Voters in California, Nevada are considering a ban on forced labor

By SOPHIE AUSTIN and RIO YAMAT Associated Press/Report for America

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Voters in California and Nevada will decide in November whether to ban forced prison labor by removing language from their state constitutions that is rooted in the legacy of slavery.

The measures are intended to protect incarcerated people from being forced to work under the threat of punishment in the United States, where it is not uncommon for prisoners to be paid less than $1 an hour to put out fires, clean prison cells, make license plates or to carry out garden work. working in cemeteries.

Nevada holds about 10,000 people in prison. All inmates in the state must work 40 hours a week or attend vocational training unless they have a medical exemption. Some of them earn as little as 35 cents an hour.

Voters will weigh the proposals during one of the most historic elections in modern history, said Jamilia Land, an advocate with the Abolish Slavery National Network, which has tried for years to pass the California measure.

“California, like Nevada, has the opportunity to end legalized, constitutional slavery within our states, in its entirety, while at the same time having the first Black woman to run for president,” she said about Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic speech. bid as the first Black and Asian American woman to earn a major party’s nomination for the nation’s highest office.

Several other states, such as Colorado, Alabama and Tennessee, have eliminated slavery and involuntary servitude exceptions in recent years, although the changes were not immediate. Colorado — the first state to remove a slavery exception from the Constitution in 2018 — jailed people who claimed they were still forced to work in a lawsuit filed against the Corrections Department in 2022.

“What it did do: It created a constitutional right for an entire class of people that didn’t exist before,” said Kamau Allen, co-founder of the Abolish Slavery National Network, which advocated for the Colorado measure.

Nevada’s proposal aims to remove both slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime from the Constitution. The California Constitution was amended in the 1970s to eliminate an exemption for slavery, but the involuntary servitude exception remains on the books.

Wildlife firefighting is one of the most sought-after prison employment programs in Nevada. Those who qualify for the program are paid about $24 per day.

“There are many people in prison who want to do meaningful work. Are they being treated fairly now? No,” said Chris Peterson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which supports the measure. “They get paid pennies an hour, while other people get dollars, to do incredibly dangerous work.”

Peterson pointed to a state law that created a modified workers’ compensation program for incarcerated people who are injured on the job. Under that program, the amount awarded is based on the person’s average monthly wage at the time the injury occurred.

In 2016, Darrell White, an injured prison firefighter who filed a claim under the modified program, learned that he would receive monthly disability benefits of “$22.30 for a daily rate of $0.50.” By then, White had already been released from prison, but he was unable to work for months while he recovered from surgery to repair his broken finger, which required physical therapy.