICE raid…
… Except this is way less funny.
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### Author:  [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2018, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/48 "2018-08-06T15:32:33Z")
> [@begbert2](#):
>
> Come now people, I think we can agree that as long as a business is a for-profit business in a competitive market operating on free market principles, it’s literally impossible for them to do any thing wrong, because if they did the invisible hand would rise up and slap them. Yes, the detainees would choose to stay in a different detainment center, so since they don’t we can be absolutely confident that any slavery you see them doing is perfectly okay because of, again, Free Market.
There is no free market in enslaving people. Only the government can legally enslave and give out enslavement grants of privilege.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2018, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/49 "2018-08-06T17:13:24Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#):
>
> There is no free market in enslaving people. Only the government can legally enslave and give out enslavement grants of privilege.
I suppose life was sweet in Somalia when its central government collapsed, but what about Europe?
History question:
**1. What trend is associated with the freeing of serfs in medieval Europe?**
INDENT exposure of land-owners to libertarian thought.
(b) the publication of Murray Rothbard’s doctoral dissertation.
(c) increased power of central governments.
[/INDENT]
This is an open-book exam. Fell free to use Google or Wikipedia.
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### Author:  [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2018, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/50 "2018-08-06T18:09:50Z")
Tell us all about the backward Venetians and the progressive Russians. Serfdom disappeared in decentralized, proto-capitalist, cities first. It persisted in Russia, a centralized empire, much longer.
We all remember how the mercantilist empires of England and Spain were so progressive when it came to slavery. The hundreds of German and Italian sovereignties were really the ones who raped the New World and spread chattel slavery to the furthest reaches of Earth.
Choice A, even though you attempted a caricature, is closest to the real, highly complicated, answer. Unless you think the ideological trends of the Enlightenment weren’t important to emancipation, a peculiar belief.
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2018, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/51 "2018-08-07T00:37:47Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#):
>
> There is no free market in enslaving people. Only the government can legally enslave and give out enslavement grants of privilege.
See Prison Leasing - that’s for starters.
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### Author:  [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2018, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/52 "2018-08-07T02:56:36Z")
For profit prisons are an abomination and should be wiped out. There should NEVER be a financial incentive to lock up a fellow citizen.
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### Author:  [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2018, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/53 "2018-08-07T11:19:49Z")
> [@asahi](#):
>
> See Prison Leasing - that’s for starters.
Yes that is a good place to start to verify my claim. No “private” organization can enslave or imprison anyone without being granted the privilege by the state. Blaming capitalism for imprisonment is like blaming Lockheed Martin and L3 for the Iraq invasion. Yes they lobbied for it, but the perpetrator is clearly the government.
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2018, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/54 "2018-08-07T23:41:32Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#):
>
> Yes that is a good place to start to verify my claim. No “private” organization can enslave or imprison anyone without being granted the privilege by the state. Blaming capitalism for imprisonment is like blaming Lockheed Martin and L3 for the Iraq invasion. Yes they lobbied for it, but the perpetrator is clearly the government.
But who occupies positions within the government? Capitalists can become elected or appointed and use state laws, institutions, and resources to support capitalist enterprise. Or maybe they don’t but they just create a political and legal climate that permits employers to exploit and abuse laborers to the point where they are de facto slaves even if they are free. This is what led to clashes between labor and mining operators in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the late 1800s and early 1900s, culminating in the most violent and deadly outbreaks of unrest since the end of the Civil War. Is that the America you want to return to?
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2018, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-seems-that-private-prisons-are-violating-the-13th-amendment/806980/55 "2018-08-08T18:27:00Z")
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