Following the carceral cash, sometimes to shady places

The last of a sweeping, three-part  Associated Press investigation into prison labor.

The business of prison labor is so vast and convoluted that tracing the money can be challenging. Some agricultural programs regularly go into the red, raising questions in state audits and prompting investigations into potential corruption, mismanagement or general inefficiency.

Nearly half the agricultural goods produced in Texas between 2014 and 2018 lost money, for example, and a similar report in Louisiana uncovered losses of around $3.8 million between fiscal years 2016 and 2018. A separate federal investigation into graft at the for-profit arm of Louisiana’s correctional department led to the jailing of two employees.

Correctional officials say steep farming expenditures and unpredictable variables like weather can eat into profits. And while some goods may do poorly, they note, others do well.

Prisons at times have generated revenue by tapping into niche markets or to their states’ signature foods.

During the six-year period the AP examined, surplus raw milk from a Wisconsin prison dairy went to BelGioioso Cheese, which makes Polly-O string cheese and other products that land in grocery stores nationwide like Whole Foods. A California prison provided almonds to Minturn Nut Company, a major producer and exporter. And until 2022, Colorado was raising water buffalo for milk that was sold to giant mozzarella cheesemaker Leprino Foods, which supplies major pizza companies like Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s.

But for many states, it’s the work-release programs that have become the biggest cash generators, largely because of the low overhead. In Alabama, for instance, the state brought in more than $32 million in the past five fiscal years after garnishing 40 percent of prisoners’ wages.

In some states, work-release programs are run on the local level, with sheriffs frequently responsible for handling the books and awarding contracts. Even though the programs are widely praised — by the state, employers and often prisoners themselves — reports of abuse exist.

In Louisiana, where more than 1,200 companies hire prisoners through work release, sheriffs get anywhere from about $10 to $20 a day for each state prisoner they house in local jails to help ease overcrowding. And they can deduct more than half of the wages earned by those contracted out to companies — a huge revenue stream for small counties.

Jack Strain, a former longtime sheriff in the state’s St. Tammany Parish, pleaded guilty in 2021 in a scheme involving the privatization of a work-release program in which nearly $1.4 million was taken in and steered to Strain, close associates and family members. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, which came on top of four consecutive life sentences for a broader sex scandal linked to that same program.

‘Nothing has changed’

Incarcerated people also have been contracted to companies that partner with prisons. In Idaho, they’ve sorted and packed the state’s famous potatoes, which are exported and sold to companies nationwide. In Kansas, they’ve been employed at Russell Stover chocolates and Cal-Maine Foods, the country’s largest egg producer. Though the company has since stopped using them, in recent years they were hired in Arizona by Taylor Farms, which sells salad kits in many major grocery stores nationwide and supplies popular fast-food chains and restaurants like Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Some states would not provide the names of companies taking part in transitional prison work programs, citing security concerns. So AP reporters confirmed some prisoners’ private employers with officials running operations on the ground and also followed inmate transport vehicles as they zigzagged through cities and drove down country roads. The vans stopped everywhere from giant meat-processing plants to a chicken and daiquiri restaurant.

One pulled into the manicured grounds of a former slave plantation that has been transformed into a popular tourist site and hotel in St. Francisville, Louisiana, where visitors pose for wedding photos under old live oaks draped with Spanish moss.

As a reporter watched, a West Feliciana Parish van emblazoned with “Sheriff Transitional Work Program” pulled up. Two Black men hopped out and quickly walked through the restaurant’s back door. One said he was there to wash dishes before his boss called him back inside.

The Myrtles, as the antebellum home is known, sits just 20 miles away from where men toil in the fields of Angola.

“Slavery has not been abolished,” said Curtis Davis, who spent more than 25 years at the penitentiary and is now fighting to change state laws that allow for forced labor in prisons.

“It is still operating in present tense,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”

AP videographers Robert Bumsted and Cody Jackson contributed to this report.

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