"Alabama profits off prisoners safe enough to work at McDonald’s, deems them too dangerous for parole"

... 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.

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.

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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, 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 ...

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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.

Best Western said it does not participate in personnel matters at its independently owned and operated hotels, and 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.

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.

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 ...

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