How America’s Prison System Became a Modern Extension of Slavery. 

By Mariam Diallo

America represents only 4% of the world’s population, yet we account for 25% of the world’s prison population. Roughly 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the U.S., a 500% increase since the 1970s. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, we spend over 180 billion dollars a year on mass incarceration, locking up nearly 1% of our adult population. Here is some more food for thought: Black people account for 13% of the U.S. population, but they account for 38.9% of prison inmates. One in five Black men will face incarceration. Over ⅔ of individuals serving life sentences are minorities, and among those serving life sentences without parole, 55% are Black. 

 

You might be wondering why there seems to be a current trend in incarceration rates. I am here to tell you that it is not a coincidence; to understand it, we must travel back in time to understand its origins, particularly the Civil War and the 13th Amendment. 

 

The American Civil War lasted between 1861 and 1865 and was fought between the Union and Confederate States regarding state rights, federalism, and, most importantly, slavery. As we know, the Union won, leading to the ratification of the 13th Amendment. What many do not realize is that the 13th Amendment abolished only chattel slavery, where one person has complete ownership of another and treats them as property. If you look closely at the fine print, it states that slavery is abolished “except as a punishment for crime,” and, thus, behold America’s modern-day prison system was born.

 

After chattel slavery was abolished, Black Codes were enacted, restricting the freedom of Black Americans by forbidding them from voting, conducting business, intermarrying, and buying and leasing land. Some states even criminalized men who were unemployed or who weren’t employed at a job that the Black Codes recognized. As a punishment for violating Black codes, Black Americans were sent to private prisons where they were “sold” to private businesses.​​ This monetized the mass incarceration of Black people to create a forced supply of cheap labor to replace the slave labor that many industries had previously relied on, leading to the privatization and incentivizing of involuntary servitude. 

 

Even after Jim Crow laws were outlawed through the 1965 Civil Rights Act, it took on another form through our executive powers, implementing the war on drugs. It all began during Richard Nixon’s administration in 1971, where he called a war on drugs and proclaimed that drugs were the “public’s number one enemy.” Nixon passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Prevention Act, labeling marijuana as “very dangerous,” yet it’s considered less dangerous than any other Schedule 1 drug, which was disproportionately consumed by Black people but disregarded that white suburban communities were dealing with an extensive opioid epidemic. After the war on drugs became public, the number of incarcerated individuals rose from 300,000 to 2 million– 50% were convicted for drug offenses, and of those convicted for drug offenses ⅔ of them were people of color. To this day, African Americans are far more likely to be arrested for drug offenses than their white counterparts, although their white counterparts are just as likely to use drugs and are more likely to sell drugs. 

 

However, our government had these exact effects in mind: In fact, the war on drugs was designed for this very reason. In an interview with journalist Dan Baum for Harper’s magazine, Richard Nixon’s advisor Ehrlichman admitted that they created it to discriminate against minorities, specifically against Black Americans. Ehrlichman says “You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”  

 

By vilifying Black Americans and associating them with guilt, it led to an explosion in racial profiling and over-policing of Black neighborhoods, and the industrial prison system benefitted largely from this, lobbying for harsher sentences on drug offenses and mandatory minimum sentences. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Black inmates are paid 2 cents an hour to pick cotton. Yes, you read it right. Black people are still picking cotton in the 21st century and our government is 100% okay with it.

 

The prison system was never intended for reform and “justice” but for profit. The minimum wage for prisoners ranges from $0.10 to $0.65 an hour and has decreased throughout the years. 

The prison industrial system doesn’t focus on rehabilitation and reform because the contracts its officials sign with our government likely discourage them from doing so for a variety of reasons. The majority of private prison contracts in America require between 90-95% of prison beds to be filled, or the state has to pay a penalty. This motivates states to send prisoners to private prisons rather than state-run prisons. By leasing private prisons, our governments embezzle our taxpayer dollars and benefit from the exploitation of its citizens.

Works Cited 

Admin, Madeo. “Nixon Adviser Admits War on Drugs Was Designed to Criminalize Black People.” Equal Justice Initiative, 3 June 2022, eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/. 

“How the 13th Amendment Kept Slavery Alive: Perspectives from the Prison Where Slavery Never Ended.” Innocence Project, 13 June 2023, innocenceproject.org/how-the-13th-amendment-kept-slavery-alive-perspectives-from-the-prison-where-slavery-never-ended/. 

Initiative, Prison Policy. “States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2024.” Prison Policy Initiative, www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2024.html. Accessed 18 Feb. 2025. 

Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph.D. “One in Five: Racial Disparity in Imprisonment – Causes and Remedies.” The Sentencing Project, 16 Jan. 2024, www.sentencingproject.org/publications/one-in-five-racial-disparity-in-imprisonment-causes-and-remedies.