Cheap prison labor is used to supply businesses with all sorts of products; but prisoners can be vulnerable to abuse

Prisoners are forced laborers without 13th Amendment
protections. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell, AP)

Less than a decade ago, a New York Times story ran with this headline, "A Small Indiana County Sends More People to Prison Than San Francisco and Durham, N.C., Combined. Why?" The story goes on to explore America's prison belt, which was brimming with rural residents, often sentenced for drug crimes by more conservative courts. But, if sending people away for extensive sentences is a rural answer to crime, residents may want to know what the incarcerated do while serving those sentences.

Angola, Louisiana, is home to the country's largest maximum-security prison, which used to be a Southern slave plantation but is now a vast farming facility with prisoner labor. "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," reports Robin McDowell and Margie Mason of The Associated Press. "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."

Prison workers are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. "If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement," McDowell and Mason write. "They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job."

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude "except as punishment for a crime," AP reports. "That clause is currently being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen states this year."

Meanwhile, many U.S. prisons "lease" incarcerated people for labor. "An analysis of data amassed by the AP from correctional facilities nationwide traced nearly $200 million worth of sales of farmed goods and livestock to businesses over the past six years," McDowell and Mason write. That amount does not include sales to state and government entities. 

Corporations who "hire" prisoners not only harness cheap, reliable labor, but they may reap additional benefits such as tax credits and other financial incentives. "Incarcerated workers also typically aren't covered by the most basic protections, including workers' compensation and federal safety standards," AP reports. "In many cases, they cannot file official complaints about poor working conditions."

Linking prison labor to shelved products requires following a complex web, but AP found "Mammoth commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge have in recent years scooped up millions of dollars' worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers."

To read how AP reporters crisscrossed the country to uncover agriculture trading practices tied to prison labor, read the full story here.