The exception, and what it means for you.

What a conviction does.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Read the middle of the sentence. The Constitution bans slavery for everyone except a person convicted of a crime. On the day of conviction the protection is suspended. No one in the courtroom says so.

Slavery has a legal definition the United States accepted in 1929: "the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised." The powers are possession, use, management, profit, transfer, and disposal. The locked door is not the question. Being used, managed, and profited from is. The three terms, explained.

Nine state constitutions carry no exception.

Alabama, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont removed it by vote since 2018. Rhode Island never wrote it. In those states the custodian has no authorization in the state constitution for any power of ownership. In every other state the exception stands in the state constitution, or the state says nothing and relies on the federal one. Find your state.

If you were never convicted, the exception does not reach you at all. People awaiting trial, in immigration detention, in civil commitment, and children in juvenile facilities have not been convicted of the thing they are held for. Held without conviction.

Look at what it lists. Then at what it leaves out.

If you pleaded guilty, your plea form lists the fees and the rights you gave up. It does not tell you that conviction suspends your protection against slavery. No plea form the network has audited does. New Jersey's form lists a thirty-dollar fee and not this; the petition to fix it is before that state's Supreme Court committee. Keep your copy. It is evidence of what you were told and what you were not.

The New Jersey petition, as filed (PDF)

The audits run on records.

What you can keep, if you can keep it safely:

1. Your work assignment: the job, the hours, the pay rate, and who profits from the work.
2. The rule that punishes refusing work, by number, and any write-up for refusing.
3. Grievance receipts and responses, with dates.
4. Your plea form and sentencing papers.
5. Anything that shows transfer for money, use of your body without consent, or profit from you.

Have someone you trust on the outside send copies, never originals, to info@abolishslavery.us. Write your state on everything. The network reads the record against the definition and publishes findings by state. It does not take individual cases.

Ask for the rules in writing.

Every state has a public records law. A family member on the outside can ask the department for its own rules: the work policy, the pay schedule, the discipline for refusing, and the contracts under which people in custody work for anyone else. The second page of the sheet is a model letter. Fill in the brackets and send it to the department's records custodian.

1. Keep the date you sent it. Most states set a deadline to respond. Silence past the deadline is itself a record.
2. Keep every page you receive, and every letter that denies or delays. A denial is a record too.
3. Send copies to the network with your state in the subject line.

The sheet, with the model letter (PDF)

Findings by state. Nothing about you by name.

Records that reach the network go into the state audits. The audits score the custodian, on its own rules and records, against the definition. Nothing identifying an individual is published. How the audits work · What one state's record shows.

• The exception, and what it means for you, two pages, with the model records request (PDF)
• Petition to amend New Jersey's plea form, filed April 17, 2026 (PDF)
• Where the states stand, kept current