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.
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.
Yes, convict leasing was designed to be a direct replacement for slavery. It was used that way right after slavery ended when you could arrest a black person for anything you could think of. No job? Arrested, leased. No home? Arrested, leased. Etc....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_leasing
So slavey never ended! Cool cool. Totally not a corporate dictatorship masquerading as a democracy...
the laws never pretended it ended. the thirteenth ammendment very plainly allows it:
emphasis mine. it never said you can't have slavery any more, it just said if you're gonna do slavery you have to convict someone first.
That’s how propagandized Americans are. lmfao They act as if this is some shadowy hidden part of our culture
It's not like you'd expect people to be closely acquainted with an obscure legal document like the constitution.
Oh, wait...