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Andrea C. Armstrong

Excerpted from: Andrea C. Armstrong, Slavery Revisited in Penal Plantation Labor, 35 Seattle University Law Review 673 (Spring, 2012) (97 footnotes omitted)

 

Andrea C ArmstrongNot only does the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibit involuntary labor writ large but it also includes an exception for penal servitude. Specifically, the Thirteenth Amendment states: "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 The Punishment Clause or "prisoner-labor exception clause" is often misinterpreted to allow both conditions of slavery and involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.