Inmates plant, care for, and harvest the crops. Then, the fruits of their labor are donated to local food pantries.
Nobody appears to be profiting off their labor and there’s no mention it’s forced. So it looks to me like volunteer work going to charities. A productive use of time, prisoner or not.
I have a lot of problems with prison labor but this isn’t one of them.
“It’s kind of nice for they [sic] because they feel like they feel like they’re giving back to the communities,” said Overseer Eddie Gilbert. “It gives them a sense of accomplishment and I enjoy it also. It kind of gets me out and about with my whip.”
Easiest block ever. If you choose to remain willfully ignorant of the prison industrial complex and how they operate to make unscrupulous profit by filling cells with the help of a racist justice system and backed by the fascist Republican party, then there is no help for you.
Okay, so this is actually really interesting. It gets into how in the US, when we talk about slavery, we are specifically talking about chattel slavery as it was practiced in the Americas. And there’s actually a pretty strong argument that American chattel slavery is, if not unique in world history, it is more aberrant than other force labor systems throughout world history.
Absolutely mass incarceration, and the force labor system that goes along with it are incredibly distinct from American style chattel slavery, but this is because they’re arguably more in line with what slavery, distinct from chattel slavery, ‘usually’ meant. Basing a forced labor system off of race is more or less a modern phenomenon . There’s some nuance, but slave codes basically make up the core of available written records on the development of race as a cultural concept. [big ol’ FOR THE WEST label here]