Slavery never left it just got rebranded.
The Thirteenth Amendment needs to be amended.
Per Wikipedia: The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18, 1865. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.
It’s a scam, like everything in modern prisons. They intentionally underfeed prisoners, so that you have to buy extra food from the prison store, where it’s overpriced but at least you’ll get the calories and nutrients you need to stay healthy. Most prisoners don’t have external income, so they are forced to work those prison jobs for pennies on the dollar.
And this is just one example of how prison administrators have intentionally set things up to fuck over prisoners as much as possible. In the U.S., it is sad but true that a large percent of the general public simply does not care, they think the prisoners “deserve it”.
Oh, and those books you’re talking about, do you think those come for free? Do you think you’ll get them if you’re on the guards’ shit list because you’re too lazy to work? That varies by location, but you can be sure that there’s no guarantees of access to literature.