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.
I mean, if you consider ~$4.00 an hour a job...
But hey, free housing!
Being locked in a concrete block with no AC in an Alabama summer is not housing.
Better than the current sub minimum wage of $2.13 for tipped jobs.
It's not.
That's ~$4.00 an hour with benefits of food, shelter, and healthcare. They might be the worst of all three you can have, but they're included.
You must not be familiar with Alabama's prisons. AL prisons are a death sentence for hundreds of people a year.
Shh don't tell people. How will they get free slave labor if they need to ~~entrap~~ convince people to commit crimes?