Alabama says they are safe enough for KFC, but too dangerous for parole

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Alabama says they are safe enough for KFC, but too dangerous for parole

Inmates who are denied parole are going to work in a system that generates millions for the state each year, a system that’s been called a “modern-day form of slavery."

www.al.com

Denied: Alabama's broken parole system

Alabama says they are safe enough for KFC, but too dangerous for parole​

• Published: Dec. 10, 2024, 6:37 a.m.

The face of Jerry Dino Helton at the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles in Montgomery, Alabama. He one of many who were denied of parole in Alabama. (Photo Illustration/Tamika Moore/AL.com) AL.com

By Ivana Hrynkiw | ihrynkiw@al.com

Editor's Note

Last year, Alabama’s top prosecutor said the parole system is working, and “dangerous offenders are largely the only ones left behind bars.” Was he right? Thousands of people in Alabama lockups are eligible for parole, and each year fewer and fewer are freed. In this series, Denied: Alabama's broken parole system, AL.com highlights several recent cases. You can decide if Attorney General Steve Marshall was right when he said "there is simply nobody else to 'reform.'"

Michael Campbell gets up with the sun and makes his way to a KFC in north Alabama under the familiar, bearded face of Colonel Sanders.

He dumps chicken in hot oil, filling striped buckets with thighs and drums.

At the end of his shift, he hangs up his apron and boards a bus. A bus headed back to prison.

The next morning, he gets back on the bus, puts on that KFC apron and starts all over again.

He is going to work as the state takes a chunk of each paycheck, raking in nearly $13 million last year in a system that’s being sued over claims of labor trafficking and operating a “modern-day form of slavery.”

Like more than a thousand other Alabama inmates, Campbell is on work release. That means he is deemed safe enough by the prison system to work in public, unsupervised and without any guardrails to protect the community.

But the entirely separate Alabama Parole Board decided last summer that Campbell, despite working in public each day, wasn’t safe enough to send home to sleep.

“It’s absurd,” said Will Tucker, the southern director for the nonprofit Jobs to Move America.

Alabama’s parole board frequently denies release to people who are in minimum-security facilities, working regular jobs and walking around in regular clothes or restaurant uniforms each day, arguing that while they’re safe to work, they’re not safe enough to sleep at home.

In fact, being on work release doesn’t seem to help their chances much at all. This year, according to August data from the prison system, just 151 people in prison work release and work centers were released on parole, despite already meeting the prisons’ standards for being allowed in public with minimal supervision. That’s compared to the 137 paroled from the highest-security facilities, and 135 from medium security.

Experts, lawyers and advocates say that doesn’t make sense.

“One would expect people on work release to be frequently granted parole because ADOC has already determined them to be safe working in the community,” said Jessica Vosburgh, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Vosburg represents several inmates who are suing Alabama in state court, arguing that the work release policies violate the state constitution’s ban on slavery and involuntary servitude.

In a separate lawsuit in federal court, 10 current and former Alabama inmates are arguing that the state systemically denies parole to people on work release because the state benefits by keeping a big piece of each paycheck. The federal suit calls the Alabama system labor trafficking and a “modern-day form of slavery.”

The Alabama Attorney General’s office is fighting back in both cases.

How work release works​

Jerry Helton, a Navy veteran, is serving a life sentence for a series of charges stemming from writing bad checks in the 1990s. He’s been up for parole six times — without any luck.

“Working every day, making $300 a week, actually working a real job, wearing free world clothes and unsupervised out in the community, and they still deny you parole,” Helton told AL.com through the prison phone. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”

There were about 3,200 inmates housed in minimum-security prison facilities across Alabama in August, according to prison records. That means they are cleared to work in the community without direct supervision.

But that status is decided by prison officials, influenced by a decent prison record, an inmate’s criminal past and other factors. And that decision has no clear effect on Alabama’s separate, three-member parole board.

These are some of the businesses in Alabama that employ inmates through work release programs and are being sued in federal court. Ramsey Archibald | rarchibald@al.com

The last two times Helton was denied — he recalled those hearings were in 2018 and 2021 — he was on work release in north Alabama. He first worked in a warehouse, sorting DVDs and CDs to sell to big box stores. Then, Helton moved to a higher-paying job driving heavy machinery at a lumberyard. He worked 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., unsupervised.

In August, there were 1,430 inmates like Helton in work release facilities, meaning they can work for private employers like McDonalds, Burger King, BamaBudweiser, car dealerships and lumberyards. Another 1,744 that month were at work centers, meaning they can be sent out to work for local governments, like the city of Montgomery or Jefferson County.

Both work facilities are suitable for people “who do not pose a significant risk to self or others” according to prison policies, and for those who are expected to soon “transition and reintegrate back into the community.”

Inmates on both status levels work without direct supervision, sometimes six days a week, and the prison bus that carts inmates to their jobs is even driven by a fellow inmate. Many in work release facilities are given “passes” for home visits, allowing them to leave prison and report back at the end of the weekend.

But between January and August of 2024, prison data shows that just 40 people were paroled from work centers, and just 111 from work release centers.

It comes even as paroles have increased under public scrutiny, after AL.com reporting showed that nearly no one was being paroled anymore. The parole rate rose from a historic low of 8% last year to 20% in 2024, according to parole board data.

The Birmingham Community Based Facility, a minimum-security work release facility run by the prison system. Photo by the Alabama Department of Corrections

“I can understand it if I’m behind the fence and I’ve committed a violent crime and I had a lot of disciplinaries for fighting and stuff like that,” Helton added. “But here I am at a work release going out every day unsupervised, working a job, making real money, coming back, and they still deny you parole.”

Helton described a few disciplinaries he received during those years, several for suboxone use and another for having a consensual relationship with a woman he worked with. But none were for violent offenses.

After Helton’s denial in 2021, he kept on working, hoping and praying that one day he would leave prison for good. But earlier this year, he had a heart attack. He was transferred to the high-security Kilby Correctional Facility for medical care that the minimum-security center couldn’t provide.

For months, Helton lived in the prison infirmary. There, Helton discovered he was littered with cancerous tumors, which had spread throughout his body. He described some as the size of a lemon; another an acorn, while a third was a BB. “They’re everywhere,” he said quietly.

But Helton’s story is not unusual in Alabama. The federal lawsuit dug into parole rates last summer, looking at the cases that were heard in public between June and August. The suit argues that the board granted parole to just 10 of the 74 people who were already safe enough for at work release. During that same period, 86.5% of inmates assigned to work release were denied.

Denied: Alabama's broken parole system​

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And the parole board’s own data shows that last year, they granted parole to only 8% of people who had a hearing and were deemed to be low risk using the parole board’s own assessment, similar to the one the prison used to place those people in the public to work. The board granted 11% of those deemed as a moderate risk, and 4% of those with a high risk.

As a veteran, Helton said, if he had been paroled he could have gone to the VA earlier and received treatment. “I could have caught this (cancer) before it spread like this,” he said.

Recently, Helton’s nonprofit attorneys asked for him to be released on medical furlough so he could spend what doctors believe to be his final months at home with his children and grandchildren.

The prison commissioner, John Hamm, approved the furlough in November. When Helton finally walks out of prison, he will have spent over 27 years behind bars.

“I’m not a saint,” Helton repeated during a second call from prison, after the time on his first call ran out. “But I’ve done right things in my life... I’ve never hurt anyone.”

The money​

In fiscal year 2023, the Alabama prison system reported that it collected $12.9 million from work release alone. In 2024, that number was $12.2 million.

Inmates on work release must pay the prison system 40% of their gross earnings “to assist in defraying the cost of his/her incarceration,” according to prison rules.

And that’s not all. Inmates who get a paycheck have to pay outstanding payments for court costs, attorneys fees, restitution, or child support. Drug test fees come next, along with $5 daily round-trip transportation fees to get to work. There’s also a $15 monthly laundry fee. And some private employers charge for things like safety glasses or work shoes.

 

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The prison system’s August report showed inmates in the 11 work release programs generated gross salaries of $2.6 million that month. The amount paid to the prison system that same month was just over $1 million. After fees for transportation, restitution, medical payments and more, just over $900,000 reached inmate accounts.

Take this example from one of the lawsuits:

An inmate works at a private laundry service and makes $7.25 per hour. That’s $290 for 40 hours. The ADOC takes 40% of that, leaving $174 for the inmate. The usual taxes knock that down to $116. Figure $25-$30 for prison fees for five or six days of rides to work and another $3.75 for washing work clothes. The inmate is down to $82.25 now, and banking just over $2 an hour. And that’s before any garnishment for restitution or family support, or any unexpected bills for medicine or doctors.

But that’s still a better pay day than seen by some inmates, who due to certain convictions and criminal histories can’t work for private employers, yet are considered safe enough to work in public without supervision. Instead of work release, they end up at the work centers.

For work centers, also called “honor camps,” the payment scheme is different.

They generally receive just $2 each day. These people work for city, county and state agencies and are employed in places like the Capitol, the Governor’s Mansion, the Alabama Supreme Court and the Montgomery Biscuits park. They work as drivers, landscapers, janitors and more.

Some of these inmates work for the Alabama Department of Transportation, which has an agreement with the prison system to lease land in exchange for inmates performing road maintenance, according to the federal lawsuit.

The lawsuit says the state’s public entities saved $30 million in wages from 2018 to 2023 by using inmate workers.

The lawsuits​

Last year, a group of 10 current and former inmates sued the state and a handful of private employers for what they called a system of convict leasing and labor trafficking, “in which incarcerated people are forced to work, often for little or no money, for the benefit of the numerous government entities and private businesses that ‘employ’ them.”

The federal suit likened the plaintiffs’ experiences to slaves forced to work in Alabama’s cotton fields. It also argues that the state is keeping inmates — particularly Black prisoners — in the system to work and produce millions of dollars each year instead of paroling them.

“..here I am at a work release going out every day unsupervised, working a job, making real money, coming back, and they still deny you parole.”

Jerry Helton, a Navy veteran, who is is serving a life sentence in Alabama

The lawsuit claims that in the last five years, about 575 private employers and over 100 government agencies have employed prisoners. But the plaintiffs and their lawyers are specifically going after several state actors, including Gov. Kay Ivey and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, the three parole board members and prison Commissioner Hamm. They are also going after franchisees of fast-food restaurants McDonalds, KFC, Wendy’s, and Burger King; the cities of Montgomery and Troy and Jefferson County; the Alabama Department of Transportation; Bama Budweiser; three meat and poultry processing plants; and six manufacturing and engineering firms.

People on work release are employed at restaurant locations scattered throughout the state: a KFC in Pell City, a McDonald’s in Birmingham, a Montgomery-area Wendy’s, and more.

“By a conservative estimate, (the state) enjoy(s) a benefit of more than $450 million annually from the... forced labor, inside and outside the prison walls,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit argues that the governor, attorney general, the prison commissioner and the three parole board members are “perpetuating the lucrative and abusive practices …by shutting down the possibility of parole...”

“The more people ADOC keeps incarcerated and working, the more money ADOC and its business partners reap through their forced labor and wrongful detention scheme, and the greater their economic incentive to keep perpetuating that unlawful scheme.”

Some inmates work as janitors and in other roles at the Alabama State Capitol. Daniel Vorndran

The state pushed back.

“Although Plaintiffs go so far as to accuse the State Defendants of engaging in human trafficking,” replied the attorney general’s office, “when stripped of all rhetoric, Plaintiffs complain only of being required to do chores in prison without compensation, laboring on public works projects for less than the minimum wage, and working for private employers on work release for prevailing wages.”

The top prosecutor’s office cites state laws and prison policies where the payment blueprint is mapped out, and stresses that inmates agree to be sent to work release facilities.

The people​

Arthur Charles Ptomey Jr., who’s serving 22 years on third-degree burglary and robbery charges, has been in prison for almost 18 years. He’s been on work release for six years, working at various fast food restaurants including KFC and Arby’s and then on another job detailing government cars. At one point in his prison term, he was responsible for burying fellow inmates who died in custody when no one claimed their bodies.

He works five days a week now, at a warehouse. He boards a bus, driven by another inmate, with about 15 other men headed to their jobs. Ptomey usually gets to work before the sun comes up.

From the time he leaves the prison facility in Childersburg until he gets back later in the afternoon, Ptomey is completely unsupervised by prison guards.

“It’s really ludicrous when you look at it,” he said. “You have individuals incarcerated that are able to be unsupervised for so many amount of hours, but when it comes to meet the criteria of the privilege to make parole, they’re getting denied.”

The outside of the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles in Montgomery, Alabama, January 9, 2024. Tamika Moore | AL.com

He was last denied parole in 2022, despite working for a manufacturer at the time. The board, according to his lawyers, denied Ptomey because he had been fired from KFC — but his lawyers said he had been issued a prison disciplinary because he protested the low wage. The lawyers said that his manager at KFC even advocated for his parole.

He’s working for a little more now at his current job — $12.50 an hour, before all of the deductions and fines and fees.

Ptomey gets to leave prison outside of working hours, too. Every two weeks, he gets a 48-hour pass to leave the lockup and go home. And every 90 days, he gets a 72-hour pass.

His loved ones pick him up at the gates and return him back when it’s time. He’s been doing that for more than half a decade.

“There was a point in time when I did feel some type of way… we doing all of this, and were still being denied parole?”

“Ain’t no one okay to go home? They don’t even care,” Ptomey said of the parole board. He’s changed his mindset over the years, grown strong in his faith and leaned on God to forge his path home.

Will Tucker with Jobs to Move America, a nonprofit dedicated to improving working conditions, said paroling those on work release would help ease the overcrowding in Alabama’s dangerous prisons. “There’s no reason to keep them incarcerated,” he said.

And there is pressure to fix the system. Alabama prisons have been under federal investigation for years, under the Department of Justice led by both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The federal investigators have argued the state’s lockups are dangerously overcrowded, catastrophically understaffed, and excessively violent.

“Finding a way to get the incarcerated workers in work release out of prison fully should not be a controversial task,” said Tucker. “The prison system itself has determined these two to three thousand people are not a threat to anyone and they’re not a public safety threat.”

“They can go to work?” he asked. “But they have to go back to prison to sleep at night? That’s absurd.”

But about 235 people who worked through the work-center or work-release programs in 2022 came up for parole and were denied. Of those, according to the lawsuit, 141 were Black.

Jerame Cole, 38, is one of those men. He’s part of the federal lawsuit, suing the state while serving 20 years for a 2007 robbery conviction. He was 21 when he and three other people were arrested for robbing a man outside his car and robbing another inside his house.

He’s been denied parole four times over the past 17 years and is destined now to finish his prison sentence in June of 2027 without another shot at parole. He will get out at the end of his sentence, without any monitoring or requirements, something referred to in the criminal justice world as “EOS.”

Cole was denied parole last time due to his “overall institutional behavior,” according to his lawyers, but they said he’s worked without issue in the community through work release since 2016. He’s also received passes to visit his family since 2021.

The stories of the men and women who have jobs and are denied parole are seemingly endless.

“They can go to work... But they have to go back to prison to sleep at night? That’s absurd.”

Will Tucker, Southern Director of Jobs to Move America

Campbell, the man who fries chicken at KFC, is serving three decades for a drug charge and has already been behind bars for 20 years. Campbell was denied parole last year, although he’s had several free world jobs.

Currently, he works six days a week.

“I work for my money,” he said late one afternoon in November on his off day. “I do what I can to support myself.”

He was on parole once before, caught another new drug case and went back to prison. But he’s served all of his time on the newer cases, leaving him on the hook for the 30-year sentence for drug distribution he got in 2003. Campbell has been on work release for six years and said he’s received no disciplinaries in that time.

The board​

Parole board member Darryl Littleton recently made a surprise visit to a work release center in east Alabama, according to prison officials. He wanted to see how the process worked.

Littleton has been getting more people paroled on split votes this year, along with fellow member Gabrelle Simmons, while chairwoman Leigh Gwathney remains a frequent ‘no’ vote.

Gabrelle Simmons and Darryl Littleton, Associate Members of the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, listen to an offender asking for a pardon during a hearing at the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles in Montgomery, Alabama, January 9, 2024. Tamika Moore | AL.com

But Vosburgh, the lawyer representing inmates in the state lawsuit, said too many are still being denied. She said two of the five plaintiffs in that lawsuit have recently come up for parole and been denied. One was on work release at the time and had a letter from her employer saying she was a great worker, and the business would continue to employ her if she was released.

“I guess that did very little to convince the parole board,” said Vosburgh. “It’s clear that this board is committed to keeping people incarcerated.”

Ptomey, the man who leaves on weekend passes and reports back to lockup, won’t face the parole board again until the fall of 2025. A possible new face could be on the board by then, as parole chairwoman Gwathney’s term expires next summer and officials haven’t yet said if she will be re-nominated.

Ptomey talked about the privilege of parole. He also said in the community that most people, unless specifically told, don’t realize they’re working or dining next to inmates.

“I can only keep doing what I’m doing,” he said. “Coming in from passes on time, coming into work… really it’s just that my time is in the Lord’s time. It doesn’t have to do with man or the parole board.”

“There’s only so much you can do in this situation.”

 

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Alabama profits off prisoners who work at McDonald’s but deems them too dangerous for parole

No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama.

apnews.com

Alabama profits off prisoners who work at McDonald’s but deems them too dangerous for parole​

By ROBIN MCDOWELL and MARGIE MASON

Updated 5:10 PM EST, December 20, 2024

DADEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — A storm was looming when the inmate serving 20 years for armed robbery was assigned to transport fellow prisoners to their jobs at private manufacturers supplying goods to companies like Home Depot and Wayfair. It didn’t matter that Jake Jones once had escaped or that he had failed two drug and alcohol tests while in lockup — he was unsupervised and technically in charge.

By the time Jones was driving back to the work release center with six other incarcerated workers, it was pelting rain. Jones had a reputation for driving fast and some of his passengers said he was racing along the country road, jamming to music in his earbuds. Suddenly, the transport van hit a dip and swerved on the wet pavement, slamming into a tree.

AP Video/Marshall Ritzel

Two men died after being thrown out of the van. And Jones, who was critically hurt and slumped over the blaring horn, had to be cut out of the vehicle. As the other men staggered into the storm to flag down help, they wondered: Why would the Alabama Department of Corrections place their lives in Jones’ hands?

“They knew he had a propensity to drink,” said Shawn Wasden, who survived the crash. “And they put him behind the wheel of a van anyway.”

No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.

This August 10, 1909 photo shows convicts engaged in street repair on 24th Street while under the watch of guards in Birmingham, Ala. (Birmingham, Ala., Public Library Archives via AP)

This July 1907 photo shows city convicts in their sleeping quarters in Birmingham, Ala. (Birmingham, Ala., Public Library Archives via AP)

Shackles used during the time of convict leasing lay stored in a box at the Birmingham Public Libray Central Branch Archives, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Best Western, Bama Budweiser and Burger King are among the more than 500 businesses to lease incarcerated workers from one of the most violent, overcrowded and unruly prison systems in the U.S. in the past five years alone, The Associated Press found as part of a two-year investigation into prison labor. The cheap, reliable labor force has generated more than $250 million for the state since 2000 through money garnished from prisoners’ paychecks.

Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state’s inmates — who are disproportionately Black — can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry. But more than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama’s prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, the AP determined.

While those working at private companies can at least earn a little money, they face possible punishment if they refuse, from being denied family visits to being sent to higher-security prisons, which are so dangerous that the federal government filed a lawsuit four years ago that remains pending, calling the treatment of prisoners unconstitutional.

Though they make at least $7.25 an hour, the state siphons 40% off the top of all wages and also levies fees, including $5 a day for rides to their jobs and $15 a month for laundry.

Turning down work can jeopardize chances of early release in a state that last year granted parole to only 8% of eligible prisoners — an all-time low, and among the worst rates nationwide — though that number more than doubled this year after public outcry.

“It is a symptom of a completely, utterly broken system,” said Chris England, an Alabama lawmaker pushing for criminal justice reform.

Many prisoners work 40 hours a week outside their facilities and then get weekend passes, allowing them to go home without any supervision or electronic monitoring. So when prisoners are then told they’re too dangerous to be permanently released, England said, it looks like “another way to create a cheap labor force that is easily exploited and abused.”

Arthur Ptomey stands for a photo at his mother’s home, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024 in Birmingham, Ala. Ptomey was on work release for several private companies over six years, then denied parole after refusing to take on shifts over a wage dispute. (Anonymous via AP)

Arthur Ptomey, who has worked at various private companies over the past six years, said he was denied parole in 2022 after losing his job at KFC, where he had complained about his low wages. A full-time cook, he was upset that even teenagers working the register were outearning him despite the fact that he had worked there for over a year.

Ptomey is one of 10 current and former prisoners who filed a class-action federal lawsuit last year against state officials, local governments and businesses like McDonald’s and Wendy’s franchises, contending they perpetuate a system of forced labor akin to a “modern-day form of slavery” that keeps the best workers from being released.

He currently works at Progressive Finishes, one of the state’s biggest contractors of prison labor, which says on its website that it has served as a third-party supplier to automotive companies including Honda, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Kia, Volvo, Chrysler and Hyundai.

“For a lot of these jobs, the attitude is the same … if you don’t meet our expectations, we’ll just call for somebody else,” Ptomey said while on a 48-hour home pass at his mother’s house. “I’m grateful to come out and work, but I ain’t come in here to be a slave.”

Kelly Betts of the corrections department defended the work programs, calling them crucial to the success of inmates preparing to leave prison. But she acknowledged that even those sentenced to life without the possibility of parole are eligible for so-called work release jobs.

That’s because in Alabama the department determines which prisoners are employed off site largely based on how well they’ve behaved behind bars, instead of what put them there. Those working among the civilian population include men and women with records for violent crimes like murder and assault. Many are serving 15 years or longer.

“Many choose work to being confined to a facility all day,” Betts said. “In many cases, it is a matter of quality of life. But ultimately, the inmate chooses and is not penalized for non-participation.”

Alabama’s lockups are chronically understaffed, and it’s not unusual for prisoners to work outside their facilities without any correctional oversight. And in some cases, there is no supervision of any kind, which has led to escapes, often referred to as “walkaways.”

More from this series



A hidden web links hundreds of popular food brands to work done by US prisoners



US prisoners are being assigned dangerous jobs. But what happens if they are hurt or killed?

 

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Prison work assignments used to lure and rape female inmates. Guards sometimes walk free

Asked how prisoners are chosen to work without monitoring, Betts said, “Each inmate’s situation is unique, and each inmate is evaluated on his or her own record.”

Most companies did not respond to requests for comment, but the handful that did said they had no direct involvement with work release programs.

Home Depot said it would investigate its connection to outdoor furniture maker Wadley Holdings, where some men in the van crash were working. It said it prohibits suppliers from using prison labor and would take action if policy violations are found.

McDonald’s said in a statement it does not permit the use of prison labor within its supply chain or at its corporate-owned restaurants and is “committed to promoting ethical employment practices.” The fast food giant added that while franchisees operate independently, they are expected to respect human rights and are encouraged to develop similar policies.

Best Western also said it does not participate in personnel matters at its independently owned and operated hotels. Hyundai said it knew some of its suppliers hired inmates for jobs but was not involved in the decision to do so. Honda said it was not aware of any business relationship with Progressive Finishes, which is common with companies and third-party suppliers.

As part of its investigation, the AP analyzed 24 years of Alabama corrections department monthly statistical reports to calculate the amount of money generated via contracts with private companies and deductions taken out of prisoners’ paychecks.

Reporters also parsed information from more than 83,000 pages of data obtained through a public records request, including the names of inmates involved in Alabama’s work programs. In addition to working for public entities — everywhere from landfills to the governor’s mansion — they were leased out to at least 500 private businesses between 2018 and mid-March 2024. That information was cross-referenced with an online state database, detailing the crimes that landed people in prison, their sentences, time served, race and good-time credits earned and revoked. The AP analysis faced limitations because some workplace entries were insufficiently defined.

Few prisoner advocates believe outside jobs should be abolished. In Alabama, for instance, those shifts can offer a reprieve from the excessive violence inside the state’s institutions. Last year, and in the first six months of 2024, an Alabama inmate died behind bars nearly every day, a rate five times the national average.

But advocates say incarcerated workers should be paid fair wages, given the choice to work without threat of punishment, and granted the same workplace rights and protections guaranteed to other Americans.

Prisoners nationwide cannot organize, protest or strike for better conditions. They also aren’t typically classified as employees, whether they’re working inside correctional facilities or for outside businesses through prison contracts or work release programs. And unless they are able to prove “willful negligence,” it is almost impossible to successfully sue when incarcerated workers are hurt or killed.

Though the Alabama corrections department said it could not provide information about the number of prisoners who died while on outside jobs, the AP tracked down family members of prisoners who lost their lives. One man was killed after being sucked into a machine at a plant operated by massive poultry processor Koch Foods and others died after being struck by vehicles while picking up trash or doing road maintenance on the side of busy highways.

Tyrone Heard stands in his living room with his kids Karinina, 8, Tyrone, Jr., 7, and Kylee, 5, after they arrived home from school, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, in Alexander City, Ala. Heard’s uncle, Willie Craytwon was killed while on work release riding in an Alexander City Work Center transport van that crashed in April. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The day of the van accident, Jake Jones had finished his shift at a nearby Quality Inn, where his boss and co-workers told the AP that nothing seemed amiss. He headed to the Alexander City work center, where he was a go-to driver, and grabbed the keys to the white Ford Econoline so he could shuttle his fellow prisoners to their jobs. He had about four hours of driving ahead of him, zipping between a string of companies up to 40 minutes apart.

Tyrone Heard, one of the passengers dropped off before the crash, said Jones had been drinking and that he believed staff knew it. Before heading out, he said he overheard two officers discussing whether they should find another driver.

An hour into the trip, Heard said, Jones “told us he was drunk.” At one point, he added, Jones smashed his foot on the gas until the speedometer topped 90 mph.

This undated photo shows Jake Jones, who was allowed to drive a work-release van, despite having once escaped, and failing two drug and alcohol tests while in lockup. (Alabama Department of Corrections via AP)

About two hours later, the van was wrapped around the tree. Heard’s uncle, Willie Crayton, was killed instantly. Bruce Clements struggled to breathe and died on the way to the hospital.

The accident report estimated the van’s speed was 67 mph upon impact — more than 20 mph over the speed limit. Blood tests were conducted to determine if drugs or alcohol were in the driver’s system, but those results have never been released. Police, volunteer firefighters and emergency medical responders would not comment, saying the case remained under investigation.

Betts, the corrections department spokeswoman, said Jones met all the criteria to be an inmate driver: Though he failed drug and alcohol tests in 2018 and 2022 — and another about a month after the accident — he passed his screening test two days before the deadly crash.

And prison guidelines only bar participation of prisoners who escaped or were recaptured within a 10-year period. His escape was in 2010.

Jones, who since has been moved to a higher-security facility, did not respond to questions from the AP.

Some of the men involved in the crash have been released from prison after serving their sentences, but others continue to report to outside jobs.

They still ride past the crash site, marked by a simple cross — with Willie Crayton’s hat resting on top.

Willie Crayton’s hat hangs on a cross bearing the Lord’s Prayer and marking the location along Elder Road, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024, in Dadeville, Ala, where the Alexander City Community Work Center transport van he was riding in crashed in April 2024, killing Crayton and Bruce Clements. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

“One dies, get another”​

Prison labor is enshrined in the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which banned slavery and involuntary servitude – except for those convicted of a crime. That language also was added to the constitutions of many states, though eight of them have removed the so-called punishment clause in recent years after taking the issue to voters.

In 2022, Alabama became one of them, but Gov. Kay Ivey signed an executive order last year giving the corrections department the authority to revoke good-time credits — days shaved off sentences rewarding model behavior — for “refusing to work,” making it harder for even the best prisoners to accelerate their release.

“The people just say that they thought it was unconstitutional, inhumane … and you come back and say, ‘I don’t care,’” said Robert Earl Council, who is part of the federal lawsuit filed last year against forced labor in prison. “It verifies clearly to me the point that we’ve been trying to drive home … this is strictly, explicitly about the money.”

Council, also known as Kinetic Justice, spent five years in solitary confinement for helping lead prison work stoppages — including one that spread to facilities in several other states. At one point, he and other inmates also began hunger strikes, demanding an end to free labor.

Throughout the state’s history of prison labor, money has been a key driver.

 

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Soon after the Civil War, when the South’s once-booming economy was in tatters, Alabama turned to convict leasing. Young, mostly Black men were arrested for petty crimes like gambling or vagrancy and hired out to private companies. They were forced to build railroads, work in sawmills and toil under deplorable conditions in coal mines, including those owned by U.S. Steel — the biggest company in the world at the time.

The Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark sits empty, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024, in Birmingham, Ala., nearly 100 years after the iron plant stopped using convict labor. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

This undated government survey photo shows the Pratt Coal & Coke Company, Pratt Mines, in Birmingham, Ala., the site of an unmarked cemetery where convicts leased to the company are believed to be buried. (Library of Congress via AP)

A narrow path runs by the wooded area and unmarked cemetery that were once part of the US Steel Pratt mines near the prison wall and Slope No. 12, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

No state in America earned more from convict leasing than Alabama — at one point, it accounted for more than 70% of all annual revenue. It was also where companies made the most money. By the time Alabama became the last state to officially ban the practice in 1928, thousands of prisoners had died from rampant disease, dangerous working conditions and poor treatment. Incarcerated workers were treated as disposable, reflected in a quote at the time: “One dies, get another.”

Alabama shifted its strategy when industries began to modernize and mechanize, said Douglas Blackmon, whose book “Slavery by Another Name” chronicles the state’s dark past of convict leasing.

“Up until that moment, the practices were so profitable for both government officials and industry … that they would always find a way to continue the system,” he said. “It’s something that people have figured out how to make a lot of money on again. And so the practice reemerges.”

Fast forward to the 1970s, when conditions were so bad — from abysmal treatment of inmates with mental illnesses to extreme violence — that a U.S. federal judge took control of Alabama’s entire prison system.

That’s when the Department of Corrections decided to classify inmates largely by their behavior behind bars rather than their criminal histories, ostensibly to help alleviate overcrowding. Under the new standards, eligible participants would not only get paid for their outside jobs, but also have their sentences reduced for every day worked.

The system was adopted over the objections of Oscar Adams, the state’s first Black Supreme Court justice, who noted that the vast majority of those accepted would not get “good time” because prisoners sentenced to more than 10 years — later pushed to 15 — were ineligible. At the time, they represented the bulk of the prison population.

That population continued to grow, mostly due to historically harsh sentencing laws that put people away for life, even if they were convicted of nonviolent crimes. And so did its workforce.

Today, the state has a patchwork of programs that includes not just work centers — including jobs for the city and state paying $2 a day — but also work release programs operated at the county level, sometimes by nonprofit organizations. They receive about $10 a day for every person they house, plus hefty fees paid by prisoners for things like mandatory drug testing.

Some see the largely autonomous county programs as exploitative, but others call them a lifeline.

“It taught me how to be a man,” said Matthew Smith, who has a history of drug addiction and worked at a poultry plant through a community corrections work release program. “It taught me how to get up and go to work every day.”

AP Animation/Marshall Ritzel

Even prisoners who are happy working often complain about the steep pre-tax deductions taken by the state. After a 40-hour week, many say they end up pocketing only about $100 to $200.

But for the hundreds of private companies that hire them, the benefits are robust. Businesses pay at least minimum wage, but can earn up to $2,400 in tax credits for some inmates hired. Amid crushing staff shortages, they can rely on a steady, pliable workforce available to take extra shifts, fill in at the last minute when civilian workers call in sick and also work holidays. And if an incarcerated worker is injured or even killed on the job, the company may not be liable.

The same is true for businesses across the country. As part of its larger investigation, the AP spoke to more than 120 current and former prisoners and relatives of those who died on the job. Reporters found that the use of incarcerated workers is so pervasive nationwide that prison labor has seeped into the supply chains of some of the country’s largest companies and retailers — and also goods being exported.

Trader Joe’s, Cargill, McDonald’s and other companies responded to that reporting earlier this year by either cutting ties with correctional departments or third-party suppliers or indicating they were in the process of doing so.

FILE - A person waits to enter a Trader Joe's grocery store, as a shopper leaves in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles on March 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

FILE - Cars sit parked at a Cargill Inc., turkey processing plant on Aug. 4, 2011, in Springdale, Ark. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File)

In Alabama, the roster of companies hiring inmates is vast.

In the past five years, over 500 prisoners have worked at local Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King and Applebee’s restaurants alone. They also have cleaned hotels, manufactured kitchen cabinets, made yarn used in carpets, constructed doors for houses sold at national home stores like Lowe’s, and built trailers pulled behind semi trucks. They’ve helped keep cities running across the state, and worked at public country clubs and even the Supreme Court.

Alabama collected more than $13 million in work release fees in fiscal year 2024. But the prisoner lawsuit filed in federal court late last year with backing from the powerful AFL-CIO federation of unions, estimates the corrections department actually rakes in about $450 million in benefits from prison labor annually. That takes into consideration money saved by not having to hire civilians to maintain the sprawling prison system or work for government agencies.

The suit also alleges that prisoners participating in work programs with good disciplinary records have been hardest hit by plummeting parole rates, with Black workers disproportionately affected.

A decade ago, nearly half the prisoners coming up for parole were released, with no clear racial disparity, it noted. But that changed several years ago when the board began disregarding its own guidelines and denying early releases to those who scored high enough to qualify, based on criteria like their crimes, perceived risk to society and behavior behind bars. In fiscal year 2023, there were 3,583 parole hearings that resulted in 3,286 denials — including one involving a man who had been dead for 10 days.

Alabama’s attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment. But in successfully moving for dismissal of a similar state lawsuit filed by inmates last year, it said “slavery and involuntary servitude do not exist in the state’s prison system.”

Those who take part in work release programs do so voluntarily, the motion noted.

For members of the public buying a Blizzard at Dairy Queen or having their cars worked on in a local garage, it can be hard to distinguish incarcerated employees from their civilian counterparts. In most cases, they dress in the same clothes or uniforms. And even those clearly identified as prisoners doing more traditional jobs like road work go unnoticed by most busy motorists speeding down the state’s roads.

Angela Lindsey shows a picture on her phone of her son, Braxton Moon, who was struck and killed on Interstate 65 while part of a road crew. (AP/ Robin McDowell)

That was true of Braxton Moon, his mother said. He told her how terrified he was by how dangerously close cars whizzed past him, even as he held a sign warning drivers to slow down.

Angela Lindsey pleaded with her son to quit — he was making only $2 a day. But he told her that working beat being locked up around the clock.

Two weeks later, in August 2015, Lindsey received a phone call from her cousin asking: “‘Is it true?’” An officer at the work center had posted a picture of her son on Facebook with the words “Rest in peace.”

She frantically called the center over and over, only to be hung up on each time. “All of this was before I even got anything — anything — from the state,” she said. “It was on social media. It was on the news.”

And then it was confirmed: Her son had been struck by a tractor-trailer in a hit and run along the side of Interstate 65.

He had died instantly. He was just 21.

 

[Westbama Heartthrob]

Subs

Thread needs to do numbers

 

[Luke Cage]

straight up slavery
they either too dangerous to be re-integrated into society or not.

 

[MajesticLion]

When money is your god, all manner of folly becomes possible.

 

[degu9089]

The Nazis really stole Americas fukked up plan bar for bar.

 

[b_b]

Modern day slavery supported by the state and private industry. What impetus is there for the government to reduce its supply of cheap labor while receiving the benefits from supplying said labor. Why would they ever want to reduce their supply and thereby the money they can make? Absolutely fukking repugnant

 

[Pull Up the Roots]

They're trustworthy enough to interact with the public on a daily basis, be a part of the public workforce, all while being unsupervised? But not granted parole? This is what happens when economic incentives are prioritized over rehabilitation and justice. The state exploits their labor for profit, they take a huge cut of their earnings, and then they deny them the freedom they've earned. This is a brazen example of how the system is designed to keep people trapped.

 

[Richard Glidewell]

They got this cat doing life for check fraud?! Ain't no fukking way........

 

[Splakavellie504]

I read about this bullshyt a few days ago smh

 

[CopiousX]

Man this sht is evil and depressing. There should be no govt incentive to keep prisoners incarcerated.

 

[Bleed The Freak]

That 13th amendment loophole is there for a reason

And never got removed for it