No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.

Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state’s inmates — who are disproportionately Black — can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry. But more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, the AP determined.

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-alabama-3b2c7e414c681ba545dc1d0ad30bfaf5

    • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
      23·
      22 hours ago

      You must not be American - the thirteenth amendment codifies slavery and involuntary servitude into the constitution.

      • can@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        21 hours ago

        I’m not, but I am familiar with that but I didn’t know it went this far. It’s so blatent.

        edit: fellow canadian

        • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
          8·
          21 hours ago

          Ya, I’m hyperbolizing a little bit… But not really. The 13th amendment is what outlawed black slavery in the United States… But also explicitly allows slavery in the United States:

          Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

          Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

    • cybervseas@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      1 day ago

      I’m sorry to say the Prison-Industrial Complex is a huge problem, and part of why this country has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world 🙁

      • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
        8·
        22 hours ago

        Companies like Bob Barker (not the tv one) and Sysco are quietly making mountains of cash to supply all those “leasable” inmates with the lowest possible quality food and toiletries. I would love to see a political candidate campaign on repealing the 13th amendment, I doubt it’ll happen any time soon but one can hope.

      • can@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        22 hours ago

        I was aware but I didn’t know it was this level.

        I can only hope more and more Americans realise we’re looking over in horror.

        • orcrist@lemm.ee
          4·
          20 hours ago

          Americans on average don’t think your looks of horror have weight. Clearly America is superior, so you’re just jealous and looking for something trivial to make yourself feel better, is the gut reaction. (Sad to say.)