Your guide to Proposition 6: Ending forced prison labor

Proposition 6 asks California voters to amend the state Constitution to ban involuntary servitude, which would end forced labor in state prisons.

California is one of eight states that still allows involuntary servitude as a criminal punishment. Proposition 6 would end mandatory work requirements for state prisoners, instead creating a voluntary work program for incarcerated people. It would also protect prisoners from being disciplined for refusing a work assignment. Voters in other states including Alabama, Oregon and Vermont also passed similar measures.

About 40,000 of the state’s 90,000 inmates work in a variety of jobs including construction, laundry, firefighting and cooking. Most of them earn as little as 74 cents an hour.

Proposition 6 was placed on the ballot by California state lawmakers, who supported it with a bipartisan vote. The measure is a Legislative Black Caucus priority bill. Additional supporters include numerous liberal groups that advocate for reforming the criminal justice system.

Also in support of the bill are human rights organizations such as ACLU California Action, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, California Democratic Party, California Teachers Assn., California Labor Federation, and League of Women Voters of California. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also has endorsed the measure.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. opposes this measure.

Some Republican lawmakers have expressed worry that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would have to pay prisoners minimum wage, which would cost the state over a billion dollars annually. Proposition 6 doesn’t mandate wages, and a related new law explicitly says that the state would not be required to pay prisoners minimum wage and that the secretary of the Corrections Department would set prison wages.

All of Us or None, a civil and human rights organization, has contributed $345,000. Criminal justice reform donors Patty Quillin and Quinn Delaney have given $250,000 and $100,000, respectively. The Heising-Simons Action Fund, run by Elizabeth Simons and Mark Heising, contributed $350,000. Voters Organized to Educate, a Louisiana-based organization that informs the public about voting rights and election information, contributed $120,000.

The Times has not identified any opposing committees.

California’s Constitution mirrors the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which allows for involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. A growing list of states have passed similar initiatives that removed involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes from their state constitutions. Those states include Vermont, Oregon, Tennessee, Alabama, Nebraska, Utah, and Colorado.

Criminal justice reform advocates have been pushing for a change to the language in the Constitution for years, saying it allows the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to require able-bodied inmates to work for as little as 35 cents an hour.

The first push to remove that exception from the state Constitution stalled in 2022 because lawmakers feared it would cost billions. After the effort was discarded, Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City), chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, brought back the measure last year as one of the California Reparations Task Force‘s 14 reparations bills for the descendants of enslaved African Americans. This measure would make prison work optional by instituting a voluntary work program.

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 50% of voters are likely to vote no and 46% are likely to vote yes on this legislative constitutional amendment. The remaining 3% are undecided.