Man Forced to Work in Prison Sues Under Anti-Slavery Amendment

This is very interesting, and the gentlemen appears to have a legit claim to the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. The man claims he was forced to work or be confined in solitary confinement during his stay at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, Vt.

He was forced to work having been convicted of no crime, therefore punishment cannot be doled out in the form of work having been incarcerated as a pretrial detainee, which is separate from convicted criminals who can be made to do such things, the case claims.

Source

Supreme Court precedent has established that the constitutional rights of pretrial detainees are distinct from those of convicted inmates, because criminal convictions can justify certain punishments, Parker argued.

"If you haven't been convicted at all, your pretrial detention is not a form of punishment," said Columbia Law School professor Jamal Greene. "The degree to which his liberty can be restricted is directly tied to the needs that required him to be detained. So if he was detained only to secure himself for trial, he can't be detained for punishment."

Had he not threaten to kill his family, and discharge a gun in his house, I would have probably cared.

However, I hope he wins, and his wife and child take every penny of the settlement.

I hope he's not counting on $11 million dollars for his 18 days work. Wish he had a stronger case though. This one may be decided in his favor, but it doesn't seem clear cut. One court found against him, another said do it over. I hate cases which aren't obvious.

IMO, he wasn't "forced" to do anything....no prisoner is. What are they6 going to do? Beat him into submission? That would go over well with the ACLU. The more likely scenario is that he was ASKED to do work...and he did it.

What a pansy, crybaby....and I'm a female.

Mans a coward and a whiner.

reply to post by Daedal


All I have to say is, if he wasn't convicted he deserves no punishment at all end of story.

Reguardless of the evidence against him or how airtight the case may seem from what the MSM says, he can't be treated as a criminal until he is convicted. Or do you guys hope that the public crucifies you and you get forced hard labor, even before your side has been told in court?

I mean the system was designed this way for a reason, nobody knows all the facts until they come out in court. Until such a time as you are convicted by your peers for your crimes, you should be treated no different than anyone else who is innocent until proven otherwise.

Everyone of you that say punishing those not proven guilty is fine, discust me, I find you detestable at the moment.

i find a handfull of ATSERS show der true colors in thread like this
i say even if he is guilty he should not be forced to work

being IN PRISON alone is plenty of punishment in my book

reply to post by LeatherNLace


This could potentially set the precedent for future individuals who may find themselves being detained without conviction, "guilty until proven innocent," and not forced to accept labor or the alternative solitary confinement, which is worse than work. Regardless of what the man did, yeah it wasn't right but, the system has to follow the rule of law for convicted criminals and those who are being detained before trial.

The line isn't very clear, but the courts will decide the validity of the issue and whether anyone in this position is treated according to provisions setup in our Constitution. In my opinion a convicted criminal is different from a detainee who is supposed to be innocent, and therefore doesn't carry legal burdens allowed under the law convicts can be forced to do.

This issue isn't about this guy IMO, it's about everyone who enters into the prison system that suffers undo penalties previous to a convicted status, this is just one case. As the man said, "others were concerned as well" with how the prison conducted and treated inmates in it's work program.

Convicted criminals can be made or forced to work, but what of people who don't have that status? IMO I would be in favor of the case, but not of his crime. These are two separate issues entirely. And hopefully the courts clarify the difference and stop forced labor or it's alternative "the hole," to detainees before pretrial.

Originally posted by charles1952
I hope he's not counting on $11 million dollars for his 18 days work. Wish he had a stronger case though. This one may be decided in his favor, but it doesn't seem clear cut. One court found against him, another said do it over. I hate cases which aren't obvious.

Magistrates are only required to take a two week training coruse. They don't have to any education in law or have worked in lae enforcment. Or at least local ones do. The article said federal I would assume it is the same.
Good for this guy. Rite now we need to fight in anyway we can. If he wins it isn't just for him. The was never convicted and all charges where dropped.Remeber people our rites belong to all of us.Beside the article also said he was a student and using a gun to threaten people. This is a conspiracy based website. Why are not talking about how the goverment used mind contro;l to make him do that in ploy to use UN troops to take away all our guns. Then dropped charges when he filed the suit because in made everything to high profile. Jesus people think.

reply to post by mythots

Dear mythots,

Thanks for your interesting post. I believe federal magistrates are held to higher standards than local ones, but I was really intrigued by this part of your post:

Why are not talking about how the goverment used mind contro;l to make him do that in ploy to use UN troops to take away all our guns. Then dropped charges when he filed the suit because in made everything to high profile. Jesus people think.

Do I understand you to be saying that the government sucked him into a crime using mind control and the resources of the government and couldn't make the charges stick? That the government wanted a lot of publicity to persuade Americans and the UN that we had to give up our weapons, then they dropped the case because it might get too high profile? Just want to get it clear in my mind.

With respect,
Charles1952

Prison is big biz.

Prisoners are free labor.

reply to post by zroth


This. For sure.

With the privatization of prisons, it most certainly calls into question the issue of prison labor. Who reaps the benefits of the labor? The corporation or the community in which the crime was committed?

reply to post by kosmicjack

You have an excellent question on the broad scale. I'm sure when the community and the corporation dicker over the contract, they make whatever provisions they care to.

In this specific case, though, 18 days of laundry? Not much benefit for community or corporation.

reply to post by charles1952


Agreed, in this case, though the principle is very important.

Assumption of innocence is one of the foundations of our legal system. You do not lose your freedoms and some rights until conviction - not when charged.

This is a slippery slope issue... if being simply charged with a crime can construe a removal of rights? Even temporarily?

Hopefully the massive size of the lawsuit is to make a point and not to just cash in. I hate frivolous lawsuits...

~Heff

You are right, and I apologize for seeming to avoid the main issue. Where is the line to be drawn? That is the larger question and will be decided by the courts.

Now, perhaps a bit off-topic, what are the practical results of the no work policy. (Please understand that I don't know and am just tossing this out as an idea.) What does he do when the sentenced criminals are working? Walk around? Watch TV? Will this endear him to the sentenced prisoners? Will he be in danger? Is that solved by keeping him locked in his cell?

From the start, I've been uncomfortable about this case. Yes, it has to be resolved, but I'm worried about every solution. Perhaps I just worry too much.

Strange, isolation is the only way to stop 99% of crime inside prison.
Everyone should be isolated, duh. That way they can't conspire or "do stuff" together as much.
That way we can pinpoint the corrupt guards easier too.

Look, everyone has a right to isolation for their own safety while incarcerated, and they do not have a right to consort with other criminals all day to syndicate. What the hell?!

And yes, forcing prisoners to work is by definition slavery. That's the traditional pool from which slaves are drawn from, prisoners.

What do you folks know about 'chain gangs' and how it was used to replace the labor force that disappeared after the end of the civil war?

That's one of the biggest conspiracies going by the way.
Convincing the average person that "slavery" was abolished.
It wasn't, it just changed forms and changed names.

Even outside of prison in the so called 'free world', "human resources" companies like Adecco totally get paid merely for running a "voluntary" slave exchange operation.

This is an abuse of power (in prison) because what if some of the 'prisoners' are innocent? It's pretty commonplace to have wrongly accused taking the fall while the real criminals remain on the loose. This system isn't even working to create significant incentive to prevent crime, nor is it even capable of leveraging pressure adequately against the right individuals in the pursuit of justice.

Also we can consider it a cruel and unusual punishment. Whereas isolation is a just and rightful punishment, as it protects the individual in the case they are innocent and allows them to build their legal case in a more speedy and direct manner.

I would laugh though honestly if that was my two choices, isolation or slavery?
Isolation of course, that's obvious. This system is so backwards now that any halfway intelligent person can easily navigate through the majority of these ridiculous problems, once they accept the underlying nonsensical nature of it all and use that to their advantage.

I keep thinking it's like that movie Idiocracy.
It appears in each of these cases the servitude is entirely voluntary.
It's like all they had to do was dumb everyone down just enough, then give them two options, and watch the vast majority of them make the wrong decision based on false pretense and human nature (desire to be gregarious).
And then watch the profits roll in....

I feel like i should be paid to read this crap.... Send him back to prison

Originally posted by jplaysguitar
i find a handfull of ATSERS show der true colors in thread like this
i say even if he is guilty he should not be forced to work

being IN PRISON alone is plenty of punishment in my book

Check this out from the prison wiki:

For most of history, imprisoning has not been a punishment in itself, but rather a way to confine criminals until corporal or capital punishment was administered. There were prisons used for detention in Jerusalem in Old Testament times, and the Bible details the imprisonment of Joseph in Egypt.[4] Dungeons were used to hold prisoners; those who were not killed or left to die there often became galley slaves or faced penal transportations. In other cases debtors were often thrown into debtor's prisons, until they paid their jailers enough money in exchange for a limited degree of freedom.

Only in the 19th century, beginning in Britain, did prisons as known today become commonplace. The modern prison system was born in London, influenced by the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. Bentham's panopticon introduced the principle of observation and control that underpins the design of the modern prison. The notion of prisoners being incarcerated as part of their punishment and not simply as a holding state until trial or hanging, was at the time revolutionary. This is when prisons had begun to be used as criminal rehabilitation centers.

So earlier in history, it was more likely that a prison or dungeon would merely be a holding place until you were tortured or killed. Or until your trial if in a lawful setting, but still in jeopardy of being placed back into the holding cell until punishment is dealt if found guilty.

Then this "revolutionary concept" came along and changed everything. Going to jail became the punishment itself. Doing menial labor was a big part of this "rehabilitation/corrections" concept.

Check this wiki, Panopticon

If you read into it, you will see that this is quite a questionable concept.
But just for those conspiracy minded here is a trivia tidbit near the bottom for all of you, in reference to the idea of the Panopticon being rejected.

Bentham remained bitter about the rejection of the Panopticon scheme throughout his later life, convinced that it had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite. It was largely because of his sense of injustice that he developed his ideas of 'sinister interest' – that is, of the vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest – which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform.

So even he thought a lot of the same things we do today.

Originally posted by charles1952
reply to post by mythots

 

Dear mythots,

Thanks for your interesting post. I believe federal magistrates are held to higher standards than local ones, but I was really intrigued by this part of your post:

Why are not talking about how the goverment used mind contro;l to make him do that in ploy to use UN troops to take away all our guns. Then dropped charges when he filed the suit because in made everything to high profile. Jesus people think.

Do I understand you to be saying that the government sucked him into a crime using mind control and the resources of the government and couldn't make the charges stick? That the government wanted a lot of publicity to persuade Americans and the UN that we had to give up our weapons, then they dropped the case because it might get too high profile? Just want to get it clear in my mind.


With respect,
Charles1952

Yes that is what I said. I am just funning a little. I am sure you have seen the type of post that inspired that part of that comment. Really it was the reason why after years of visiting this site I am finally getting around to posting. That and I have to many pictures of lights in the sky followed by fanatical post about how this proof of aliens. Or better yet the picture that is clearly of a Gorilla that people insist is Bigfoot.
Back to the topic at hand. This guy could be crazy but he has a piont. He was not covicited of a crime and should not be forced to do Labor and told he will be punished if he dosen't.