Slavery never left it just got rebranded.
The Thirteenth Amendment needs to be amended.
Per Wikipedia: The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18, 1865. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.
It’s more complex than just “prison labour isn’t that bad.”
I agree that prisoners should have jobs, opportunities to train for new vocations, something to be proud of accomplishing when they’re locked away.
But that’s not why they work. They work to make the prison more money, and in a profit driven prison system, it disincentivises rehabilitation because recidivism ensures a hefty circulating population of re-offenders.
In a system that saves money and stays competitive by using their prison labour as slave labour for pennies, there is no onus for that same system to try to help its prisoners not reoffend.