The Thirteenth Amendment’s exception clause enabled post-slavery convict leasing

Evidence

During slavery, black incarceration was rare to nonexistent because plantation owners were solely responsible for disciplining and punishing enslaved people. They generally did not send their enslaved workers to prison because they did not want to lose valuable labor. As a result, prisons held mainly white Americans. But the Thirteenth Amendment included a loophole. If a person was convicted of a crime, the law allowed convicts to be imprisoned in slavery-like conditions. And that loophole was exploited by all those who wanted to create a legal form of slavery. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 273

Categorization

• XREF: This disproves the common objection that the Thirteenth Amendment ended forced labor — the punishment clause is the crux. Very useful for rebutting opponents.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing the exact percentages of convict-leasing prisoners who were black and the scale of this labor system.