As detailed in my book “the new human rights movement” the transition away from abject slavery never addressed the root incentives or accepted procedural nature of the institution, ideologically. Rarely is such discourse found in the historical literature.
The same logic that motivated people to fictionalize ownership of other people is the standard operating foundation of modern capitalism. The empirical history and a formal understanding of the system validates definitively.
Empirical history shows that black slaves may have been freed by legal decree but a phenomenon called “convict leasing” was instantly employed which today's exploitation of criminals behind bars for commercial purposes – is merely a variation.
Convict leasing was an incredibly brutal practice that basically returned the newly freed slaves back to the plantations because of bond loans – or else being exploited by corporations directly hiring the imprisoned people for free labor.
What people misunderstand about the broad transition is that through debt and the natural character of wealth trickling up in market capitalism by default, forever putting pressure on the poor (which are often minorities hence suffering from the systemic racism rooted in the economy) is that direct discrimination isn't required.
Bigots do not need to exist for the bigoted outcomes of the system to perpetuate themselves. The very foundation of our economy being derived from debt, ensures that there is always a subclass of people that are forever vulnerable and systemically coerced into hyper exploitative circumstances.
The continued use of prisoners as slave labor is hence to be expected. And even if it was eradicated, it barely makes a dent. There are more slaves by UN standards, due to human trafficking in various degrees of desperate vulnerability than any time in human history.
The foundational principle of “cost efficiency” drives human exploitation to various degrees with the hard concept of “slavery” just a truncated category people assume only when they see subjective extremes.
The truth is the whole economic system is a slavery-based system by technical default and it always will be as long as the system exists. So if you wanna stop slavery – ending the ruthless peer to peer exploitation and dominance we've seen for countless generations – abolish market capitalism.