Californians Will Vote on Whether to End Forced Prison Labor This November

California’s Senate voted Thursday to end forced labor in the state’s prisons and jails. The state constitutional amendment will go to voters for final approval in November. If passed, the change would mark another win for the state’s first-in-the-nation effort to provide state-level reparations to Black residents.

Assembly Constitutional Amendment 8 is one of the California Legislative Black Caucus’ 14 reparations bills moving through the Legislature this year. The bills draw on recommendations made by the state’s reparations task force last June.

“Slavery takes a modern form in involuntary servitude, including forced labor in prisons,” former task force member Sen. Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) said on the Senate floor. “Slavery is wrong in all forms, and California should be clear in denouncing that in our Constitution.”

The task force defined reparations not only as compensation for past discriminatory policies but also as efforts to end ongoing practices that disproportionately harm Black residents.

The amendment would close a loophole in the state constitution that bans involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Though only 5% of the state population, Black Californians make up 28% of the prison population, which means the state’s involuntary servitude exception disproportionately impacts Black Californians.

If approved, the amendment would prevent the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from disciplining an incarcerated person who refuses a work assignment.

“As we do the work of reparations, we refer to slavery as a relic of the past. But as I stand here today, we have thousands of indentured servants in our penal system,” caucus member Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-Los Angeles) said, speaking in support of the amendment before the vote on the Senate floor. “When you have folks in a prison who are making 2 and 5 and 8 cents an hour, it undermines everyone’s ability to earn a living wage in California.”

After the bill’s passage in the Senate on Thursday, applause and cheering broke out in the gallery, and Smallwood-Cuevas raised a fist in celebration. The amendment, endorsed by the California Democratic Party, received some bipartisan support in both houses. Republicans cast all votes against the bill.

In 2022, a similar proposal was voted down, in part, over concerns that the end of involuntary servitude would require wage increases for prison labor, adding significant costs to the state prison system, according to analysts with the state Department of Finance. This year, the bill was amended to allow CDCR to provide credits instead of pay for voluntary work in state prisons.

Last week, the state set aside $12 million in its budget to support reparations programs passed by the Legislature this year.

California is one of only 16 states with an exception clause for involuntary servitude in its constitution. Most recently, voters in Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont removed involuntary servitude language from their state’s constitution.