A bill that would change the California Constitution removing the exception that allows for involuntary servitude as punishment to a crime passed the Assembly floor yesterday.
If passed by the State Senate, ACA 3 would be on the November 8 ballot for California voters to decide whether to amend the California Constitution and prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude without exception.
“On the heels of the nationwide abolition movement, the California Abolition Act seeks to abolish forced labor and involuntary servitude unconditionally in the state of California,” Senator Syndey Kamlager, author of ACA 3 said.
The Thirteenth Amendment of the United Constitution was ratified in 1865, prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude but as an exception, involuntary servitude is allowed when imposed as punishment for a crime.
Article I, section 6, of the California Constitution contains the same prohibitions on slavery and involuntary servitude and the same exception for involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. Co-chairs of ACA3, Jamilia Land and Samual Brown, said California is one step closer to ending legalized slavery in the State.
“Today, that practice continues in the form of forced labor in prisons, which falls disproportionately on Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous people and reflects broader disparities in the criminal justice system,” Land said. Brown was incarcerated for 24 years and was the author of the proposal that became ACA 3.
“The ultimate goal isn’t about increasing wages but exposing this as a moral issue and ending involuntary servitude. There’s no reason we should still have legalized slavery via mass incarceration in 2021,” Brown said in a previous interview.
Today, 12 states prohibit enslavement and involuntary servitude, but exception provisions for criminal punishment remain, according to Senator Kamlager.
Over 94,000 Californians are currently incarcerated in state prison, According to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
African Americans account for 28 percent of the prison population and less than 6 percent of California’s overall population.
“As it stands the Constitution of our State prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude except for the punishment of crime,” Kamlager said. “Abolition is not conditional. In the year 2021, in our great state of California often touted as one of the most progressive states in the country, this is unacceptable.”
Although no courts explicitly include labor as a condition of criminal sentencing, many incarcerated people perform labor oftentimes for as little as eight cents an hour, or no wages at all, according to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.
“The penal code says that CDCR shall require of every able bodied prisoner imprisoned in any State prison, as many hours of faithful labor of each day and everyday during his or her term of imprisonment as shall be prescribed by the rules and regulations of the Director of Corrections,” Kamlager said. “When I read that, I thought to myself this is very similar to what I would hear in a story about a slave owner and a plantation.” In 2018, Colorado passed a ballot measure that removed slavery and involuntary servitude as a criminal punishment from its state Constitution. In 2020, Utah and Nebraska did the same.
U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and U.S. Congresswoman Nikema Williams (Georgia) introduced SJR 81 and HJR 104 also known as the Abolition Act, which would repeal and replace the exclusionary language of the 13th amendment.
“Dissolving the remnants of slavery and racial inequality is more important now than ever before. Our state constitution has yet to reflect the values of equality and justice that Californians now hold so dear,” Kamlager said.
Samual Brown says, “As it stands and operates, the current penal system is one which prioritizes cheap, and most times free labor over public safety, education, pro-social engagement and citizenship training.”
“We must not forget that California is the largest carceral state in the country and along with the rest of this nation are in direct violation of United Nations laws”. Jamilia Land, co-chair of the California Abolition Act Coalition. The U.S is in violation of International anti-slavery Treatise by having a constitutional exception to slavery and involuntary servitude according to Max Parthas, Director of State Operations for the Abolish Slavery National Network.
“The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, is a 1956 United Nations treaty which builds upon the 1926 Slavery Convention, which is still operative and which proposed to secure the abolition of slavery and of the slave trade,” Parthas said.
Robert J. Hansen | Contributed
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