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By MARGIE MASON and ROBIN MCDOWELL

ANGOLA, Louisiana
A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.

Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are forced to work, sometimes for pennies an hour or 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 supplies giants like McDonald’s,Walmart and Costco.

Intricate, invisible webs, just like this one, link some of the world’s largest companies and most popular brands to jobs performed by U.S. prisoners nationwide, according to a sweeping two-year AP investigation that tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market.

They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers, working under what some experts describe as slave-like conditions. If they refuse to work, they face punishment that includes being sent to solitary confinement or having time added to their sentences. They also are excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.

Inmates harvest turnips at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, April 15, 2014, in Angola, La. The former 19th-century antebellum plantation once was owned by one of the largest slave traders in the United States. Within days of arrival, they head to the fields, sometimes using picking crops hoes and shovels or picking crops by hand. After working three years for free, they earn between 2 cents and 40 cents an hour, sweating under the watchful eyes of gun-toting correctional officers on horseback. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The goods these prisoners produce wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products found in most American kitchens, from Rice Krispies cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour, Jif peanut butter, Coca-Cola, Riceland rice, and M&M chocolates. They are on the shelves of virtually every supermarket in the country, including Kroger, Target and Whole Foods. And some products are exported.

Many of the companies that buy directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of forced or prison labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back in large to labor shortages needed to help rebuild the South’s shattered economy after the Civil War. Enshrined in the Constitution by the 13th Amendment, slavery and involuntary servitude are banned – except as punishment for a crime.

That clause is currently being challenged on the federal levels. Its appearance in many state constitutions also is under debate and expected to reach the ballot around a dozen states this year.

Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves toiled more than 150 years ago, with present-day images looking eerily similar to the past. In Louisiana, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, Black men still stoop over crops stretching far into the distance, overseen by armed guards on horseback.

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

He recalled seeing men, working with little or no water, passing out in the fields in triple-digit heat. Some days, he said, workers would throw their tools in the air to protest, despite knowing the repercussions.

“They’d come, maybe four in the truck, shields over their face, billy clubs, and they’d beat you right there in the field. They beat you, handcuff you and beat you again,” said Ingram, who was supposed to serve 10 ½ years in prison for a crime he said he didn’t commit. As laws changed, so did his sentence. He was released in 2021 at age 73 after a sympathetic judge learned he was still behind bars.

Prison populations in the United States started to soar in the 1970s just as Ingram entered the system, disproportionately hitting people of color. Now, with about 2 million prisoners behind bars, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire, extending far beyond the classic images of people stamping license plates, working on road crews or battling wildfires.

Gallery: Some prisoners earn pennies an hour or nothing at all

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In this April 15, 2014 photo, inmates harvest turnips at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. The former 19th-century antebellum plantation once was owned by one of the largest slave traders in the United States. Within days of arrival, they head to the fields, sometimes using picking crops hoes and shovels or picking crops by hand. After working three years for free, they earn between 2 cents and 40 cents an hour, sweating under the watchful eyes of gun-toting correctional officers on horseback. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

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Inmate Jason Garcia unloads hay at the dairy in the Montana State Prison, Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023, in Deer Lodge, Mont. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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An Inmate unloads a truck of harvested corn at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023, in Gould, Ark. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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Inmates Brett Lockhart, left, and Mark McGuire move a newly born calf at the dairy at the Montana State Prison Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023, in Deer Lodge, Mont. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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In this April 15, 2014 photo, inmates line up to work inside a vegetable processing plant at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. The former 19th-century antebellum plantation once was owned by one of the largest slave traders in the United States. Within days of arrival, they head to the fields, sometimes using picking crops hoes and shovels or picking crops by hand. After working three years for free, they earn between 2 cents and 40 cents an hour, sweating under the watchful eyes of gun-toting correctional officers on horseback.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

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Inmate Dean Crider uses a device to give a cow pills in the dairy at the Montana State Prison Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023, in Deer Lodge, Mont. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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Inmate Michael Jefferson wipes away sweat while herding cattle at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, in Gould, Ark. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Although agriculture represents a small percentage of the overall prison workforce, it has been constant since slaves harvested cotton, tobacco and sugarcane. Today, farmed goods are still the only products that can legally be purchased directly from prisons and sold across state lines.

An analysis of data amassed by the AP traced more than $370 million worth of transactions to agriculture-based prison labor in state and federal facilities over the past six years. That includes everything from money earned by leasing prisoners out to work at private businesses to farmed goods and livestock sold on the open market. Many of these goods came from large operations in the South, including Louisiana and Alabama, where class-action lawsuits filed in recent months liken the practice to modern-day slavery. But almost every state has some sort of agriculture program.

Corrections officials and other proponents note that not all work is forced and that prison jobs save taxpayers money. For example, in some cases, the food produced is served in prison kitchens. They also say workers are learning skills that can be used when they’re released and given a sense of purpose, which could help ward off repeat offenses. In some places, it allows them to also shave time off their sentences. And the jobs provide a way to repay a debt to society, they say.

While most critics don’t believe all jobs should be eliminated, they say incarcerated people should be paid fairly, treated humanely and that all work should be voluntary. Some note that even when people get specialized training, like firefighting, their criminal records can make it almost impossible to get hired on the outside.

“They are largely uncompensated, they are being forced to work, and it’s unsafe. They also aren’t learning skills that will help them when they are released,” said law professor Andrea Armstrong, an expert on prison labor at Loyola University New Orleans. “It raises the question of why we are still forcing people to work in the fields.”

In addition to tapping a cheap, reliable workforce, companies often don’t have to pay health insurance and sometimes get tax credits and other financial incentives. Incarcerated workers typically aren’t covered by the most basic protections, including workers’ compensation and federal safety standards. In many cases, they cannot file official complaints about poor working conditions.

Inmates serving time at the Arizona State Prison Complex – Perryville arrive at the gates of a Hickman’s Family Farms egg ranch in Buckeye, Arizona, April 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

These prisoners often work in industries with severe labor shortages, doing some of the country’s dirtiest and most dangerous jobs.

The AP spoke to more than 80 current or formerly incarcerated people, including men and women convicted of crimes that ranged from murder to shoplifting, writing bad checks, theft or other illegal acts linked to drug abuse. Some were given long sentences for nonviolent offenses because they had previous convictions, while others were released after proving their innocence.

Reporters found prisoners who were hurt or maimed on the job, and also interviewed women who were sexually harassed or abused, sometimes by their civilian supervisors or the correctional officers overseeing them. While it’s often nearly impossible for those involved in workplace accidents to sue, the AP examined dozens of cases that managed to make their way into the court system. Reporters also spoke to family members of prisoners who were killed.

One of those was Frank Dwayne Ellington, who was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after stealing a man’s wallet at gunpoint – a result of Alabama’s habitual offenders act. In 2017, Ellington, 33, was cleaning a machine near the chicken “kill line” in Ashland at Koch Foods – one of the country’s biggest poultry-processing companies – when its whirling teeth caught his arm and sucked him inside, crushing his skull. He died instantly.

During a years-long legal battle, Koch Foods at first argued Ellington wasn’t technically an employee, and later said his family should be barred from filing for wrongful death because the company had paid his funeral expenses. The case eventually was settled under undisclosed terms. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $19,500, saying it violated safety standards and did not provide workers with proper training.

“It’s somebody’s child, it’s somebody’s dad, it’s somebody’s uncle, it’s somebody’s family,” said Ellington’s mother, Alishia Powell-Clark. “Yes, they did wrong, but they are paying for it.”

The AP found that U.S. prison labor is in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies, including to countries that have been slapped with import bans by Washington in recent years for using prison and forced labor themselves. Cotton from prisons in the state of Georgia, for example, is bought by Staplcotn. The large cooperative exports to China, one of the biggest manufacturers of top U.S. clothing brands.

While many companies are purchasing prison-made goods unknowingly through third-party suppliers, others buy direct. Mammoth commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge – which together post annual revenues of more than $400 billion – have been scooping up millions of dollars’ worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers.

Some of the largest cheesemakers and cooperatives like the Dairy Farmers of America, which bills itself as the top supplier of raw milk worldwide, also have bought straight from correctional facilities.

Companies buying goods, from X to XX, say XXXX. DARRELL, NAT, NOTE THAT THIS COMMENT IS LIKELY TO BE A FEW PARAGRAPHS LONGXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxxxXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXxxXXXXXXX

The AP tied prison labor to the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest companies

To understand the business of prison labor and the complex movement of agricultural goods, the AP sought information from all 50 states, through public records requests and inquiries to corrections departments. Reporters also crisscrossed the country, following trucks transporting crops and livestock linked to prison work, and tailed transport vans from prisons and work-release sites heading to places such as poultry plants, egg farms and fast-food restaurants.

In many cases, officials did not provide a full accounting, omitting some categories or limiting sales figures to just one or two years. A lack of transparency and, at times, baffling losses exposed in audits, also added to the challenges of fully tracking the money.

Big-ticket items like row crops and livestock are sold on the open market, with profits fed back into agriculture programs. For instance, more than a dozen state prison farms, including operations in Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming, sold about $40 million worth of cattle in the past five years.

As with other sales, the custody of cows can take a serpentine route. Because they often are sold online at auction houses or to stockyards, it can be almost impossible to determine where the beef eventually ends up.

Sometimes there’s only one way to know for sure.

In Louisiana, an AP reporter watched as three long trailers loaded with more than 80 cattle left the state penitentiary. The cows raised by prisoners traveled for about an hour before being unloaded for sale at Dominique’s Livestock Market in Baton Rouge.

As they were shoved through a gate into a viewing pen, the auctioneer jokingly warned buyers to “Watch out!” The cows, he said, had just broken out of prison.

Within minutes, the Angola lot was snapped up by a local livestock dealer, who then sold the cattle to a Texas beef processor that also buys cows directly from prisons in that state. The slaughterhouse supplies some of the country’s biggest fast-food chains, supermarkets and meat exporters, including Burger King, Sam’s Club and Tyson Foods.

“It’s a real slap in the face, to hear where all those cattle are going,” said Jermaine Hudson, who served 22 years at Angola on a robbery conviction before he was exonerated.

He said it’s especially galling because the food served in prison tasted like slop.

“Those were some of the most disrespectful meals,” Hudson said, “that I ever, in my life, had to endure.”

___

In this aerial photo, the Louisiana State Penitentiary is seen along the bending Mississippi River in Angola, La., Friday, July 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Angola is imposing in its sheer scale. The so-called “Alcatraz of the South” is tucked far away, surrounded by crocodile-infested swamps in a bend of the Mississippi River. It spans 18,000 acres – an area bigger than the island of Manhattan – and has its own ZIP code.

The former 19th-century antebellum plantation once was owned by one of the largest slave traders in the U.S. Today, it houses some 5,000 men behind its razor-wire walls, three-quarters of them Black, most of whom will never get out. All have been sentenced to hard labor. Within days of arrival, they head to the fields, sometimes using hoes and shovels or picking crops by hand. After working three years for free, they earn between 2 cents and 40 cents an hour.

Calvin Thomas, who spent more than 17 years at Angola, said anyone who refused to work, didn’t produce enough or just stepped outside the long straight rows knew there would be consequences.

“If he shoots the gun in the air because you done passed that line, that means you’re going to get locked up and you’re going to have to pay for that bullet that he shot,” said Thomas, adding that some days were so blistering hot the horses would collapse.

You can’t call it anything else. It’s just slavery.”

-Calvin Thomas

Comment from Louisiana corrections spokesman Ken Pastorick in response to the allegations. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Meanwhile, current and former prisoners in both Louisiana and Alabama have filed class-action lawsuits in the past four months saying they have been forced to provide cheap _ or free _ labor to the state and private companies.

ASK KEN TO COMMENT ON IT.

Prisoners have been made to work since before emancipation, when slaves were at times imprisoned and then leased out by local authorities.

But after the Civil War, the 13th Amendment’s exclusionary clause that allows for prison labor provided legal cover to round up thousands of mostly young Black men. Many were jailed for petty offenses like loitering, vagrancy or talking loudly in front of white women. They then were leased out by states to plantations like Angola and some of the country’s biggest privately owned companies, including coal mines and railroads, and routinely whipped for not meeting quotas while doing brutal and often deadly work.

Prison labor past and present: Some prisoners are forced to work on former slave plantations and face punishment if they refuse

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This 1978 photo shows a flatweeding, hoe, squad walking to a work area at the Ellis unit of the Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville, Texas. (Bruce Jackson via AP)

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In this 1973 photo, three guards shake down and body search a prisoner and at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit in Grady, Ark. (Bruce Jackson via AP)

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This 1978 photo shows a flatweeding, hoe, squad at work at the Ellis unit of the Texas Department of Corrections in Huntsville, Texas. (Bruce Jackson via AP)

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In this 1975 photo, an inmate picks cotton at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit in Grady, Ark. (Bruce Jackson via AP)

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In this 1975 photo, Prisoners ride a wagon train taking them to a work area at the Department of Corrections Cummins Unit in Grady, Ark. (Bruce Jackson via AP)

The convict-leasing period, (LINK PODCAST HERE) which officially ended in 1928, helped chart the path to America’s modern-day prison-industrial complex.

Incarceration was used not just for punishment or rehabilitation but for profit. A law passed a few years later made it illegal to knowingly transport or sell goods made by incarcerated workers across state lines, though an exception was made for agricultural products. Today, after years of efforts by lawmakers and businesses, private corporations are setting up joint ventures with corrections agencies, enabling them to sell almost anything nationwide.

To learn more about the history of prison labor, listen to this Reveal podcast as AP reporters take you back more than 150 years to explore how a brutal system known as convict leasing helped build American business empires.

Civilian workers are guaranteed basic rights and protections by OSHA and laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act, but prisoners are denied many of those entitlements and cannot protest or form unions.

“They may be doing the exact same work as people who are not incarcerated, but they don’t have the training, they don’t have the experience, they don’t have the protective equipment,” said Jennifer Turner, lead author of an American Civil Liberties Union report on prison labor.

Almost all of the country’s state and federal adult prisons have some sort of work program, employing around 800,000 people, the 2022 report said. It noted that the vast majority of those jobs are tied to tasks like maintaining prisons, laundry or kitchen work.

Altogether, labor tied specifically to goods and services produced through prison industries brought in more than $2 billion in 2021, the report said. That includes everything from making mattresses to solar panels, but does not account for work-release and other programs run through local jails, detention and immigration centers and even drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities.

Some also work beyond prison gates – everywhere from Jiffy Lube to a mill that supplies Domino Sugar. Outside jobs often are coveted because they typically pay more and some states deposit a small percentage earned into a savings account for prisoners’ eventual release. Though some companies pay minimum wage, as much as 80 percent can be garnished for items such as room and board and court fees.

David Farabough, director of the agricultural division for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, holds rice at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, in Gould, Ark. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Inmate Christopher Terrell stands near a tractor at the Arkansas Department of Corrections Cummins Unit Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, in Gould, Ark. (AP Photo/John Locher)

It’s a different story for those on prison farms. The biggest operations remain in the South, and crops are still harvested on a number of former slave plantations, including in Arkansas, Texas and at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm. Those states, along with Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia, pay nothing for most work.

Many larger farms have mechanized, using commercial-size tractors and trucks for cotton, rice and other row crops, but prisoners in some places continue to do work by hand without gloves or protective gear, including clearing brush with swing blades.

“I was in a field with a hoe in my hand with maybe like a hundred other women. We were standing in a line very closely together, and we had to raise our hoes up at the exact same time and count ‘One, two, three, chop!’” said LaQuanda “Faye” Jacobs, who worked on various prison farms in Arkansas.

Jacobs, who was released in 2018 after 26 years, said the only pay she received was two rolls of toilet paper a week, toothpaste and a few menstrual pads each month.

Laquana “Faye” Jacobs holds a hoe as she recalls her time working on Arkansas prison farm Monday, Sept. 18, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo. Jacobs, worked on Arkansas prison farms that together total 21,000 acres before being released in 2018 after 26 years. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

She recalled being made to carry rocks from one end of a field to the other and back again for hours, and said she also endured taunting from guards saying, “Come on, hos, it’s hoe squad!” She said she later was sent back to the fields at another prison after women there complained of sexual abuse and harassment by staff inside the facility.

“We were like ‘Is this a punishment?’” she said. “‘We’re telling y’all that we’re being sexually assaulted, and you come back and the first thing you want to do is just put us all on hoe squad.’”

David Farabough, who oversees the state’s 21,000 acres of prison farms, said Arkansas’ operations aren’t “anywhere close to slavery.”

“A lot of these guys come from homes where they’ve never understood work and they’ve never understood the feeling at the end of the day for a job well-done,” he said. “We’re giving them purpose. … And then at the end of the day, they get the return by having better food in the kitchens.”

In addition to giant farms, at least 650 correctional facilities nationwide have prisoners doing jobs like landscaping, tending greenhouses and gardens, raising livestock, beekeeping and even fish farming, said Joshua Sbicca, director of the Prison Agriculture Lab at Colorado State University. He noted that corrections officials exert power by deciding who deserves trade-building jobs like welding, for example, and who works in the fields.

In several states, along with raising chickens, cows and hogs, corrections’ departments have their own processing plants, dairies and canneries. But many states also hire out prisoners to do that same work at big private companies.

The AP met women in Mississippi locked up for an indefinite period at restitution centers, the equivalent of debtors’ prisons, to pay off court-mandated expenses – the only program of its kind in the country. They worked at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and other fast-food chains and also have been hired out to individuals for work like lawn mowing or home repairs.

“There is nothing innovative or interesting about this system of forced labor as punishment for what in so many instances is an issue of poverty or substance abuse,” said Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi.

In Alabama, where prisoners are leased out by private companies, AP reporters followed inmate transport vans to poultry plants run by Tyson Foods, which owns a company that supplies beef, chicken and fish to McDonald’s, along with brands such as Hillshire Farms, Jimmy Dean and Sara Lee. The vans also stopped at Wayne Farms, part of a joint venture owned by Continental Grain Company and Cargill – America’s largest privately owned company, bringing in $177 billion in revenue last fiscal year, and a supplier to major companies like PepsiCo.

Some are put to work even before they’ve been convicted. An unusual work-release program in the state accepts pre-trial defendants, allowing them to avoid jail while earning bond money. But with multiple fees deducted from their salaries, that can take time.

Members of Brevard County’s chain gang, jail inmates convicted of non-violent misdemeanors, wear chains around their ankles as they pick up trash along a roadside in Titusville, Fla., Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023. Participation in the 5-8 man chain gang, created by county sheriff Wayne Ivey as a crime deterrent, is voluntary and sometimes has a waitlist to join. While participants said wearing ankle chains shortened their natural strides and was “a little humiliating,” they chose to join the chain gain for the fresh air, exercise, and variety of work, rather than to sit inside the jail for the duration of their sentences. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

The AP went out on a work detail with a Florida chain gang wearing black-and-white striped uniforms and ankle shackles, created after Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey took office in 2012. He said the unpaid work is voluntary and so popular that it has a waitlist.

“It’s a win-win,” he said. “The inmate that’s doing that is learning a skill set. … They are making time go by at a faster pace. The other side of the win-win is, it’s generally saving the taxpayers money.”

Ivey noted it’s one of the only remaining places in the country where a chain gang still operates.

I don’t feel like they should get paid. They’re paying back their debt to society for violating the law.”

- Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey

Elsewhere, several former prisoners spoke positively about their work experiences, even if they sometimes felt exploited.

“I didn’t really think about it until I got out, and I was like, ‘Wow, you know, I actually took something from there and applied it out here,’” said William “Buck” Saunders, who got certified to operate a forklift at his job stacking animal feed at Cargill while incarcerated in Arizona.

Private companies that hire prisoners get a reliable, plentiful workforce even during unprecedented labor shortages stemming from immigration crackdowns and, more recently, the coronavirus pandemic.

In March 2020, though all other outside jobs were halted, about 140 women were abruptly moved from their Arizona prison to a barn-like dorm on property owned by Hickman’s Family Farms, which pitches itself as the Southwest’s largest egg producer.

Hickman’s has employed thousands of prisoners for nearly 30 years and supplies many grocery stores, including Costco, Albertsons and Kroger, selling brands such as Egg-Land’s Best and Land O’ Lakes. It is the state corrections department’s largest private labor contractor, bringing in nearly $35 million over the past six fiscal years.

“The only reason they had us out there was because they didn’t want to lose that contract because the prison makes so much money off of it,” said Brooke Counts, who worked at Hickman’s desert site for nearly a year during the pandemic’s height. She was serving a drug-related sentence and said she feared losing privileges or being transferred to a more secure prison yard if she refused.

Counts said she saw prisoners who were seriously hurt, including one woman who was impaled and required a helicopter life flight and another who lost part of a finger.

Hickman’s, which has faced numerous lawsuits stemming from inmate injuries, response here. Officials at the corrections department would not comment on why the women were moved off site or who was involved in making the decision, saying it happened during a previous administration. We can quote from press release in the margin. (hickman’s brought in $7 million in FY 2020). XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Some women employed by Hickman’s earned less than $3 an hour after deductions, including 30 percent taken by the state for room and board, even though they were living outside the prison.

“While we were out there, we were still paying the prison rent,” said Counts, adding it cost her up to $450 a month. “What for?”

The business of prison labor is so vast and convoluted that tracing the money can be challenging.

Some agricultural programs regularly go into the red, raising questions in state audits and prompting investigations into potential corruption, mismanagement or general inefficiency.

Nearly half the agricultural goods produced in Texas between 2014 and 2018 lost money, for example, and a similar report in Louisiana uncovered losses of up to $1.5 million a year between fiscal years 2016 and 2018. A separate federal investigation into graft at the for-profit arm of Louisiana’s correctional department led to the jailing of two employees.

Correctional officials respond that steep farming expenditures and unpredictable variables like weather can eat into profits. And while some goods may do poorly, they note, others do well.

At times, prisons have generated revenue by tapping into goods tied to their states’ signature foods.

Though some companies might have since stopped buying, the AP found raw milk from a Wisconsin prison dairy went to BelGioioso Cheese, which makes Polly-O string cheese and other products that land in grocery stores nationwide like Whole Foods. A California women’s prison provided almonds to Minturn Nut Company, a major producer and exporter. And in Georgia, prison-grown peanuts were bought by one of the country’s leading distributors, Golden Peanut, which supplies to America’s top candy and peanut butter brands.

For many states, it’s the work-release programs that have become the biggest cash generators, largely because of the low overhead. Though inmates can earn more working in the outside world, they often end up with only about $2 or $3 an hour after multiple deductions. In Alabama, for instance, the state brought in more than $30 million in the past five fiscal years after garnishing more than 40 percent of prisoners’ wages.

Aerial video shows the Raceland Raw Sugar mill in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana. The mill is one of more than 1,200 private companies in the state that has hired incarcerated workers through transitional work programs. More than half of their wages can be deducted.

In some states, work-release programs are run on the local level, with sheriffs frequently responsible for handling the books and awarding contracts. And though the programs are widely praised – by the state, employers and often prisoners themselves – reports of abuse exist.

In Louisiana more than 1,200 private companies hire incarcerated workers, at times bringing in more than $50 million a year, according to state auditors. Sheriffs get more than $20 a day for each state prisoner they house to help ease overcrowding and can deduct more than half of the wages earned by those contracted out to private companies – a huge revenue stream for small counties.

Jack Strain, a former longtime sheriff in the state’s St. Tammany Parish, pleaded guilty in 2021 in a scheme involving the privatization of a work-release program in which more than $1.4 million was steered to Strain, family members and close friends. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, which came on top of four consecutive life sentences for a broader sex scandal linked to that same program.

Unlike work crews picking up litter in orange jumpsuits, most people who take part in work-release programs aren’t easily identifiable. They often have just a few months or years left on their sentences and wear the same company uniforms as their civilian counterparts.

For years, they’ve worked unnoticed at thousands of businesses nationwide, behind the counters of restaurant chains like Subway, KFC, Chili’s Grill & Bar, Wendy’s and Outback Steakhouse, at hotels like Marriott, and at major retail stores like Walgreen’s and Dollar Tree, the AP found.

Incarcerated people also are sometimes contracted to companies that partner with prisons. In Idaho, they’ve sorted and packed the state’s famous potatoes and worked at a company that’s a major supplier for McDonald’s french fries. In Kansas, they’ve been employed at Russell Stover chocolates and Cal-Maine Foods, the country’s largest egg producer. And in Arizona, they have been hired by Taylor Farms, which sells salad kits in nearly every major grocery store nationwide and supplies popular fast-food chains and restaurants like Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Some states would not provide the names of companies taking part in transitional prison work programs, citing security concerns. So AP reporters confirmed some prisoners’ private employers with officials running operations on the ground and also followed inmate transport vehicles as they zigzagged through cities and drove down country roads. The vans stopped everywhere from meat-processing plants to a chicken and daiquiri restaurant.

Spanish moss hangs from trees lining a courtyard at The Myrtles, a former antebellum home slave plantation turned tourist site, Nov. 16, 2021 in St. Francisville, La, (AP Photo Margie Mason)

One pulled into the manicured grounds of a former slave plantation that has been transformed into a popular tourist site and hotel in St. Francisville, Louisiana, where visitors pose for wedding photos under old live oaks draped with Spanish moss.

As a reporter watched, a gray West Feliciana Parish van emblazoned with “Sheriff Transitional Work Program” pulled up. Two Black men hopped out and quickly walked through the restaurant’s back door. One nervously said he was there to wash dishes before his boss called him back inside.

Former Angola inmate, Curtis Davis, talks about his time at the penitentiary during a 2021 visit to The Myrtles plantation tourist site in St. Francisville, La. (AP Photo/ Serginho Roosblad)

The Myrtles, as the antebellum home is known, sits just 20 miles away from where men toil in the fields of Angola.

“Slavery has not been abolished,” said Curtis Davis, who spent more than 25 years at the penitentiary and is now fighting to change state laws that allow for forced labor in prisons.

“It is still operating in present tense,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”

Add a credit line for Robert Bumsted, who contributed a quote.

This story was supported by Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.