California May Have Voted to Keep Slavery in Prisons

Vice President Kamala Harris’ home state of California is on track to reject a ballot measure that would ban forced labor in state prisons. Proposition 6 was an effort to ban slavery by creating voluntary work programs with a focus on rehabilitation.

As of Wednesday evening, Proposition 6 was trailing 55 percent to 45 percent, despite no organized opposition to the measure. Supporters of the measure spent $2.1 million, compared to roughly $9,000 spent against it. 

The outcomes of Tuesday’s election suggest that voters in blue California, known as a liberal bastion, want to be tougher on crime. California voters also passed a measure to make shoplifting a felony for repeat offenders and make fentanyl possession a felony as well. .

Supporters of Proposition 6 argued that the measure would uphold human rights and basic dignity. 

“This is our moral obligation of our generation — to remove all vestiges of slavery from everything we do in California, especially our Constitution,” Democratic Assemblymember Lori Wilson told CalMatters.

The proposition was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union of California, the League of Women Voters of California, the California Labor Federation, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Only a handful organizations are on the record opposing the measure. Even still, no argument against the measure was actually submitted to the official state voter guide. 

“Removing slavery was on the ballot in California. It literally had no opposition campaign at all, and it still lost,” one user posted on X.

The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bans slavery, but it has an exception for punishment of crimes. Seven states have removed slavery from their state constitutions since 2018: Colorado, Utah, Nebraska, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont. An effort in Louisiana failed in 2022. A similar initiative failed in California that year, too.

Incarcerated people in California make between $0.16 per hour and $10.24 a day. At the top of the pay scale are firefighters, who risk their lives to fight dangerous wildfires, but it’s still a fraction of what a non-incarcerated California firefighter makes. 
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California prisoners face punishments if they do not carry out their work, something Proposition 6 would have forbidden. For example, if an inmate misses work because of being sick, they could lose visits with family members.

One group that voiced its opposition prior to the election is the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, a nonpartisan group that is against raising taxes. They argued that taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay more in taxes to give prisoners the possibility of higher wages, because they are “paying off their debt to society.” 

However, the proposition did not include language about raising wages. The state voter guide said the cost of the measure would not exceed tens of millions of dollars annually. In fact, proponents of the proposition argued that by lowering recidivism, taxpayers would save money. 

The Bay Area News Group editorial board also ran an op-ed in their newspapers, including the Mercury News, making their case against the measure. The piece, headlined “No, California inmates should not be entitled to refuse to do chores in prison,” argues that prisoners should be required to work to contribute toward their “room and board.” 

Like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, the papers opposed the possibility of higher taxes. The piece frames prison labor as basic housekeeping; in addition to fighting wildfires, such labor can include tasks such as making license plates and furniture.
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The effort was a key priority for California’s Reparations Task Force, an agency consisting of nine members who recommend policies aimed at providing reparations for African Americans, particularly those descended from slaves. Across the country, Black people are disproportionately incarcerated.

“I think the narrative around Prop. 6 got swept into the fear politics that are driving the return to mass incarceration and the tough-on-crime era,” democratic Assemblymember Isaac Bryan told The New York Times. Bryan is the vice chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, which played a major role in bringing the proposition to voters.