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ANGOLA, La. (AP) — In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola. They are on the shelves of most supermarkets, including Kroger, Target and Whole Foods. They’re also exported. The prisoners who help produce these goods are disproportionately people of color. Some are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work – or face punishment – and are sometimes paid pennies an hour or nothing at all. They also are excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job. And it can be almost impossible for them to sue.
The complaint notes that while 26.8% of Alabama’s population identifies as Black or African American, double that percentage constitutes the Black incarcerated population. Drawing historical parallels, the group compares the alleged labor-trafficking scheme to the enslavement of individuals in Alabama’s cotton fields and subsequent sharecropping and convict leasing practices post-Civil War.