- Why do inequality and deprivation produce high crime and low trust?
- How the United States Punishes People for Being Poor
- How Poverty Drives Violent Crime
- Poverty, Racism, and the Public Health Crisis in America
- An Unjust Burden: The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System
- Homelessness and Black History: Poverty and Income
It’s the reason slavery was enshrined in the 13th amendment.
Yep! Can’t be a slave anymore, unless you broke the law. Then fuck you.
That was only step 1. Step 2 was to pass laws targeting the minority you wanted to keep as an underclass, so that if they refused to sign a labor contract to work for their former owner for slave wages, they could be arrested for “vagrancy” and leased right back to them anyway as convict labor.
In other words, they didn’t just enslave criminals; they manufactured criminals to enslave.