Prisoners Sue Alabama, Alleging ‘Modern-Day Form Of Slavery’

The plaintiffs, who are all Black, are current and former Alabama prisoners. They say prisoners are forced to work for about $2 an hour, sometimes $2 a day, and are often denied parole in order to keep supplying cheap labor to private businesses and local governments.

More from The New York Times:

According to the lawsuit, the system effectively resurrects Alabama’s notorious practice of “convict leasing,” in which Black laborers, from 1875 until 1928, were forced to work for private companies, who in turn paid substantial fees to state and county governments.

Since 2018, about 575 companies and more than 100 public agencies in Alabama have used incarcerated people as landscapers, janitors, drivers, metal fabricators and fast-food workers, the lawsuit states, reaping an annual benefit of $450 million.

“They are trapped in this labor trafficking scheme,” the lawsuit states. “Although they are trusted to perform work for the state, local governments, and a vast array of private employers, some of the same people who profit from their coerced labor have systematically shut down grants of parole.”

Plaintiff and former Alabama prisoner Lakiera Walker provided details to The Washington Post that sure sound like slavery to me:

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