cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/16448519

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

  • @kryptonianCodeMonkey
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    19
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    10 hours ago

    Check your 13th Amendment lady. Slavery is specifically deemed illegal EXCEPT as punishment for a crime. So… yes. They mean slavery. Legal modern day slavery. Honestly, it’s surprising it’s not worse and more common than it is.

    • @krashmo
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      36 hours ago

      The war on drugs and it’s disproportionate impact on black Americans makes a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of funneling people into prisons for the purpose of slave labor.

  • @over_clox
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    710 hours ago

    So, you mean I can get a job if I just move to Alabama, identify as black, and go piss behind a tree in a public park?

    • @PineRune
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      57 hours ago

      That would land you a sex offender charge, which they probably won’t give you work release with. Try murdering a poor person instead, they view that as mostly harmless. (Please don’t actually do any of this)