This “Punishments” clause allowed for the birth of the “convict-lease” system in the South after the war. Many Southern states passed anti-vagrancy “black codes,” criminalizing the status of being unemployed. Citing cost reasons, states would then lease out their prisoners to private persons to work under slave-like conditions.
As Frederick Douglass noted, “companies assume charge of the convicts, work them as cheap labor and pay the states a handsome revenue for their labor. Nine[-]tenths of these convicts are Negroes.”
Since the 1860s, courts have interpreted the 13th Amendment as it plainly reads. “Once individuals have been duly tried, convicted, sentenced, and imprisoned, courts will not find 13th Amendment violations where prison rules require inmates to work.”
For example, in Mikeska v. Collins (1990), the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that “any unjustified refusal to follow the established work regime is an invitation to sanctions.”
The compensation of prison labor today reflects this history. In Georgia and Texas, the maximum wage in dollars per day is $0. In Nevada, prisoners make $0.13 an hour. The average wage is between $0.93 a day and $4.93 a day—less than an hour of work at minimum wage. Conservative estimates put the value of output from prison labor at $2 billion annually.