America Has Gulags in Its Own Backyard 

Plucking chickens for for-profit companies, caring for elderly patients without any training, and other forms of hard, uncompensated labor are sanctioned in the United States as court-mandated rehabilitation for drug-related charges. As the deficit of rehab care in the U.S. grew during the far-reaching opioids crisis over recent years, what are essentially work camps—

where detainees work for no money or face prison time, despite often not even being convicted of a crime—started to pop up all over the country.

 “The 13th Amendment,” Walter explains, “basically outlawed slavery in the United States. And it states that involuntary servitude is not OK, except as a punishment upon conviction of a crime. 

So, when you have participants who are getting sent by courts to these programs, ostensibly for rehab and treatment for their addictions, what lawyers have told us is there’s an argument that that violates the 13th Amendment. Because not only sometimes are there no convictions in these cases yet, but a lot of the time, even if there are convictions, the courts are saying: This is not for punishment. This is to rehabilitate you. This is to provide treatment so that you can recover from your addictions and become a productive member of society.”

 DYI