#13 & Origins of Modern Slavery
A recent webinar hosted by a financial crimes association covered the subject of Modern Slavery from an international supply chain perspective, specifically highlighting the Uyghers’ forced labor in China.
While modern slavery is worldwide and has its origins in ancient times, the origins of modern slavery in the United States are inextricably tied to the abolition of colonial slavery.
- Despite the abolition of colonial slavery in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment legalizes forced labor when it comes to prisoners.
- Astoundingly, both the abolition and the legalization of slavery were ratified into the Thirteenth Amendment.
- Consequently, slavery has never truly been abolished, but instead re-organized under the authority and jurisdiction of the police force, prosecutors, judges, and prison systems.
Supply chain wise, the enslavement, trafficking, and the buying and selling of slaves describe the trans-Atlantic slave trade from West Africa to the United States (US), one of many slave trade routes in the world. Here is a simple breakdown of supply chain actors from an anti-money laundering (AML) perspective.
- Supply chain of original U.S. slaves originating from West Africa
- Buyers and resellers of slaves lived in the confederate and union states of the U.S.
- Cotton grown, maintained, and harvested by slaves is used in the production of goods (i.e. Brooks Brothers)
- Slaves built the following buildings (partial list): White House, US Capitol, Smithsonian Institution, Wall Street (NYC), Harvard Law School, Georgetown University, Monticello
- Ultimate beneficiaries of U.S. slave labor are past and current generations of U.S. residents and citizens
From an accounting standpoint, the outstanding debts of forced labor remain on the books over 400 years later. Furthermore, these unacknowledged payroll debts and the legally institutionalized enslavement of the descendants of slaves persists in the form of prison labor.
The following excerpts from the researched and sourced article, “Rooted in Slavery: Prison Labor Exploitation,” explain the beginnings of legalized post-colonial institutional slavery.
- “Prisons were built in the South as part of the backlash to Black Reconstruction and as a mechanism to re-enslave Black workers. In the late 19th-century South, an extensive prison system was developed in the interest of maintaining the racial and economic relationship of slavery.”
- “Louisiana’s famous Angola Prison illustrates this history best. In 1880, this 8000-acre family plantation was purchased by the state of Louisiana and converted into a prison. Slave quarters became cell units. Now expanded to 18,000 acres, the Angola plantation is tilled by prisoners working the land — a chilling picture of modern day chattel slavery.”
- “When slavery was legally abolished, a new set of laws called the Black Codes emerged to criminalize legal activity for African Americans. Through the enforcement of these laws, acts such as standing in one area of town or walking at night, for example, became the criminal acts of “loitering” or “breaking curfew,” for which African Americans were imprisoned. As a result of Black Codes, the percentage of African Americans in prison grew exponentially, surpassing whites for the first time.”
- “A system of convict leasing was developed to allow white slave plantation owners in the South to literally purchase prisoners to live on their property and work under their control. Through this system, bidders paid an average $25,000 a year to the state, in exchange for control over the lives of all of the prisoners. The system provided revenue for the state and profits for plantation owners. In 1878, Georgia leased out 1,239 prisoners, and all but 115 were African American.”
Fast forward to 1971 — President Nixon’s War on Drugs program targeted Black people in order to suppress their political influence which led to incarceration numbers in 2001 that exceeded the number of slaves held in 1820.
- “As of 2016, people of color made up 67% of the incarcerated community despite only making up 37% of the nation’s population. African Americans still are more likely to be arrested for drug crimes: six times that of their white counterpart.”
Investigative news sources report that private prison populations consist of the following:
- “The private prison population grew 80 percent between 1999 and 2010, according to a 2017 paper. In addition, hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants pass through privately run detention centers each year.”
- “In 2016, 73 percent of beds for immigrant detention were located in privately run facilities, a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told journalists. In 2009, that figure was about 49 percent.”
- “Specifically, private prisons detain inmate populations that are disproportionately non-white, under federal jurisdiction, and serving short sentences; and they employ officers that are disproportionately female and black or Hispanic. These results depict the private prison sector as distinct from its public counterpart — both in terms of prisoner and staff composition.”
As of October 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that Whites now outnumber Blacks in federal prisons.
Unfortunately, reality portends that the Thirteenth Amendment’s legalization of slavery via imprisonment and its indirect ‘encouragement’ of other forms of modern slavery will most likely remain in effect, and so what can be done falls within the scope of reparations and risk management.
- Reparations, if done right, would address original U.S. slavery and rebuild a corrective, preventative foundation that restores sovereignty to oppressed people whose ancestors were U.S. slaves.
- Once these roots have been properly nourished, a path to the eventual end of modern slavery and trafficking occuring in all racial categories is more justifiable, evidenced by the precedent of reparations done right.
- Until then, modern slavery and trafficking are unapologetically validated by conditions of the 13th Amendment, whether through U.S. prisons or Uygher concentration camps in Western China.
Despite the slim possibility of reparations or abolishing slavery without condition — risks of being involved in the slave trade, whether as a slave or enslaver, can be managed through education, awareness, ethics training, pre-emptive rehabilitation, and personal empowerment. One of FISE Portal’s goals thus includes native risk management as a culture, inclusive and incentivized.
- Poverty knows no race or color, and with poverty, a lack of education and awareness create the profile of someone who would make an easy-to-capture slave or enslaver.
- This is why there is more incentive to make the poor poorer, so that the market for prisoners (slaves) expands.
- Good risk management, whether it involves anti-money laundering (AML) training or to reduce the risk of recidivism, involves counseling, education, and awareness.
- The internet and technology, or digitization, can be leveraged to increase education which can alleviate risks of poverty and lack risk management awareness.
- On the other hand, digitization also carries risks of data enslavement via privacy invasion, digital data capture, and data trafficking.
FISE Portal’s privacy compliant, governance based platform can help mitigate these risks.
Certain Amendments address privacy concerns and were written as a check against government overreach in the physical realm.
- These same Amendments can be applied to the digital realm.
- The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was written to articulate and enforce digital data privacy rights, privacy-by-design governance, and consent mechanisms for E.U. citizens wherever they do business.
- Data privacy initiatives in the U.S. have also been influenced by the GDPR.
- FISE Portal’s privacy-by-design service is a foundational feature of the application which serves to enable consent, incentives, privacy, regulatory needs, and data governance.
Call To Action
Email us at connect@fiseportal.com with your thoughts and how you want to get involved. We’d love to hear from you!
- Additionally, FISE Portal is seeking engineers and designers.
- Feel free to send resumes or send a hello to connect@fiseportal.com.
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Disclaimer: References to FISE Portal’ services are intended to be forward-looking statements that describe the projected state of FISE Portal’s future development, currently in progress.
