A measure that would change the California constitution to prohibit involuntary servitude in criminal punishment did not pass the Senate in time to make a deadline for the November ballot, disappointing prison reform advocates who called it critical in addressing the state’s history of enslavement.
The amendment, which requires voter approval, would delete language in the constitution that bans forced labor, except as a form of punishment. Lawmakers can vote on the bill this year, but it would not go to voters until 2023 at the earliest.
The measure, known as the End Slavery in California Act, was developed by criminal justice reform advocate, Samual Brown, and carried by Sen. Sydney Kamlager, D-Los Angeles.
The bill failed an earlier vote in the Senate over concerns that it would disrupt rehabilitative work programs in county jails and state prisons.
“The CA State Senate just reaffirmed its commitment to keeping slavery and involuntary servitude in the state’s constitution. Way to go Confederates,” Kamlager wrote in Twitter post on June 23.
Inmates earn as little as 8 cents an hour for work they perform while incarcerated. Raising their pay to minimum wage would cost the state more than $1 billion a year, according to a Senate analysis.
Lawmakers amended the bill to allow for voluntary, rehabilitative work in correctional settings. That version of the bill has not received a vote by the Senate.
Chris Lodgson, lead organizer for Coalition For a Just and Equitable California (CJEC), on Thursday wrote on Twitter, “slavery will be legal in CA prisons for another year. Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Four states have removed language in their state constitution that appeared to have allowed slavery or involuntary servitude. The list includes Rhode Island in 1842, Colorado in 2018, and Nebraska and Utah in 2020.
Voters in Oregon and Tennessee later this year are expected to consider similar measures.
California entered the union as a free state in 1850, but permitted enslavement. It adopted a fugitive slave act in 1852 that encouraged white enslavers to apprehend Black people. At least some Californians lived in enslavement until 1864, a year after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
The California Reparations Task Force, which is charged with investigating state policies that harmed Black residents and developing reparation proposals for African Americans, earlier this month endorsed the proposed constitutional amendment to expressly prohibit involuntary servitude.
Brown, who spent over 20 years in a state prison, said the constitution as currently written perpetuates enslavement in the country, taking advantage of incarcerated people.
“This bill stops the transgenerational genocide of communities of color and that’s powerful,” Brown said.
He believes the state’s goal for incarceration should be for a person to go inside the prison system and come to understand what led them to crime, including any potential physical or mental trauma. He wants inmates to develop skills that will allow them to step out of prison an evolved human being.
He told The Sacramento Bee that he won’t give up on the bill.
“We face opposition as a people. It’s like Frederick Douglass said ‘if there is no struggle, there is no progress,’” said Brown. “It will be back and we’re going to get it done.”
-------
