Current Events > 'They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants'

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https://www.revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-to-rehab-they-ended-up-in-chicken-plants/

Aside from daily cans of Dr Pepper, McGahey wasnt addicted to anything. The judge knew that. But the Chicken Farm sounded better than prison.

A few weeks later, McGahey stood in front of a speeding conveyor belt inside a frigid poultry plant, pulling guts and stray feathers from slaughtered chickens destined for major fast food restaurants and grocery stores.

There wasnt much substance abuse treatment at CAAIR. It was mostly factory work for one of Americas top poultry companies. If McGahey got hurt or worked too slowly, his bosses threatened him with prison.

And he worked for free. CAAIR pocketed the pay.

It was a slave camp, McGahey said. I cant believe the court sent me there.

But in the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, theyve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.

The beneficiaries of these programs span the country, from Fortune 500 companies to factories and local businesses. The defendants work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina.

To unearth this story, Reveal interviewed scores of former participants and employees, court officials and judges and reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents, tax filings and workers compensation records.

At some rehabs, defendants get to keep their pay. At CAAIR and many others, they do not.

Legal experts said forcing defendants to work for free might violate their constitutional rights. The 13th Amendment bans slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, except as punishment for convicts. Thats why prison labor programs are legal. But many defendants sent to programs such as CAAIR have not yet been convicted of crimes, and some later have their cases dismissed.

Youve got to be kidding me, Noah Zatz, a professor specializing in labor law at UCLA, said when presented with Reveals findings. Thats a very strong 13th Amendment violation case.

Sounds a lot like slavery. Prison labor camps are bad enough IMO, but this goes even further.

The people responsible for that should be executed.
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Reminder: these are the job creators that conservatives talk about.
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Those poor chickens.
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They ought to remove the first word from their program. They're despicable, and they dredge the name of Christians through the mud. The whole program needs to be eviscerated and gutted from top to fucking bottom, and Wilkerson needs to go to prison herself.
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Shut it down. If you haven't been convicted of a crime, this shouldn't be a thing.
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Man, this just pisses me off something fierce. I can't believe shit like this still happens today. I thought we had moved beyond the practices illustrated in Sinclair's 'The Jungle,' and that was over 100 years ago.
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These judges are obviously corrupt or stupid and do not deserve to be on the bench and more than likely deserve prison time.

EverDownward posted...

Man, this just pisses me off something fierce. I can't believe shit like this still happens today. I thought we had moved beyond the practices illustrated in Sinclair's 'The Jungle,' and that was over 100 years ago.

In a lot of ways, the country is still the same as it was 100 years ago. Any progress that has been made from that time is slowly being done away with. We are going full circle.
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