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Behind Anti-Slavery Ballot Measures, Prison Labor Isn't So Simple

Behind Anti-Slavery Ballot Measures, Prison Labor Isn't So Simple

On November 8, voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont will decide if they’ll strip their state constitutions of language that allows slavery in cases of a criminal conviction. Nineteen states have constitutions that include such wording that technically permits slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments. In 2018, Colorado voters were the first to remove the language from the state’s founding document by ballot measure, then Nebraska and Utah did the same in 2020.

Taking a stand against slavery isn’t brave nor should it require deliberation. Sometimes these ballot measures do, even though they pass pretty overwhelmingly. Two years ago, Utah’s got 80 percent approval, Nebraska’s garnered 68 percent. Although the ballot measure didn’t pass in Colorado in 2016, it lost by a third of a percentage point‚ it went on to attract approval from more than two thirds of voters; it passed by 66 percent in 2018.

If someone’s looking for advice on how to vote on the amendment in their particular state, voting no won't really change much in the short term, so there isn’t much reason to vote any other way but yes.

Prison labor systems are still operating in Utah and Nebraska, even after the language change, and Colorado inmates are currently litigating whether they can be compelled to work, which begs the question of what the change in language can or will accomplish — and how.

“Whether prison labor changes after the passage of these ballot [measures] will depend entirely on whether correctional administrators believe that their current system is one of slavery and involuntary servitude. Many probably won’t and then it’ll be on advocates again to demand change through litigation. It’ll be up to the courts to eventually decide what is and is not slavery and involuntary servitude,” said Bianca Tylek,executive director of Worth Rises, a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to changing prisons and the criminal legal system, in a text interview.

Jennifer Turner, principal human rights researcher for the American Civil Liberties Union, says that these revised amendments will prohibit facilities from forcing incarcerated people to work but the question is when.

"While these measures may require administrators to reconsider wages and other labor protections, they are unlikely to automatically confer employment rights to incarcerated people,” said Turner in an email interview.

“Because U.S. law also explicitly excludes incarcerated workers from the most universally recognized workplace protections and courts have often held that incarcerated people are not employees under federal laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act and National Labor Relations Act," she continued, "securing employment rights for incarcerated workers will likely require additional legislation."

If prison labor is slavery, it’s not clear why changing a state constitution in this way doesn’t have the immediate effect of ending mandatory unpaid prison labor. None of the three states that have changed their constitutions pay nothing to incarcerated workers; they pay penny wages.

One of the five states that may change after taking voters’ temperatures on this issue on Tuesday — Alabama — doesn’t pay at all. A strike is ongoing there in the Yellowhammer State right now, with workers challenging unfair and unworkable sentencing schemes, including parole. Interestingly, none of the strike demands have to do with wages or working conditions. Rather, they demand an end to life without parole sentences, the opening of conviction integrity units, and modifications to other sentencing and parole laws.

If the amendment passes there, immediate closures and stoppages in Alabama may follow. The remaining four states will likely go the way of Colorado, Nebraska, and Utah: prison work opportunities will remain the same.

The reason why little changes as a result of these amendments is that right now, prison labor isn’t chattel slavery; workers aren’t legally considered property. Convict leasing, a practice that assumed the prison owned the worker, has been banned in all 50 states since 1928.

Prison labor may be involuntary servitude but it can’t be if it’s voluntary. Inmates want to work; the federal prison system's 25,000-person waiting list proves that they don’t have enough jobs for those who want one.

There are good reasons for incarcerated laborers to want their jobs. Working maintains sanity in a place that rarely protects it; two-thirds of federal prisoners say they haven’t received any mental health care. The stakes are high for this failure. The risk for suicide in prisons is high; three to ten times higher than the general population. People in prison work to save themselves from the carceral experience.

No one’s clear on whether the law should require prison labor to be voluntary as well as paid, or that involuntary paid labor doesn't constitute involuntary servitude. But if these ballot measures are about securing a minimum or other wage for incarcerated workers as experts believe they might be — indeed, the state of California refused to consider changing the state constitution because Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration predicted it would cost billions of dollars to pay a minimum wage to 65,000 workers — then governors, sheriffs, and wardens could snatch away programs that benefit prisoners and preserve their sanity.

It’s hard to talk about this or even ask a question about it without being shot down as a racist or someone unfeeling toward people in custody. That’s how people win debates these days; mention slavery to give the issue gravitas — and end up closing off nuanced conversation.

These ballot measures should pass, but anyone who worries about what their ultimate impact will be on incarcerated workers isn’t a bigot or a slavery apologist. If anything, that questioning voter may understand that the confluence of labor, accountability, profit, and harm is a gray area. It’s much more complicated than advocates make it out to be. Providing better answers to the other questions would have made what should be a no-brainer an even easier sell.

Chandra Bozelko did time in a maximum-security facility in Connecticut. While inside she became the first incarcerated person with a regular byline in a publication outside of the facility. Her “Prison Diaries" column ran in The New Haven Independent, and she later established a blog under the same name that earned several professional awards. Her columns now appear regularly in The National Memo.


Defying Court Order, Trump Officials Separated Over 900 Migrant Kids From Families

Defying Court Order, Trump Officials Separated Over 900 Migrant Kids From Families

The Trump administration has ripped 911 children from their families in the past year, despite the courts demanded them not to, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

In June 2018, a federal judge ordered the administration to stop separating families except in limited circumstances and the Trump administration claims it only separates families if a child is at risk. However, the ACLU said that evidence of this has been weak and many allegations of safety risks have been dubious.

In one case, a father and his two young children were separated from more than six months because the government claimed he was a gang member, despite providing no evidence. One man’s daughter was taken from him because a U.S. Border Patrol agent claimed the father failed to change her diaper. Another man, with a speech impediment, was separated from his young son when he couldn’t clearly answer questions.

This follows reports that the administration’s claims of “fake families,” or adults traveling with unrelated minors posing in order to smuggle drugs into the U.S., are bogus.

“It is shocking that the Trump administration continues to take babies from their parents,” said Lee Gelernt, lead attorney in the family separation lawsuit and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “The administration must not be allowed to circumvent the court order over infractions like minor traffic violations.”

The ACLU also said that the average age of the children separated was 9 years old and that 185 of the separated children were under 5 years old.

The filing comes as migrants and separated families continue to be detained in poor living conditions near the southern border. Additionally, a congressional report found that some border agents decided to keep families separated to “avoid doing the additional paperwork.”

It seems more and more than the Trump administration’s immigration tactics have very little to do with the facts.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

Trump Signs Repeal Of U.S. Broadband Privacy Rules

Trump Signs Repeal Of U.S. Broadband Privacy Rules

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signed a repeal of Obama-era broadband privacy rules, the White House said, a victory for internet service providers and a blow to privacy advocates.

Republicans in Congress last week narrowly passed the repeal of the privacy rules with no Democratic support and over the strong objections of privacy advocates.

The signing, disclosed in White House statement late on Monday, follows strong criticism of the bill, which is a win for AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc.

The bill repeals regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under the Obama administration requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers’ broadband privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc’s Google or Facebook Inc.

The rules had not yet taken effect but would have required internet providers to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children’s information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised the repeal in a statement late on Monday for having “appropriately invalidated one part of the Obama-era plan for regulating the internet.” Those flawed privacy rules, which never went into effect, were designed to benefit one group of favored companies, not online consumers.”

Pai said the FCC would work with the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees websites, to restore the “FTC’s authority to police internet service providers’ broadband privacy practices.”

Republican FCC commissioners have said the Obama rules would unfairly give websites the ability to harvest more data than internet service providers.

The action is the latest in a string of reversals of Obama administration rules. On Monday, the FCC reversed a requirement that Charter Communications Inc extend broadband service to 1 million homes that already have a high-speed provider.

On Friday, Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T Inc. said they would voluntarily not sell customers’ individual internet browsing information.

Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so but the company said it has two advertising programs that use “de-identified” customer browsing data, including one that uses “aggregate insights that might be useful for advertisers and other businesses.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said last month Congress should have opposed “industry pressure to put profits over privacy” and added “most Americans believe that their sensitive internet information should be closely guarded.”

Trade group USTelecom Chief Executive Jonathan Spalter in a statement praised Trump for “stopping rules that would have created a confusing and conflicting consumer privacy framework.”

Last week, 46 Senate Democrats urged Trump not to sign the bill, arguing most Americans “believe that their private information should be just that.”

Republicans later this year are expected to move to overturn net neutrality provisions that in 2015 reclassified broadband providers and treated them like a public utility – a move that is expected to spark an even bigger fight.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Bill Trott)

IMAGE: President Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Student’s Death Raises Questions About Drug Informants On College Campuses

Student’s Death Raises Questions About Drug Informants On College Campuses

By Matt McKinney, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

MINNEAPOLIS — Andrew Sadek, a North Dakota college student who went missing two weeks before his graduation, was found dead in the Red River just over a year ago. He had been shot once in the head. He wore a backpack full of rocks.

Initially there were murmurs that it was suicide. But after his family learned that Sadek had been working as a confidential informant for a drug task force in the months before his death, they have pushed for answers, and for changes in the practice that they believe led to their son’s killing.

Sadek was busted for selling $80 worth of marijuana. He faced the possibility of more than 40 years in prison.

“That would scare the bejesus out of anyone,” said his mother, Tammy Sadek. “They get kids who have no knowledge of the law. They don’t offer up an attorney during this whole thing.”

Tammy Sadek says police should stop using college students accused of nonviolent offenses to carry out undercover drug buys. Her son’s case has been compared to others in which young kids busted for minor drug offenses are told they can reduce their sentence if they help police catch others. The practice has been criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union and led to reforms in one state after an informant was murdered by those she was trying to help catch.

Authorities in North Dakota said Sadek was an adult who knew what he was doing when he chose informant work. A review of how the task force handled Sadek didn’t find wrongdoing.

But a year later, the case remains unsolved — with no official determination of suicide or homicide.

The gun that killed Sadek has not been found, but a pistol that shoots the same sized bullets disappeared from one of the Sadeks’ farm vehicles at their ranch near Rogers, N.D. Tammy Sadek said she doesn’t know if it’s connected because it’s not clear when the pistol was taken.

Sadek’s roommate, Drew Kugel, said Sadek didn’t appear depressed in the days before his disappearance. Kugel didn’t know about the undercover work his roommate was doing. He only knew Sadek as a quiet person who liked to ride his skateboard around campus and got good grades.

“Something went bad,” he said. “He was just a college student and I think they maybe sent him out to do something way over his head.”

His family said Sadek was a thoughtful kid who loved the outdoors and planned to take over the family farm.

He spent two years on the Wahpeton, N.D., campus of the State College of Science (NDSCS), a two-year community college in the center of the town of 7,800 people.

“Andrew was a quiet, gentle soul,” his mom said. “He would do anything for anyone.”

What no one close to him knew was that he had become entangled in legal trouble and spent the last few months of his life working to clear his name.

Sadek was busted after he sold 3.35 grams of marijuana worth $80 in April 2013 to an informant in two separate sales in a campus parking lot.

State law in North Dakota doesn’t differentiate between a small amount of marijuana or a kilo of cocaine: the sale of either one is considered a Class A felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.

In November of 2013, agents with the Southeast Multi-County Agency Drug Task Force searched Sadek’s dorm room, finding a marijuana grinder in his desk. Sadek admitted that the grinder was his. A misdemeanor was added to his charges; he faced a maximum possible sentence of 41 years in prison. He signed papers to become an informant the next day.

Over the next three months, Sadek bought drugs three times wearing a police wire. All three buys were on college property. He was supposed to make two more buys when he stopped contacting the task force. He was last seen May 1, 2014, at 2 a.m. walking out of his residence hall alone.

A warrant for his arrest on two counts of drug dealing was issued May 5. At the time, campus police Sgt. Steve Helgeson suggested to local media that Sadek had fled. Sadek’s body was found June 27 in the Red River about a mile north of Breckenridge, Minn.

His wallet was not on him. He was wearing different clothes than the ones he wore when he was last seen leaving his dorm. He had been shot with a bullet from a .22-caliber weapon. An autopsy ruled that he died from the gunshot wound. No drugs or alcohol were found in his body.

The college didn’t know anything about Sadek’s criminal problems or his work with the drug task force until after he went missing, said Harvey Link, the school’s vice president for academic and student affairs.

A school policy to notify parents when students violate drug or alcohol rules never came into play as a result, he said.

Informants are helpful in small towns because police officers are already well known and suspects would likely recognize them, said the head of the drug task force that used Sadek as an informant.

“We’ve never really had any problems with anything,” said Jason Weber, a deputy in the Richland County Sheriff’s Office. Officers watch confidential informants during drug buys. Informants wear a wire that transmits and records conversations.

“Basically, if you have a student in college that gets caught with selling marijuana, meth, whatever it may be, now they’re giving themselves an opportunity to help themselves out,” said Weber. Citing the investigation, the sheriff’s office declined to answer specific questions about Sadek.

Drawing confidential informants from the pool of students on a college campus has come under fire after several high-profile failures of the practice in Massachusetts and Mississippi. A Florida law known as Rachel’s Law that beefs up protections for confidential informants was passed after the murder of Rachel Hoffman, a 23-year-old student killed while working as a confidential informant for police.

The practice is generally avoided by campus police at the University of Minnesota, said UMPD Lt. Troy Buhta. “I think anything like that could go bad,” said Buhta.

A school spokeswoman said NDSCS would have no comment on the use of confidential informants on campus, but the practice appears to have continued. A 21-year-old man was charged in May with selling six prescription pills to a confidential informant in a school parking lot. He faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison.

Those maximum penalties give law enforcement broad leverage to find more confidential informants, but they’re unlikely to be used, said North Dakota defense attorney Mark A. Friese.

It’s ultimately up to a judge, but the reality is that “most first-time marijuana deliveries do not lead to imprisonment,” he said.

A confidential informant offer typically comes before the offender goes to court, before they even have an attorney. Sadek, despite spending months working with the police to lessen his potential sentence, never had a day in court.

“He never even made an appearance,” said Richland County Assistant State’s Attorney Megan Kummer.

Initially, the NDSCS campus police investigated Sadek’s death, and the tone of the investigation suggested police were working from the theory that he had taken his life, said Tammy Sadek.

The campus police eventually turned to outside agencies, pulling in the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation and, because Sadek’s body was found in Minnesota, the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

“At least they’re not treating it like a suicide anymore,” said Tammy Sadek, who said she and her husband, John, met with investigators in April. Some of Sadek’s college friends have also been interviewed. Carrying on her own investigation, Tammy Sadek learned the name of one of the suspects who bought drugs from Andrew when he was working as an informant. That person talked to her at first but has since broken off contact.

The Sadeks have launched a Facebook page, “Justice for Andrew Sadek,” and continue to push for answers.

This week, the couple mark a grim anniversary: On July 22, 2005, their 18-year-old son Nicholas was killed along with his girlfriend when their car was struck by a train at an unmarked train crossing.

Nicholas and Andrew were the Sadeks’ only children.

Photo: Andrew Sadek, who died while working as a drug informant. His parents believe he was murdered, although an investigation has not concluded. Andrew Sadek” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Death of Andrew Sadek“>Fair use via Wikipedia.” target=”_blank”>Wikipedia