Why free prison reform passed in Nevada and failed in California

Progressive prison reform that was on the ballot in California and Nevada this month met with very different results after the votes were counted:

In California, voters chose to maintain the status quo, allowing “involuntary servitude” to remain legal in prisons. On the other side of the state line, Nevada voters overwhelmingly passed a measure to ban “slavery and involuntary servitude.”

These different results in the two neighboring states have raised questions about whether voters in Nevada, most of whom support Donald Trump’s successful bid to return to the White House, are more open to issues of criminal justice than voters in California, where Vice President Kamala Harris. won.

Some have suggested that the failure of California’s Proposition 6 is indicative direct change in the state, where voters passed Proposition 36, a tougher crime measure by the same vote reverse course about the progressive reforms they approved a decade earlier.

But an examination of prison measures in California and Nevada reveals important differences that may explain the surprising result.

The first came down to the word “slavery”: Nevada’s measure included the word, while California’s did not.

The second difference was in the practical impact of the proposals: California’s measure would ban forced labor for prisoners; but Nevada’s ban is symbolic, leaving it up to the courts to decide whether it will mean any changes to prison operations.

“In California, slavery is being abolished, but unregulated slavery is not. There’s been a back and forth on this,” said Dennis Febo, a lead activist for the Abolish Slavery National Network, which is working to pass similar measures in several states. “It didn’t strike California voters as a problem.”

California amended its Constitution in the 1970s to prohibit slavery. This year, Proposition 6 asked voters if they wanted to continue to amend the Constitution to remove “the provision that allows prisons and jails to make military arrests to punish crimes (ie, to force prisoners to work).”

Nevada’s measure sought to remove both slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal penalties at the same time, since both terms were in its constitution.

The presence of the word “slavery” on the ballot may have spooked Nevada voters who may not have known it was still legal in their state as a criminal penalty, said Jay Jordan, who led the Yes campaign on Proposition 6. California’s measure, he said, did not create the same sense of urgency or shock because it does not have the word “slavery.”

Advocates of Proposition 6 see forced labor in prisons as a remnant of slavery, and use the term in their campaign messages. Jordan said they asked California officials to explain the measure in the ballot summary with the words, “Slavery of any kind is prohibited.”

“But they didn’t put it in there,” he said. “I do not know why.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta writes the titles and summaries of each measure that makes the vote. In drafting them, his office looks at several things, including the full text of the measure and how it would change existing law, the spokesman said.

Mention of slavery in the summary of Proposition 6 could raise questions of accuracy, because California has long banned the practice as a punishment for crimes. However, involuntary servitude is still in the Constitution.

“This whole thing is about language,” said Febo. He pointed out that while both states wanted the same changes in language, “Nevada’s campaign was simple,” and California’s ballot summary was less specific.

Jordan said the California measure faced other hurdles, including the short amount of time supporters have to campaign. The Legislature put Proposition 6 on the ballot this summer amid heated negotiations led by the Black Legislature over a package of bills aimed at addressing compensation. And the proposal went to the polls in a year when voters showed greater concern about crime, passing Proposition 36 to impose stiffer sentences for certain theft and drug crimes, and to fire progressive prosecutors in Los Angeles and Alameda counties.

In Nevada, the measure that became Question 4 in this year’s election has resurfaced in the state Legislature. Member of Parliament Howard Watts was introduced average in 2021.

Watts, a Democrat, said she was inspired in part by Ava DuVernay’s 2016 documentary “13th,” which examined how the US Constitution ended slavery in 1865 through the 13th Amendment — but with a provision that allowed slavery as a punishment for crimes.

As other free states joined the union, several also included this language in their constitutions.

DuVernay and the lawmakers who support her have argued that the language allowing slavery as a punishment for crimes allows prisons to force inmates to perform labor, many as little as a few cents an hour.

In recent years, seven states have outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude in their laws, including Colorado in 2018, Utah and Nebraska in 2020, and Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont in 2022. Louisiana voters rejected their 2022 state measure.

Prison workers in Louisiana, where voters rejected a similar constitutional amendment to outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude two years ago.

(Gerald Herbert/Associated Press)

The actual results of each measure may vary from state to state. In Tennessee, for example, state officials said the ballot measure was written to remove outdated language without barring the state from forcing inmates to work.

Watts said Nevada’s measure is mostly “symbolic,” but he “welcomes” people to push the definition to apply to prison practice. Whether it ends up prohibiting forced labor for prisoners will likely be decided in the courts.

“My thought about it was to keep it simple,” Watts said of the measure. “The harder you make it, the harder it is” for voters to understand.

But in California, Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) went on to state clearly that the abolition of involuntary servitude would result in a voluntary work program for prisoners. This, he and his lawyers, would allow inmates to refuse work assignments, choose their own schedule, and have more time for rehabilitation, including therapy and education.

Most California voters weren’t convinced that was the right way to go.

“These are people who committed crimes and were punished for those crimes,” said Jeff Greeson, a Chico prosecutor who voted for Proposition 6. “The tasks that many of them automate are based on routine maintenance that anyone can do. to maintain a place.”

He said that “calling prisoner labor slavery” would be “a misuse of language.”

Austin Yu, a San Mateo voter, said he was “50-50” on the measure, but ultimately decided to vote yes. Yu said he thinks there is more work to be done in California to fix a legal system he sees as discriminatory against people of color.

“I think that if you are incarcerated, you should work,” he said. “But I’m liberal, so the successful part wasn’t affecting people equally.”

Jordan, of the Yes on 6 campaign, remains hopeful that California will eventually go the same way as Nevada did in passing its ban. His grassroots campaign was fueled by a group of volunteers who were serving time in prison. Their involvement in politics was a victory, he said even though they failed.

“They said, ‘Can we do this again?'” he recounted. “And I say, ‘You can do it over and over again. This is not the end.’