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.
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.
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.