Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands
apnews.com
The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes to Coca-Cola.

Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all. After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill…

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    321·
    8 months ago

    It is fucking insane we’re productively using prison labor. Prison should be focused on rehabilitation, adding a profit motive just perverts incentives.

    I realize there are like a dozen other things insanely wrong with US prisons - and I don’t mean to minimize any of those.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      526·
      8 months ago

      You’re not wrong about how prisons should be about rehab etc, and prison labor is vile.

      But you got it backwards. These woke agendas are perverting the prison system…. It was always meant to be this way. (Which is why prison labor is the only form of forced labor constitutionally protected.)

      • Boinkage@lemmy.worldEnglish
        222·
        8 months ago

        If you use the words woke agenda unironically, you are not welcome in this instance of Lemmy.

        • PugJesus@kbin.social
          7·
          8 months ago

          I believe they’re using it sarcastically, especially considering that they say prison labor is vile.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          8 months ago

          it was absolutely sarcastic.

          the point I’m trying to make is that… prison labor is protected as the sole exception to slave labor in the US constitution. Prison labor has always been intended as a replacement for outright slavery.

          • The Snark Urge@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            8 months ago

            It’s hard to do sarcasm about conservatives. The shit they say is so much crazier then anything I’d think of to mock them

          • Boinkage@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            8 months ago

            Ah okay, you’re not a conservative idiot, you’re a liberal who is very bad at conveying sarcasm. Carry on.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          That’s amusing. So fascists are for prison reform?

          all I’m really saying is that the using prisoners for slave labor was always intended- which is why it’s enshrined in the US constitution as the only exception to slave labor:

          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.

          You can hate that all you want. I certainly do. It should be changed, but the unfortunate reality is it would take a constitutional amendment to get rid of it. A state might be able to pass a law forbidding it it, but I some how doubt it would survive in the current judicial atmosphere.