California voters have decided against backing Proposition 6, which would have amended the state constitution to abolish forced labor in prisons.
The West Coast state has decided to keep slavery legal, allowing prisons and jails across California to force involuntary servitude on inmates. While slavery was outlawed in California in 1850, the state’s constitution stated that detention centers are legally permitted to make inmates work or punish them if they refuse to do so.
As reported by The New York Times, 53.8 percent of California voters said no to the proposition, while 46.2 percent said yes. In recent years, states including Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont have approved amendments removing involuntary servitude from their respective constitutions.
In the lead-up to election day, which saw former President Donald Trump return to power after winning a few key battleground states, Democratic Assemblywoman Lori Wilson of Suisun City called the proposition a “moral obligation,” and stressed how important it is that the state removes “all vestiges of slavery.”
In a statement shared last week, Wilson added that the result was “disappointing” but “this setback does not end the fight.” Wilson has pledged to continue fighting to ban prison slavery.
California, a reliably blue state, is one of the 16 remaining states allowing prisons to subject inmates to forced labor. If Proposition 6 passed, prison labor would still exist, but inmates could choose whether or not to participate without facing penalization.
City and county ordinances would have also been permitted to incentivize inmates to work through pay scales. Support for a similar measure was lost in 2022 after the California Department of Finance determined it would cost the state $1.5 billion to pay prisoners minimum wage for their work, per Cal Matters.
Other propositions on the ballot this year include Proposition 3, which would appeal Proposition 8 and establish a right to same-sex marriage. Californians voted in favor of Proposition 3.
The state also voted in favor of Proposition 36, which increases the penalties for “certain drug crimes and theft convictions,” and will introduce “treatment-mandated felony” as a class of crime. This would allow prosecutors to offer people arrested for possession of hard drugs like heroin and fentanyl to undergo mental health treatment or substance use disorder treatment, or serve up to three years in prison.
Another result showed that Californians voted against Proposition 33, which would have repealed the Cost-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and allowed cities and counties to limit the cost of rent on housing.
Per the California Legislature’s Nonpartisan Fiscal and Policy Advisor’s Office, housing costs in the state are rising so much that a “bottom-tier home California home” is now approximately “32% more expensive than a mid-tier home in the rest of U.S.”
