1. ADMINISTRATIVE ENSLAVEMENT.
- Author
-
Davidson, Adam
- Subjects
- *
SLAVERY , *CRIME , *LAW reviews , *PRISON administration - Abstract
There are currently over a million people enslaved in the United States. Under threat of horrendous punishment, they cook, clean, and even fight fires. They do this not in the shadow of the law but with the express blessing of the Thirteenth Amendment’s Except Clause, which permits enslavement and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Despite discussions of this exception in law reviews, news reports, and Netflix documentaries, few commentators have recognized that this enslavement happens silently. No prosecutor, judge, or defense attorney tells convicted people that they will be enslaved as punishment for their crime. It is only once they are incarcerated that a prison administrator informs them they will be forced to work. This Article uncovers how this state of the world has come to be. It argues that our current regime is one of administrative enslavement: a constellation of judicial and legislative choices that places the punishment of enslavement outside the scope and processes of our traditional criminal punishment structure and into the hands of prison administrators. This Article is the first to provide a taxonomy of the administrative-enslavement regime. It uncovers the weak jurisprudential underpinnings of that regime, and it surveys all fifty states’ and the federal government’s legislative implementation of the Except Clause. It concludes by utilizing this taxonomy to analyze administrative enslavement’s legal weaknesses as well as how the status quo might evolve in the face of growing attacks from states removing Except Clauses from their state constitutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024