The California State Assembly has voted to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would completely ban involuntary slavery, eliminating exceptions to criminal punishment for the crime.
If passed by voters, the measure would eliminate mandatory work requirements for state prisoners, making inmate work voluntary instead.
“Current forced labor practices do not prepare people for success when they return from prison and often impede rehabilitation services,” Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) said during the Legislature on Thursday. “Let's take this step to restore dignity and humanity to those who are too often forgotten behind bars.”
The California Constitution mirrors the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits slavery and forced labor, although both clauses allow for forced labor as a punishment for crime.
An initial effort to remove the exception from the state constitution stalled in 2022 after the state Treasury Department estimated that banning forced labor could cost the state billions of dollars a year if the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was forced to pay prisoners a minimum wage.
The proposed constitutional amendment is one of 14 bills put forward by the California Reparations Task Force, which seeks to develop proposals and recommendations to address the injustices and inequalities suffered by the descendants of enslaved African Americans in the United States.
“As we work on reparations, we call slavery a relic of the past,” said Sen. Laura Smallwood Cuevas (D-Los Angeles). “Yet as I stand here today, there are thousands of indentured servants in our prisons.” The bill passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support.
Rep. Lori Wilson (D-Suisan City), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, revived the constitutional amendment last year. Wilson said the effort has nothing to do with changing prisoner wages. But she hopes the issue of a minimum prison wage will come up in the next Congress.
Previous versions of the proposal Prison work would have been voluntary.However, the wording in the Constitution that “involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, is prohibited” was not deleted.
After negotiations, the governor's office and advocacy groups met last week to remove that language from the new proposal. Currently, the Department of Corrections is allowed to require able-bodied inmates to work for as little as 35 cents an hour.
Carmen Nicole Cox, government relations director for ACLU California Action, which has been involved in the negotiations, said the governor's “fingerprints” are on the bill. Thursday morning's votes were held without debate on the Senate or Assembly floors.
The new amendment is: Assembly Bill 628A companion measure to the ballot measure would make prison labor voluntary by implementing a volunteer labor program. The measure also allows the state to Prisoners don't need to be paid minimum wage The commissioner of corrections would then determine prison wages, an amendment that criminal justice advocates opposed in negotiations with the governor's office.
“We had to make concessions,” Cox told The Times. She said the defenders' victory was a “great success” despite the compromise on wages. Include Language The bill would prohibit inmates from being disciplined for refusing a work assignment: “We would be the first state to amend our constitution to explicitly say that people cannot be punished for refusing to work.”
If passed, the bill would come into effect on January 1, 2025.
