The Slavery to Modern Slavery Pipeline: A Literature Review of the Data Behind the Continued Oppresion of Black Men in the United States The United States of America was founded on the principle of freedom. Every 4th of July, people congregate and celebrate how free American citizens are. Fireworks are set off, barbecue is served, and other festivities are hosted to mask the hypocrisy that is the idea of American freedom. Since the country’s inception, black men have been subject to evolving forms of incarceration that deprive them of their freedom, starting with slavery in the 1600s. While most Americans believe the days of slavery are behind the country, slavery has metamorphisized into imprisonment of black people. The United States has not developed from its incipient stages because the modern day treatment of black men in prison mirrors the horrid treatment of black slaves during pre-13th Amendment America, specifically through involuntary prison labor. Data science has contributed to this contemporary slavery by law enforcement relying on racist and biased technology when making legal decisions. Several pieces of scholarly literature explore the topics of historical and contemporary slavery, as well as how technology has been used to support the institutionalization of slavery. Human development is subjective. It becomes difficult to determine the progress of people without a sound interpretation of development to corroborate the progression against. Separate discussions on slavery, incarceration, laws, and technology are often complicated, and those preexisting intricacies are compounded when these topics are combined. However, it is necessary to explore the nature of their relationship because of how impactful they are for millions of people across the United States. With such an important subject matter as incarceration of black people, it is essential that the examination of the key components be comprehensible. For the sake of intelligibility, a simple, but cogent, definition of human development is needed. Indian economist Amartya Sen defines human development as the expansion of freedom (Sen, 2001). Sen’s definition streamlines an elaborate concept down to a clear dichotomy: freedom vs. unfreedom. Sen’s definition can be used to judge whether or not American society has truly advanced from the days of slavery, considering that enslavement is polar to freedom. Slavery continues to plague the world in different forms, and Dr. Kevin Bales attempts to estimate the current number of global citizens who are victims to contemporary slavery. To orchestrate this research, he firsts inspects the data surrounding the slavery of black people in the United States prior to the 13th Amendment. Using archival research of prior censuses, Bales (2017) was able to discover that there were 3,950,529 black slaves in the United States in 1860. Sen suggests that the opposite of human development is being deprived of freedom, and the contents of Bales’ research embodies that insinuation because slaves do not have the same freedoms as those who enslave them. At the time the 1860 Census was recorded, slavery was legal in the United States. A reason why this period of American slavery lasted so long was because it was difficult to abolish. Slavery often benefited those with the ability and influence to change the lawfulness, so the historical form of slavery did not end until there were legislators and political officials with the power and desire to abolish it. In 1865, the 13th Amendment was enacted. The new addition to the United States Constitution outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude, except for when slavery and forced servitude was used as a punishment for those convicted of a crime. Christopher Adamson expounds the socio-economic incentives behind the amendment using prison records. Data in his paper is derived using archival research of prison records in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina from 1866-1870, which showed that 1355 black people were imprisoned, and black people made up 95% of the prison population at this point in time (Adamson, 1983). Adamson explains that white people in the South were unhappy with the abolishment of slavery, so they pushed lawmakers to create legislation that would excessively target newly freed black individuals. Changes in the Southern penal systems prompted the mass incarceration process of black men as a means of legally continuing slavery. The internment of black men in this period of American history relates to Amartya Sen’s definition of development because most white people in the South did not want black people to experience the same legal freedoms they had. The unfair mass incarceration of black people started after slavery because white people felt threatened that black people were closer to having the same legal rights as them, and that they could no longer exploit black people for financial gain. Unfortunately, the ramifications of early American racism have prevailed, and are undeniably ingrained in current institutions, including the legal system. Insight on the lives of black men in the United States is offered through research. A group of researchers haved examined society’s treatment of African American adult males by determining how experiences of everyday discrimination relates to experience with the criminal justice system. 1271 African American males were sampled and interviewed about their experiences with everyday discrimination, and in addtion their experiences with the criminal justice system. Researchers asked the subjects to explain how they were discriminated (common responses include being told that others are better than them because they are not black, being told that they are unintelligent, and being told that people are afraid of them because they are black), and were asked to explain any contact they have had with the criminal justice system (jail, prison, arrested, etc …). After statistical analysis, the researchers found that those who reported high levels of everyday discrimination were also more likely to experience serious contect with the criminal justice system (Taylor, Miller, Mouzon, Keith, & Chatters, 2016). The data discussed in this study speaks to how racism in the United States contributes to the use of mass incarceration of black men as a form of modern day slavery. The United States has a dark history of racism, and as supported by the data in this study, there are contemporary manifestations of that past. As technology has become more ingrained in people’s lives, law enforcement has relied on data to aid arrests and indictments. Many of these predictive tools are based on past data, however, this data inaccurately categorizes black people as having a higher risk for committing a crime after being released from prison. Dr. Aleš Završnik exemplifies COMPAS, a software used to predict rearrests for prior criminals. The COMPASS algorithm is based on assessments administered by the company over a one year period. They assessed 7381 offenders in prison, parole, jail, and probation sites in the United States; 24.9% of these offenders were black and 76.9% of these offenders were men (Završnik, 2019). The algorithm was found to be inaccurate after a significant number of black offenders were false positives, meaning that they were marked by the software at being at a high risk for rearrest, yet never actually recommitting a crime. Contrastingly, the tool indicated that a significant number of white offenders were not at risk for rearrest, but in reality they were more likely to recommit a crime. Racist data like this that is used by law enforcement contributes to the idea that the United States justice system unfairly targets black people, which leads to an unproportionate number of black men in prison. Once imprisoned, black men are subject to labor that is reminiscent of American slavery from the pre-13th Amendment era. Black slaves were forced into long hours of unpaid manual labor and rendered powerless by the threat of physical harm had they not followed the demands of their owners (Library of Congress, n.d.). Involuntary labor coupled with punishment are not antiquated, they still occur in American prisons today and disproportionately affect black men. Penal labor is required for prisoners in the United States if they are deemed able-bodied by medical officials. Refusing to participate in this compulsory labor is supplemented by evil punishments like solitary confinement (Dougherty, 2008). Almost nothing has changed from Antebellum America; black men are still deprived of their freedom, forced to work, and suffer the consequences of any opposition to this unfair treatment. As Sen explains, expansion of freedom is evidence of human development. Applying Sen’s definition of human development to the incarceration of black men and subsequent prison labor as it compares to African American slavery, it is clear that no expansion has occured. Enslavement of black men is not a distant facet of American history, it is an immediate issue in the United States that is upheld by outdated laws rooted in racism. To deny the institutional racism present in the criminal justice system is insulting to the people of color who are victims to it every single day. Modern day slavery exists in the form of prison labor, even if the 13th Amendment outlaws slavery (Goodwin, 2019). Though, this grim reality for many black men in the United States can be positively transformed through a collective effort of American citizens, lawmakers, and public officials. The 13th Amendment can be modified if Congress can pass a joint resolution, or if a Constitutional convention occurs after 34 states propose a change to the amendment. Changes to constitutional amendments have happened before in American history, and it is imperative that the 13th Amendment follow suit with these adjustments. Researchers unanimously agree that black men in the United States today are victims of lasting racism, and many are subject to forced labor by a legal system that disproportionately targets them. But, seldom is there any advice on how to remedy modern day slavery. If the United States wants to continue to promote itself as a free nation it is critical that the country actively combats the components of American society that sustain the undeniable lack of freedom for certain demographics. Eliminating racism in the United States is a large undertaking, and it may be impossible on a large scale, but dismantling racism within government bodies is feasible. Government officials are supposed to be representatives of the United States, and a country that prides itself on freedom should not be spoken for by politicians who agree with depriving freedom from black men via the 13th Amendment. Data and recommendations from the aforementioned scholarly literature support this counsel.
References
Adamson, C. R. (1983). Punishment after slavery: Southern State Penal Systems, 1865-1890.
Social Problems, 30(5), 555–569. https://doi.org/10.2307/800272
Bales, K. (2017). Unlocking the statistics of slavery. CHANCE, 30(3), 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/09332480.2017.1383105
Dougherty, C. (2008). The Cruel and Unusual Irony of Prisoner Work Related Injuries in the United States. University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, 10(2) 483-508. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/jbl/vol10/iss2/7
Goodwin, M. (2019). The Thirteenth Amendment: Modern Slavery, Capitalism, and Mass Incarceration. Cornell Law Review, 104(4) 900-990. https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol104/iss4/4/
Pre-Civil War African American Slavery. The Library of Congress. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2021, from https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/national-expansion-and-reform-1815- 1880/pre-civil-war-african-american-slavery/.
Sen, A. K. (2001). Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press.
Taylor, R. J., Miller, R., Mouzon, D., Keith, V. M., & Chatters, L. M. (2016). Everyday discrimination among African American men. Race and Justice, 8(2), 154–177.https://doi.org/10.1177/2153368716661849
Završnik, A. (2019). Algorithmic justice: Algorithms and Big Data in criminal justice settings. European Journal of Criminology, 18(5), 623–642.https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819876762