Criminalization of normal black behavior is rooted in the 13th amendment, which made slavery illegal “except as a punishment for crime.”
This led to the invention of loitering—not being able to prove you had gainful employment—as a crime; the perfect way to recapture slaves that had been legally freed, and bind them to the prison system, where they worked as unpaid laborers.
The big difference: slaves ultimately had value to their owners, whereas peons had none. In this, we also find the birth of the American industrial prison complex.
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The Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery (CAPS), represented by Lee Wood, will present a series of Abolitionist petitions to the United Nations During September 2017. These include two petitions to Abolish Prison Slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment, one Petition to Abolish the Death Penalty, one petition to Abolish Police Murder of Outside Community Members, and one Memorandum of Law from political prisoner Anthony Bottoms.