Incarcerated labor linked to hundreds of major food brands

The Associated Press recently published an article linking hundreds of popular food brands to an “intricate, invisible web” of incarcerated workers. During the two-year investigation, reporters found that U.S. prisoners nationwide produced hundreds of millions of dollars worth of agricultural products and goods sold on the open market.

Incarcerated workers are often excluded from basic worker protections, like workers’ compensation and federal safety standards. In some cases, prisoners are paid pennies for their labor if anything at all. Employing prisoners is legal in the United States, even in these conditions. The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution banned slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime.

Margie Mason, an investigative reporter for The Associated Press, was a part of this investigation. Mason writes, “Now, with about 2 million people locked up, U.S. prison labor from all sectors has morphed into a multibillion-dollar empire, extending far beyond the classic images of prisoners stamping license plates, working on road crews or battling wildfires.” She spoke with “Marketplace” host Kimberly Adams about the AP’s investigation and what she’s discovered about prison labor and the companies who use it.

The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Kimberly Adams: What kinds of jobs are these prisoners doing? And where do the proceeds from their work end up?

Margie Mason: Well, it’s a variety. So you have, in some cases, you know, a lot of the incarcerated workers are on prison farms, or maybe they’re doing general jobs within the prisons like maintenance-type things like laundry or landscaping. There’s that whole sector, and then you have prisons that have contracts with private companies outside. And so they may just be leasing out the incarcerated workers for the labor. And so they’re working at places like, you know, egg farms, or they might be working on other farms, we were mainly focused on agriculture for this story. And then, you have the work release folks who, in a lot of cases, they’re kind of toward the end of their sentence, and they’re getting ready to kind of transition back into the world. They could be doing fast food restaurants or working at retail outlets, or, you know, in some cases, they’re doing jobs where they’re working at poultry plants or meat processing plants.

Adams: What did the prisoners that you talked to tell you about what it was like doing some of these jobs? 

Mason: Well, I mean, I think it was mixed. And I don’t want to say that everybody was saying that this was horrible. Again, the jobs that are on the outside pay more money. And so, those are the coveted jobs that a lot of the incarcerated workers want. But there’s not a lot of those. And even when they get those jobs, they face these huge deductions often. So you might have somebody who’s getting paid minimum wage, and then there’s a part of that that’s being taken off the top by, let’s just say, the State Prison Industries, you know, that organization. And then you’re gonna have on top of that, maybe an additional say, let’s just say 30%, taken away by the state for things like room and board. And so they would tell us, “You know, this is a problem, because we’re getting so much taken out.” But then you also have the workers that are doing things like, again, working in the fields, if they’re in a state where again, they’ve been sentenced to hard labor, it’s required that they work. If they don’t do this for, you know, pennies an hour, or sometimes nothing at all, they then face some sort of punishment. So they could wind up in solitary confinement, for instance, or they could have privileges pulled away from them.

Adams: When you followed some of these agricultural products, where did they end up? And how did those companies respond when you asked them about it?

Mason: Well, I think, you know, we basically looked at the supply chain. And so when you’re looking at the supply chain, it’s, you know, what companies are buying directly. And again, we focused on agriculture. And there were big companies like Cargill, and Tyson, and Archer Daniels Midland that were buying directly from prison farms or directly from state prisons. And then, of course, those companies are so large, that there’s this spiderweb of all these other companies that they are supplying. And so that trickles down, and you see these things going into places like McDonald’s, and Walmart. And then, so many other companies that are that are making that have all of these brands that are iconic, that we all know, and that are on the shelves in our kitchens.

Adams: And what do those companies say when you ask them about using prison labor to create their products?

Mason: Well, I think some of the companies didn’t respond at all. Some of them, I think, they didn’t know about it, because it was deep into the supply chain, and they said that they would look into it. You know, Cargill got back to us. And they said, “Yes, we’ve been doing this in three states and we are looking at this, and we’re going to take action if need be.” And some of them also had said we had been doing this in the past, but we have stopped and we’re no longer doing that. So yeah, we had kind of a mixed response from various companies.

Adams: You tell the story in your piece about Frank Ellington, who was killed on the job. Why did that story stand out to you?

Mason: So Frank Ellington was in Alabama, and he was on as part of a work release program and he was working for a poultry plant, and he was cleaning a machine. And he got his arm stuck in this machine. And it pulled him inside, and he ended up dying as a result of that. You know, oftentimes for incarcerated workers, they’re not covered by the same protections — the rights and protections that we all have and just kind of expect to be there. Things like workers compensation, or disability benefits, or, you know, if things go wrong, and you’re seriously hurt or killed on the job, it’s not as easy for them to sue. And so it creates this kind of gray area where they’re in almost like a separate category, and no one really even knows how to kind of handle their cases or their claims. And a lot of lawyers because of that don’t even want to don’t even want to take it up.

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