In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything 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 and Whole Foods. They’re also exported.
ANGOLA , La. — 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.
Many of the companies buying directly from prisons are violating their own policies against the use of such labor. But it’s completely legal, dating back largely to the need for labor 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.
“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 received a life sentence after pleading guilty to a crime he said he didn’t commit. 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.
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.
The AP sifted through thousands of pages of documents and 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 use. Some were given long sentences for nonviolent offenses because they had previous convictions, while others were released after proving their innocence.
During a yearslong 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 workers had not been given proper training and that its machines had inadequate safety guards.
The AP reached out for comment to the companies it identified as having connections to prison labor, but most did not respond. To understand the business of prison labor and the complex movement of agricultural goods, the AP collected 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.
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. Meat from the slaughterhouse winds up in the supply chains of some of the country’s biggest fast-food chains, supermarkets and meat exporters, including Burger King, Sam’s Club and Tyson Foods.
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. But after the Civil War, the 13th Amendment’s exception 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 and vagrancy. They then were leased out by states to plantations like Angola and some of the country’s biggest companies, including coal mines and railroads. They were routinely whipped for not meeting quotas while doing brutal and often deadly work.
Almost all of the country’s state and federal adult prisons have some sort of work program, employing around 800,000 people, the report said. It noted the vast majority of those jobs are connected to tasks like maintaining prisons, laundry or kitchen work, which typically pay a few cents an hour if anything at all. And the few who land the highest-paying state industry jobs may earn only a dollar an hour.
Prisoner Christopher Terrell stands near a tractor at the Cummins Unit of Arkansas' Department of Corrections Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, in Gould, Ark. The biggest operations remain in the South, and crops are still harvested on a number of former slave plantations, including in Arkansas. Most larger farms have mechanized, using commercial-size tractors and trucks for corn, rice and other row crops, but prisoners in some places continue to do work by hand.
“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 Faye Jacobs, who worked on prison farms in Arkansas. “We were like ‘Is this a punishment?’” she said. “‘We’re telling y’all that we’re being sexually harassed, and you come back and the first thing you want to do is just put us all on hoe squad.’”
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. Though Tyson did not respond to questions about direct links to prison farms, it said that its work-release programs are voluntary and that incarcerated workers receive the same pay as their civilian colleagues.
“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.”I don’t feel like they should get paid. They’re paying back their debt to society for violating the law.”Elsewhere, several former prisoners spoke positively about their work experiences, even if they sometimes felt exploited.
In March 2020, though all other outside company jobs were halted, the Arizona corrections department announced about 140 women were being abruptly moved from their prison to a metal hangar-like warehouse on property owned by Hickman’s Family Farms, which pitches itself as the Southwest’s largest egg producer.
Hickman’s, which has faced a number of lawsuits stemming from inmate injuries, did not respond to emailed questions or phone messages seeking a response. Corrections department officials would not comment on why the women were moved off-site, saying it happened during a previous administration. But a statement at the time said the move was made to “ensure a stable food supply while also protecting public health and the health of those in our custody.
Prisons at times have generated revenue by tapping into niche markets or to their states’ signature foods. In some states, work-release programs are run on the local level, with sheriffs frequently responsible for handling the books and awarding contracts. Even though the programs are widely praised – by the state, employers and often prisoners themselves – reports of abuse exist.
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