Election 2016: Mike Huckabee Says Poor Convicts Should Be Sold Into Slavery?

Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee waded into the criminal justice reform waters Wednesday with a novel statement for improving America's system of prisons: Just sell poor convicts into slavery. Huckabee agreed with Jan Mickelson, the host of a right-wing radio show based in Des Moines, Iowa, after an extended rant in which Mickelson described biblical passages that suggest thieves should be sold into slavery.

The radio host said that the "criminal justice system has been taken over by progressives," and continued, referencing the biblical Book of Exodus. "It says, if a person steals, they have to pay it back twofold, fourfold. If they don't have anything, we're supposed to take them down and sell them," he said, according to Think Progress.

"Well, it really would be," Huckabee said when asked if that system would be better than the current American criminal justice system. "Sometimes the best way to deal with a nonviolent criminal behavior is what you just suggested."

Huckabee is running a long-shot campaign for the Republican nomination. He's currently in eighth place at 2.7 percent in national polls, according to an average from Real Clear Politics.

Slavery is the go-to solution for Mickelson on more than one issue. In August, during the heat of the Donald Trump storm that brought talk of illegal immigration to the lips of virtually all presidential candidates, Mickelson suggested that if undocumented immigrants don't leave the country, then the United States should enslave them.

Mickelson also seems to pull weight in the Republican field and has hosted former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on his show. Carson is the current No. 2 in national polls, and Fiorina is in fourth place.

The Constitution of the United States outlawed slavery when the 13th Amendment was ratified in December 1865. The law came after the nation engaged in a bloody civil war that claimed more lives than any other war in the history of the country: 618,222, according to a recent estimate.