Well, This is Revolting

In Alabama, jailed inmates are being forced to work at fast food franchises.

I do understand that the 13th amendment has a carve-out for, "Punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted," but renting out prisoners to fast food joints, a purely private endeavor is truly awful.

It might be a good idea for federal authorities to do a complete audit of the finances and of the behavior of the Alabama Department of Corrections.

I can say with almost complete certainty that if they are doing this, then there is other shady sh%$ going on:

“Walk into a McDonald’s in Alabama, and the worker flipping your McDouble could be an incarcerated person,” warns a recent video from the digital news outlet More Perfect Union.

The idea that an inmate in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) might be working the kitchen at a fast-food restaurant is shocking, even to seasoned observers of the fast-food industry and the American prison system. Yet as two lawsuits filed in federal court in the last year attest, the practice is so pervasive that it’s become a reliable source of income for the state.

According to the first suit, filed by the legal nonprofit Justice Catalyst on behalf of inmates last September, ADOC transports dozens of incarcerated people per day to jobs at government agencies and private businesses around Alabama, including KFC, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s franchises. ADOC also delivers inmates to meatpacking plants run by companies like Koch Foods and Gemstone Foods. At each of their jobsites, inmates do the same work as any employee, sometimes for twelve hours or more per day. From 2018 until the suit was filed last September, one McDonald’s franchisee alone put an estimated 122 ADOC inmates to work in its restaurants.

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As both suits allege, inmates who refuse to work on a given day can face consequences, including revocation of privileges (like time on the phone with family members), stints in solitary confinement, lengthening of sentences, or transfer to one of Alabama’s medium- or high-security prisons — some of the most violent prisons in the country. 

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In their suits, CCR and Justice Catalyst cite a 2022 amendment in the Alabama constitution that prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude in all circumstances. This standard goes beyond the Thirteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which permits slavery “as punishment for a crime.” An Alabama judge recently dismissed CCR’s suit on jurisdictional grounds, though Jessica Vosburgh, a Birmingham-based lawyer for the organization, told Jacobin it is currently weighing options for an appeal. The Justice Catalyst case is ongoing. In the meantime, Vosburgh says, ADOC continues to transport workers to private businesses around the state, including fast-food restaurants, just as before.

The FBI and the DoJ should be on the ADOC like white on rice, and when corruption is found, these guys need to be prosecuted to the fullest extant of the law, and then sent to those prisons that they used to run, the maximum security ones.