by Sylvia Mendoza
In January 2025, wildfires devasted the city of Los Angeles. After nearly a month, working in dangerous conditions, firefighters contained the fires. Working side by side with those firefighters—in the same conditions, for the same 24-hour shifts—were more than 1,000 inmates that are part of California’s Conservation (Fire) Camp Program.
Identified by orange uniforms, the inmates earn time off their sentences, as well as pay ranging from $5.80 to $10.24 per day. The inmates are part of the prison labor system, where the incarcerated work certain jobs in government-run or private industries.
Criminal justice reform advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) call the prison labor system a “form of slavery.” You may be thinking, “Didn’t the 13th Amendment abolished slavery?” It did, but it came with a catch.
The 13th Amendment, ratified by the states in December 1865, reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The clause “except as punishment for a crime” also known as the “criminal-exception loophole” was immediately exploited, allowing prisons to “lease out” inmates to private companies or plantations.
At that time, the system was called “convict leasing,” and it generated revenue not just for the prison that housed the convict but for the state as well. By 1898, convict leasing accounted for 73% of the state of Alabama’s revenue, according to Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, written by Robert Perkinson, a professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaii.
To produce more labor for convict leasing programs, many Southern states, and some Northern ones too, enacted Black Codes, which were laws designed to put limits on the rights of the formerly enslaved. For example, vagrancy laws, which essentially criminalize being out of work, were popular Black Codes. A conviction for vagrancy could send Black men to prison where they would be used as unpaid labor, essentially being “re-enslaved.”
Big business
The convict leasing system ended in 1928; however, prison labor still remains big business in the United States today. According to a 2022 ACLU report, Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers, across the country “incarcerated workers produce more than $2 billion per year in goods and more than $9 billion per year in services for the maintenance of prisons.” Some states, according to the report, pay the inmates nothing, other states pay pennies per hour. The ACLU report revealed that inmates “earn, on average, between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour nationwide.”
In states where inmates earn something for their labor, according to the ACLU, the state government takes up to 80% of the wages for “room and board” and other fees associated with maintaining the prison facility. The ACLU also notes in its report that prison laborers, nationwide, are not covered by workplace safety and labor laws. That means if a prisoner is hurt while working, they have little recourse to file a complaint.
According to a 2025 report published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, “in seven Southern states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas—almost all work by prisoners remains unpaid.” The report states there are approximately 1.2 million people incarcerated in state and federal prisons, and “nearly 800,000 are prison laborers,” meaning they work for the prisons that house them.
In addition, the EPI report states that 17% of these prisoners work for government-run businesses, “where they might staff DMV call centers or wash laundry for public hospitals, or work on public projects, where they might be tasked with hazardous spill cleanup or firefighting duties in state-owned forests.” The other 3%, according to EPI’s report, work for “private-sector employers, where they earn meager wages producing goods and services for industries across the U.S. economy.” Industries that employ inmates on work release programs include the manufacturing and agricultural industries, as well as the service industry, including fast-food establishments. For the employers, it is a cheap form of labor that contributes to their profits.
On the ballot
According to the Abolish Slavery Network, a national coalition fighting to abolish constitutional slavery and involuntary servitude, currently 17 states have identical language to the 13th Amendment, including the criminal-exception loophole, in their state constitutions.
In 2018, Colorado was the first state to remove the criminal-exception loophole from its state constitution. Since then, voters in another seven states—Alabama, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah and Vermont—voted to do the same. In November 2024, California voters rejected a ballot measure to amend its state constitution. An effort in Louisiana also failed.
In New Jersey
Incarcerated individuals in New Jersey are required to engage in labor for minimal pay. In 2022, New Jersey Bill ACR125, a proposed amendment to the state constitution, was introduced. The measure would “directly prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.” The amendment would still provide opportunities for individuals who wanted to work voluntarily while incarcerated. In fact, the bill states: “The State recognizes that work can assist in an individual’s rehabilitation, improve practical and interpersonal skills that may be useful upon their integration with society.” So far, there has been no movement on the effort to amend New Jersey’s Constitution.
Meanwhile, in 2023, on the federal level, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, as well as a senator from Oregon and a congresswoman from Georgia, proposed the Abolition Amendment, which would remove the criminal-exception loophole from the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“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 Thirteenth Amendment. This 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,” Senator Booker said in a statement at the time. “This loophole is at odds with our nation’s foundational principles of liberty, justice, and equality for all our people.”
The Abolition Amendment would have a long road to passage. It is extremely difficult to amend the U.S. Constitution, as it must pass with a two-thirds vote in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Then, it must be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures (38 states).
An Alabama case
In 2022, Alabama voters approved a measure to change the wording in its state constitution, eliminating the criminal-exception loophole. Alabama’s state constitution now reads: “That no form of slavery shall exist in this state; and there shall not be any involuntary servitude.”
Unfortunately, Alabama did not take its voters’ wishes into account, which led to a lawsuit. In December 2023, a group of current and former Alabama inmates, along with the Union of Southern Service Workers and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Mid-South Council, filed a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Alabama, suing the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), Governor Kay Ivey and state Attorney General Steve Marshall. The two unions included as plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that the use of incarcerated labor lowers wages for everyone and is undermining their efforts to unionize fast-food workers.
The lawsuit—Robert Earl Council aka Kinetik Justice v. Kay Ivey—alleges that ADOC is denying parole to those involved in its work release program. An investigation by the Alabama Political Reporter, which used the state’s parole guidelines, revealed that in 2023 Alabama should have granted parole to more than 80% of parolees. Instead, ADOC paroled 8% of those eligible. In addition, the investigation found that Black men were 25% less likely to be paroled than their white counterparts.
A two-year Associated Press (AP) investigation into Alabama’s prison labor system revealed that since 2018 more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours in the state’s work release program. In addition, Alabama generated $250 million through garnishing prisoners’ paychecks—the state takes 40% of their wages and charges fees for transportation to their jobs, as well as laundry fees, according to the AP.
While the lawsuit alleges that Alabama generates more than $450 million a year through prisoner labor, the AP found that the state collected $13 million in fees for prison labor in 2024 from such companies as Wendy’s, McDonalds, Burger King, and Best Western. The AFL-CIO, a national trade union, that backs the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told the AP that their estimate of $450 million takes into account the money the state saves in not having to hire civilians to maintain the prison.
In June 2024, the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction of the ADOC’s discriminatory parole system, was denied; however, the lawsuit may have put pressure on the parole board. According to news reports, by March 2024, the average monthly parole rate in Alabama had increased to 19%—a significant increase over the 2023 rate.
In March 2025, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the counts against them. The judge did this without prejudice, which means that the plaintiffs can refile the case with new evidence or charges.
Discussion Questions
- What do you think of the criminal-exception loophole in the 13th Amendment and the effort of some states to remove it from their state constitution? Would you favor keeping it or removing it? Why?
- What do you see as the arguments for and against using prison labor? Explain your answer.
Glossary Words
defendant — in a legal case, the person accused of civil wrongdoing or a criminal act.
injunction — an order of the court that compels someone to do something or stops them from doing something.
nonpartisan— not adhering to any established political group or party.
plaintiff — person or persons bringing a civil lawsuit against another person or entity.
ratified — approved or endorsed.
vagrancy—legally refers to being without visible means of support.
without prejudice—in a legal case, when a judge dismisses without prejudice, it means the plaintiff (in a civil case) or the prosecutor (in a criminal case) can potentially refile the claim.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2025 issue of Respect.