In 1800, the United States conducted its second census, in which, out of a population of about 5.3 million peoples, there were 893,602 slaves. As of June 30, 2009, the amount of black inmates held in custody in either State or federal prisons, or local jails, was 905,800 peoples. In addition, according to Wikipedia.com in 2013, a total of 4,751,400 adults in 2013 were on probation or parole, to wit, if those held on probation or parole, were essentially the same racial percentage as those incarcerated, than an additional 1,873,261 blacks were under the supervision of parole or probation officers, signifying that in total, approximately 2,779,061 blacks were either in custody in jail of some sort, or on probation/parole.
This means, that there are significantly more blacks that are under the thumb of the justice system, today, with their freedom curtailed, than there were back in 1800, when slavery was legal in America.
While it is true, that the United States, has grown significantly in population since 1800, the fact that there are more blacks incarcerated, as well as more blacks under parole or probation, which in total well exceeds the amount of blacks previously held in the bondage of slavery, implies quite strongly, that while America was able to pass the thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery, it seems to have replaced it in fit, form, and function with a criminal justice system which puts an undue and unfair burden upon, in particular blacks, to seize their freedom, under the color of the law, so as to convict them of "crimes" and to thereby control their liberty, their happiness, and their lives.
America, must be held to the highest possible standard in the world, for this country, proclaims that it has been singularly blessed by God, yet, in its practice to its people, and specifically those that previously were brought into this country in involuntary servitude, the justice scorecard paints a rather bleak figure. The elephant in the room is that while slavery is about many things, for instance, as representing vividly man's inhumanity to man, it specifically is also about controlling a man's freedom of enjoying rightly the fruits of one's toil so as to wrest the bread of that man's labor into the hands of he who labors not; whereas jail in all of its many guises, wrests a man's freedom, into the control of abureaucracy that will not allow those caught up into the system, to ever leave it as a truly liberated man, but instead to live as three-fifths of a man, if even that.
If this, the richest nation in the world, in fact, the richest nation in the history of all mankind, cannot seem to comprehend its own Declaration of Independence, cannot seem to comprehend its own Constitution, and thereby spits in the face of our Creator, by acting as if all men are not created equal, and that some men do not have unalienable rights, than the lamp that lights our golden door, is truly extinguished, and our complete ruin, our just due.