Denise Binion retweetledi
The United States has the largest prison population on earth.
Not per capita.
Total.
More people in cages than China.
More than Russia.
More than every "authoritarian" state it condemns in its annual human rights reports.
1.8 million people.
Disproportionately Black.
Disproportionately poor.
Disproportionately from the zip codes with the worst schools, the fewest jobs, the most abandoned infrastructure.
This is presented as a "criminal justice system."
It functions as a labor system.
Prison labor, paid between 13 cents and $1.15 an hour in most states, produces goods for McDonald's, Walmart, Victoria's Secret, Whole Foods, and the United States military.
The 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, contains an exception clause:
"Except as punishment for crime."
That exception has never been closed.
It has been expanded.
The plantation did not disappear.
It received a different name and a legal foundation.
English
