Prison labor is a form of slavery. On prison farms, inmates, mostly in the South, still harvest crops, some by hand, on a number of former slave plantations. Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia pay those who do this work nothing. One former prisoner, Faye Jacobs, who worked in prison farms in Arkansas and was incarcerated for more than 26 years, recalled being made to carry rocks from one end of a field to another for hours, was sexually harassed, and, along with other women there, called a “ho”. In Florida, chain gangs wear black-and-white striped uniforms and work with their ankles shackled. Although many of America’s biggest corporations make billions off their labor, the prisoners are not guaranteed basic rights and protections by OSHA and laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Read the full story by Robin McDowell and Margie Mason for the Associated Press, via The Chief-Leader, published March 5, 2024, here: https://www.thechiefleader.com/stories/the-rise-of-jailhouse-labor,52041
