This Sheriff Is Actually Angry That They’re Taking Away His ‘Good’ Slaves

There’s a big story going around about the California wildfires. It’s happening in a “blue” state, so the President of the United States doesn’t care that one of his states is on fire, but the rest of us should be aware that at least 21 have died as 170,000 acres of land has burnt to the ground.

Do you know who is fighting those fires? Slaves. From Jezebel:

Among those working to tamp down the seemingly uncontrollable blazes are around 200 female inmates, working on salaries of $1 an hour when they’re on the fire’s front lines, and $2 per day on top of that…

In total, around 3,800 inmates—men and women—fight fires in California, comprising around 13 percent of the state’s firefighting force. Their low salaries save taxpayers $124 million per year.

“Low salaries”? No. The guy who cuts my hedges gets a “low salary.” LeBron James gets a “low salary” (compared to what he would earn in a free market: come fight me if you disagree).

California prisoners are not getting a “low salary.” They’re being used as slaves to do jobs. Non-prisoners are generally cool with this because it apparently takes being a “SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR” to believe that people who have been convicted of crimes do not forfeit their basic humanity.

That we use our prisoners as slave laborers is a well known fact to people who bother to know things. Our criminal justice system puts up a good show of caring what happens to you before you are deemed to be a “criminal,” then cares not at all about what happens once you’re convicted (or plea, even to a crime you didn’t commit). The wildfire information is not “new,” it’s just part of the background reality we’re all subconsciously aware of.

But rarely does law enforcement talk as openly about the need for slave labor as Sheriff Steve Prattor in Louisiana. His guys aren’t fighting fires, they’re just picking up trash and fixing cars and that sort of thing. But Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has made prison reforms that allow for early release for well-behaving prisoners. That could hurt Louisiana’s slave economy, and Prattor was not ashamed to say it:

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/918431668658212865

Louisiana has the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the nation. Prattor is making the fairly self-evident point that if you release the prisoners who are “good” enough that you can get work out of them, labor costs will go up. We need “good” prisoners to work for next to nothing, because the “bad” prisoners are just sunk costs and you can’t get any of that sweet, sweet free labor out of them.

That thing you’re feeling? That’s called “guilt.” It’s happening to you because you know you’ve been complicit in this system all along, but can successfully ignore it unless some guy like Prattor puts it directly in your face.

This is also a good time to mention that the argument that “immigrants” are taking jobs away from Americans is, once again, shown to be a canard. I’m sure that there are some non-incarcerated Americans who would be willing to fight fires and change oil. But California and Louisiana don’t want to pay those people to do that, they’d rather have their slaves do the work.

And since we’re here, I’ll ALSO point out that the way slave labor warps the economy for unskilled workers is WHY the Civil War broke out over the EXPANSION of slavery rather than the EXISTENCE of slavery. Northern whites did not, as a rule, have a moral objection to forced labor. What they were worried about was Southerners bringing their slaves to new territories, and WRECKING the economy for low-skilled white people in the process. If you can force a black person to do the work for free, there’s no reason to employ a white person to do the work for a wage. Even racist antebellum Americans understood that a white man’s work was not “better” than a black man’s work. Just like even sexist modern Americans understand that a woman can risk her life fighting a forest fire just as well as a man.

A true “populist” would see prison slave labor as a key factor depressing wages for “hard-working” “non-criminal” “aggrieved-white” Americans. But it’s hard for the current champions of the “white working class” to make the argument that state taxes should go up because treating inmates like machine parts is wrong. Racism’s ability to obscure one’s economic self-interest is legendary.

In any event, using prisoners as slave labor is legal in America. The 13th Amendment couldn’t make it more clear:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Americans: “Should we get rid of slavery?”
Lincoln: “YES. Let’s never speak of this again.”
Americans: “Well, not prisoners though, right?”
Lincoln: “Oh, Gods no. F**k them!”
Rebels: “Hmm… Interesting.”
[Everybody laughs]

Incarcerated Women Are Fighting on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires for $1 an Hour [Jezebel]

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Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.