Over the course of a two-year investigation, the Associated Press (AP) found that goods linked to U.S. prisoners wind up in the supply chains of a vast array of products, from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola. They are on the shelves of most supermarkets, including Kroger, Target, Aldi, and Whole Foods.
Some takeaways from the AP investigation include:
- The prisoners who help produce these goods are disproportionately people of color. Some are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work — or face punishment — and are sometimes paid pennies an hour or nothing at all. They are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job, and it can be almost impossible for them to sue.
- A wide range of businesses benefit from prison labor. Reporters found prison labor in the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart, and Costco and in the supply chains of goods being shipped all over the world via multinational companies.
- Almost all of the country’s state and federal adult prisons have some sort of work program. The vast majority of jobs are tied to tasks like maintaining prisons, laundry, or kitchen work, and some prisoners also work for states and municipalities, but others are contracted out to private companies either directly from their prisons or through work-release programs. They’re often hired in industries with severe labor shortages, doing jobs like working in poultry plants, meat-processing centers, and sawmills.
- While prison labor seeps into the supply chains of some companies through third-party suppliers without them knowing, others buy direct.
Corrections officials and other proponents note that not all work is forced and that prison jobs save taxpayers money. 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 cases, labor can mean time shaved off a sentence, 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 and treated humanely, and all work should be voluntary.
