AL Political Reporter: “A new report submitted by the Southern Prisons Coalition to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination details the devastating consequences of incarceration on Black people throughout the southern United States.
With the long-term goal of eliminating all forms of racial discrimination in the criminal legal system, including the prison system, the report describes the widespread, disparate harms resulting from the arrests, harsh prison sentences, and incarceration on Black communities.
The report frames the abuse occurring in prisons as an extension of chattel slavery, noting that the 13th amendment banning slavery carves out an exception for involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime.
“Post-Reconstruction, in response to the newly emancipated status of Black people, southern states began inexorably to imprison Black people to deprive them of their full citizenship and prevent them from gaining any political power; this exception became the primary tool of racial control,” the report states.”