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.
Yes, convict leasing was designed to be a direct replacement for slavery. It was used that way right after slavery ended when you could arrest a black person for anything you could think of. No job? Arrested, leased. No home? Arrested, leased. Etc....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_leasing
I guess it became more egalitarian and less racist though? One can say they failed to end slavery, but they managed to end exclusively black slavery.
So it turns out that USA is actually not land of the free, but land of the equal. Seems what they like to accuse USSR of. Those damned commies.
If by "more egalitarian" you mean "less blatantly racist", the sure.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/2023-demographic-differences-federal-sentencing
And if you want to get more details, watch like any episodes of John Oliver.
America is not "the land of the equal".
I was joking
It was hard to tell the tone of your voice from a piece of text.
"damned commies" probably could work as a clue though