Reddit reviews Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Slavery is a word that, like say fascism, is overused out of context and as such is misunderstood. i'm not making an apology of slavery, and will quote a review from a fantastic book to extend on that point:



>Douglas Blackmon writes an incredibly detailed account of the sad history of African Americans forcibly enslaved through questionable legal means long after the Civil War by several southern States up through WWII.

>Using trumped up charges or minor charges with extreme penalties requiring extended jail or prison terms, blacks were incarcerated and their terms leased out to mines, farms, logging companies and a variety of industries. Due to the financial rewards gained by arresting Sheriffs, Judges and Justices of the Peace, blacks were rounded up many times on false charges to merely increase the earning of those involved. The saddest history is the extreme treatment given to prisoners leased out or whose fines were paid by the owners of industry or property who maintained the prisoners until there "time" was complete although often extended. Working in horrible conditions, long days, 6 days a week, poorly fed, poorly housed and often severely beaten; blacks died by the score and were buried in unmarked graves. (...)

>What is particularly abhorrent was the gross mistreatment of prisoners and killings of helpless prisoners indicative of the fact that these men, and enslaved women, were considered less than slaves, as if they had no value primarily because they could be easily replaced by an abundant supply of arrested individuals at virtually no cost.

While you're right that some muggers do "loiter," there's a whole lot more of what DrMoo is saying. "Loitering" and other associated laws about not being in one place for too long have been historically used to just arrest blacks (and other minorities, eventually). They talk about it a lot in this book and I'd wager lots of others, don't feel like finding a particular source. The arguments for having such laws are to reduce crime of this nature and gang activity, but the arrests are generally on the same kind of people that the NYPD might plant drugs on to meet numbers.