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Old 09-28-2016, 08:58 PM
Stephen Maturin's Avatar
Stephen Maturin Stephen Maturin is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Juggalonia
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Default Re: What's the frequency, Colorado?

Like the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 26 of the Lolorado Constitution outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude.

Partially.

The relevant provision of the state constitution reads, "There shall never be in this state slavery or involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. (Emphasis added.) The exception highlights the obvious, namely that prison labor is in fact slavery/involuntary servitude. The proliferation of new crimes and the massive increase in prison populations in recent decades are in no small measure the result of lobbying by "private sector"1 businesses, which have profited wildly as the pool of cheap prison labor expanded.

Our state legislature can, by concurrent resolution, submit proposed constitutional amendments to the voters for approval. That doesn't happen much, but overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both houses passed a concurrent resolution to have us vote on whether to shitcan the language bolded above, thus effectively outlawing compulsory prison labor.

Presumably, inmates could still volunteer to do shit work for almost no pay to avoid going stir crazy. And of course in between "Hell yeah, gimme a job - ANY job" and "shovel that fucking manure or go to the SHU until further notice," there are a lot of voluntary/compulsory gray areas. That creates some unintended consequence potential, but put me down as a yes just the same.

1 On the scale we're discussing here, there's really no such thing as a "private" business. The corporate and LLC forms, for instance, are solely creature of the state. Thus, the owners/operators of such business are welfare queens.
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