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American slavery was technically abolished in 1865, but a loophole in the 13th Amendment has allowed it to continue “as a punishment for crimes” well into the 21st century.

Not surprisingly, corporations have lobbied for a broader and broader definition of “crime” in the last 150 years.

As a result, there are more (mostly dark-skinned) people performing mandatory, essentially unpaid, hard labor in America today than there were in 1830.

With 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prison population, the United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world. No other society in history has imprisoned more of its own citizens. There are half a million more prisoners in the U.S. than in China, which has five times our population. Approximately 1 in 100 adults in America were incarcerated in 2014.  Out of an adult population of 245 million that year, there were 2.4 million people in prison, jail or some form of detention center.

The vast majority – 86 percent – of prisoners have been locked up for non-violent, victimless crimes, many of them drug-related.

Big Business is making big bucks off of prison labor:

Looking through Partition Arch in Arches National Park

Pretoria Girls High School students are fighting back against a racist dress code.

When Pretoria Girls High School in Pretoria, South Africa, put restrictions on how women could wear their hair, they probably didn’t expect this response. But the students are not taking these covert racial tactics lightly. 

Boys and girls alike, including 13-year-old Zulaikha, are taking a stand with protests, demonstrations and a petition with more than 18,000 signatures. But it’s not just the dress code they’re fighting, students also claim the school restricts their language.

US Department of Justice report on the Baltimore City Police Department.

9 takeaways from the report via Vox:

1) The Baltimore Police Department targets black Americans, even when they’re totally innocent of any crimes.

2) Baltimore officers escalate typical policing situations into violence for no good reason.

3) Before Freddie Gray, police were warned about the dangerous transportation practices that killed him.

4) Good community policing was very rare — typically left to a few cops who defied systemic problems.

5) There are “two Baltimores” — one white, one black — when it comes to policing.

6) Baltimore police regularly violate people’s First Amendment rights.

7) Baltimore police may not seriously investigate sexual assault cases.

8) There’s little to no supervision and accountability at the Baltimore Police Department.