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

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. 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 feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill…

  • crimsonpoodle@pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    The closest I can come to agreeing with you is community service as a punishment or as a means to reduce one’s sentence. However, especially given what constitutes a crime is some of the bad states, and the evidence of coercion for working these jobs, it seems as those there is a perverse incentive to keep people working for little pay. At the very least, this work, if not something you have to volunteer for, should be assigned as part of the punishment from the court, deducting it against the other punishments levied against them: being in prison for xyz amount of time, or paying xyz fine, but this seems like it would need to be well regulated to avoid abuse.