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

Guess I won't be eating food any more

I think it would be better to state the specific products rather than call out grocery stores at large. With this info I cant write a letter to Costco telling them I think they should drop a product and why

I have previously read that basically every Fortune 500 company has divisions that profit off of prison labor.

I love how there's actual companies like Coke, Pepsi, McD's, BK, Aldi, and then there's Kellog's Rice Krispies - Guess anything else Kellog's is fine then.

Except if it's from Aldi.

Who "sell" products? Which ones makes them?

It's basically slavery. I'm willing to bet that most of these people working were black too.

It was horrible to do to people that you claim to be 'rehabilitating'. Now it's going to be done to whatever marginalized group is next in the list, and provided no actual challenge or resistance, that list will grow to include people in trade unions, educated professionals, entertainers, free thinkers, any type of dissenter, oh and they've already dog whistled their plan to 'punish' people who donated to the Harris campaign.

Meanwhile the Trump administration is dismantling agencies that track and fight child/human trafficking. It's not by coincidence. The goal is that we all are essentially assets of the federal government that can be bought, sold, and/or stripped of citizenship if it becomes useful to the regime.

He was told he would serve 10 ½ years and avoid a possible death penalty, but it wasn’t until 2021 that a sympathetic judge finally released him. He was 73.

note: he was released because he wasn't usable as a prison laborer anymore. he was released because the prison couldn't make money off him anymore. he was released so he has to look for his own shelter.

Willie Ingram picked everything from cotton to okra during his 51 years in the state penitentiary, better known as Angola.

Fake news, this country only got fucked after Trump got elected or bush or reagan. It was all sunshine and peaches otherwise.

gReAtEsT cOuNtRtY iN tHe wOrLd

-most yankistanis

Had to find a way to keep the racists happy with the exception to the 13th amendment.

Not always. I'm sure it won't be a nation someday.

Built into the constitution, in fact. 13th amendment.

Once it's in an amendment, it can't be changed again. Them's the rules.

The question to me is how could we fix it. I believe prison should be about herabilitation, but overall I'd say most of the population does not. Someone gets a DUI, robs a store, commits fraud, gets in a fight, beats their spouse, stabs someone, murders someone... whatever it is. People say they should be imprisoned, many say they should never be let out especially on multiple offenses. Most of the prisoners take the jobs because it is used as a "privilege.". You have to have good behavior to be eligible, then you choose one if you want with benefits that slowly "work off" hours of their sentences. (If it's available). Certain jobs pay more time off their sentences than others, and some will try to get into those jobs. Yet we will have people who scream that they shouldn't be let out after 5 years because they "insert crime here".

IF leaving their imprisonment and performing tasks in the world around people with good behavior isn't a step to proving they are re-integratable into society, what is? I would say they need a hell of a lot more therapy, access to actual healthcare, psychologists, and resources that allow for easy integration back into society so they can find gainful employment, cut ties with their past and land on two feet to be able to move forward without extreme struggles that bring them back in.

Our country doesn't vote for that, because those same things aren't available for citizens on the street who didn't commit crimes yet. And they think they are better and don't deserve less opportunities than those who did something illegal.

So I guess what I'm saying is the first step to reforming our prisons is reforming our healthcare system... And wage inequality... And fuck... It's not going anywhere

Any time somebody tries to tell me that racism isn’t really a thing anymore (yes, they do), I always ask:

“Black people have six times the incarceration rate of white people. That can mean one of two things: there’s systemic racism, OR they are committing more crimes because it’s in their nature as a race. So, which is it?”

They never want to answer. They have to keep the mask on. No matter how hard I press for an answer, they never give one and get pissed off. It’s very telling.

Racists never wish to discuss the nuance. When discussing culture, behavior, and intelligence of the black population, they never wish to discuss the myriad of variables that would cause any negative outcomes. It’s so complicated and does not come down to one race being superior. I will never understand racism.

This is a good picture of "polite" racism in the North, too. We won't call them the N word, we'll just have them taken away.

Except as punishment for a crime. Literally in the text.

👉👊

"Slavery is now American Work Freedom Plus (tm)"

73 violations involving slave labour, 1 with child labour, am I reading that right?

A lot of companies here as well have legal provisions in the contracts we have with external vendors to state anti-slavery.

They're trying to build a prison, they're trying to build a prison, they're trying to build a prison - for you and me to live in

They also aren’t learning skills that will help them when they are released

That's by design. Teaching people skills to support themselves gives them an opportunity to break out of the cycle of recidivism. Teaching people skills that are useless for most employers but are profitable to the slavers ensures that they are left disadvantaged, where they'll eventually end up back in prison for another round.

To the same end, having a culture where employers are legally permitted to background-check candidates for any old job makes it harder for reformed criminals to reintegrate into society.

When adding "tough on crime" politicians and their legislature to the mix, you can begin to see exactly what the goal is.

Warden*

For you and me to live iiin!

It will never be defeated for good. Fascism is very profitable

Most of the US hates their neighbor/s, hence the strong anti-immigration push. That's beside the ingrained racism.

If a civil war breaks out, it'll be every man for himself or a loyalty pact based on color, origin, religion or geography like Afghanistan or Myanmar.

There won't be a "us vs them", it'll be "us vs all of the others".

But fantacizing about gravy seals is what ya'll do best.

What makes you think there will be organized resistance to the party?

Just oppression, purges, projection onto groups to be persecuted, and their assets atole.

The disfavored first, soon for the end of seizing their assets.

Not civil war, oligarcgic repression, as it looks now.

I don't need your civil war. It feeds the rich while it buries the poor.

hidden in plain sight slavery

FTFY

It's pretty common for people to be released before they've served their full sentence. It makes sense if we were to consider the purpose of prison to be rehabilitation — someone who cooperates is far more likely to be deemed safe to release. The problem is that the penal system barely pays lip-service to rehabilitation. Ideologically, it seems like it's split between two, often contradictory models: the rehabilitative approach, and the punitive approach.

If someone is in for a crime where early parole seems likely (if good behaviour), then it's not so much that their sentence is being reduced for doing the menial work, but that they will experience an effective increase to their sentence if they refuse to work.

Plus even if someone was unlikely to get parole, I imagine they'd still be pretty disincentivised to resist. I know someone who did time, and there was a particular prison guard who hated her, and when this guard was working, she would often find that her food was bad in some way, such as mouldy bread (She struggled with depression and suicidality, which meant there were periods where she would eat her food in her cell alone, rather than in the canteen). She would also receive disproportionate punishment for things under this guard, such as being sent to solitary confinement if someone tried to start a fight with her. I think the original beef with this guard started when my friend spat in her face during initial processing, but my point is that guards have an insane amount of power to make someone's already miserable life even worse. I wouldn't be surprised if refusing to work might lead to privileges being removed for the entire group, which would mean the guards wouldn't even need to punish you — the other prisoners would do it.

The prison system is disgustingly inhumane even when they're following all the rules they're meant to. It's even worse in reality though, because of how little accountability there is. People trying to push for political change constantly hit a wall because the average politician doesn't want to stick their neck out for prisoners, and the average voter thinks of themselves as ontologically different to prisoners (who they see as criminals who deserve everything they get (which also ignores the fact that a heckton of innocent people are in prison))

" Or if their sentences get reduced for arbitrary menial work, that seems like a robbery of justice to victims"

Victims are already robbed of justice. They are dragged through the courts, often being retraumatised again and again, because the system cares more about punishment of criminals than it does about actually helping people heal from a crime. As someone who has been a victim of a violent crime, one of the most painful things was learning that the same person who had robbed me had gone on to do more severe crimes after their release. I hate knowing that the prison system made that outcome more likely, and I wonder whether there might have been more justice in the world had I not reported my attack. It feels like the sentence they got for robbing me might as well have been a death sentence, from what I've heard about them after they were released. Society says "once a criminal, always a criminal", and then it puts you in a context where all you can be is a criminal. It's fucked up and it hurts my heart to think about. Someone made a victim of me, and that was something awful that should never have happened. However, it's not justice to then turn that person into a victim too (especially as I learned that they had had a pretty fucked up life before attacking me. It doesn't excuse it, but it does help to explain it).

Sorry. That got longer and heavier than I expected. I feel quite strongly about this topic.

Depends on where you wind up. You usually get punished, but some places are worse than others about it.

The most common punishment for refusing to work is suspending "privileges" like the ability to buy from commissary or recreation like yard time or visiting the library. Remember that it's common for hygiene items to only be available for purchase from commissary, so by denying you commissary access, they're effectively saying you can't buy extra tampons if you refuse to work.

At worst, it can be a reason to put you in isolation, move you to a higher security prison, or deny you parole.

It's more complex than just "prison labour isn't that bad."

I agree that prisoners should have jobs, opportunities to train for new vocations, something to be proud of accomplishing when they're locked away.

But that's not why they work. They work to make the prison more money, and in a profit driven prison system, it disincentivises rehabilitation because recidivism ensures a hefty circulating population of re-offenders.

In a system that saves money and stays competitive by using their prison labour as slave labour for pennies, there is no onus for that same system to try to help its prisoners not reoffend.

plus gays arent allowed to work

Nah, both are terrible

whataboutism