36 ms·

They thought they were going to rehab but ended up in chicken plants (2017)

339 points by speeder 5y ago

thekingofravens 5y ago
There are so many terrible conditions like this in our food supply, forced labor, 80 hour weeks at frito lay, and so on. So the question I am left with is, what can I eat to avoid this, if anything?
hi41 5y ago
What did I just read. This is so sad. How come no Christian pastor or Christian leader is speaking about this evil since it all done in the name of christianity but subverted for gaining profits. I hope the men find freedom and peace. But above all, how is the judge sentencing people to such horror.
Yaggo 5y ago
This is a kind of story I would expect to read from certain authoritarian countries.
- Filligree 5y ago
  Welcome to the USA. This sort is story is common there.
- umanwizard 5y ago
  The US is not quite an authoritarian country, but its justice system is reminiscent of one in many ways.
- literallyaduck 5y ago
  You are absolutely right. America is a gilded cage and the paint is peeling.
charbonneau 5y ago
Welcome to Gulag!
thanatos519 5y ago
Coming soon to everywhere! https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/23/uk-food-firms-beg-ministers-to-let-them-use-prisoners-to-ease-labour-shortages https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/23/uk-food-fir...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- danpalmer 5y ago
  Good to mention, but the UK prison release programme is paid, albeit often at minimum wage and subject to a 40% additional tax. As far as I understand it, it is optional for prisoners to engage with though.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    > As far as I understand it, it is optional for prisoners to engage with though. I think we often use “optional” in the wrong way when we’re talking about choices we give to prisoners. When the other option is a dangerous prison it really starts to feel more coercive. The California inmates fighting wildfires for $1.45/day also comes to mind.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      $1.45? A day? Really? That's pretty shocking.
      - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
        As of 2018, yep. https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/prisoners-are-getting-paid-145-day-fight-california-wildfires https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/prisoners-are-get... (I saw an earlier one in 2015 that was 1$/day to boot!)
      - namelessoracle 5y ago
        Even at 1.45 they fight and compete over slots to participate. They'd have prisoners volunteer to do it for free even. You have to realize how draining and soul destroying prison is. By doing the fire fighting they get to leave the prison occasionally, and do something with their life that people compete to do outside the prison system. Also parts of fire fighting training is pretty cool to be honest. People want something/anything to give their life meaning and purpose, and fire fighting does that in a very prestigious way. Ideally they'd get full wages, (at least minimum wage, sense their food and housing is taken care of) and be able to use their fire fighting certification to immediately enter the work force on release. But I believe they are barred from becoming fire fighters afterwords.
bluerival 5y ago
If people are choosing to be in this "rehab" over prison, is it worse than prison?
- notahacker 5y ago
  The article says 1 in 4 complete the programme. Sounds like the majority of people eventually choose prison. After providing a few weeks or months of free labour for an organization apparently breaking far more laws than they ever did...
- bmj 5y ago
  People are not "choosing" this sort of rehab -- judges are choosing for them. Even if given the choice at a sentencing hearing ("would you prefer prison, or a rehabilitation center?"), I suspect many of those convicted have no idea that these rehab centers are really corporate labor camps.
  - smorgusofborg 5y ago
    The article doesn't mention if they did any research in this case but it is also quite common for judges to receive kickbacks from for-profits to get them inmates. A judge assigning a non-user to a rehab could be the result of that kind of conflict of interest.
    - scns 5y ago
      Two american judges went to prison for sending hundreds of minors to private, for profit detention facilities and receiving kickbacks. They made over 100k doing it. Don't have a link at hand, but since i read this on HN, someone else might supply it. Sorry, too lazy to google it for you, on mobile and realizing i'm procrastinating on important stuff. (edit) Someone supplied a link elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28288252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28288252
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    The article specifically mentions that he was threatened with prison if he didn't work fast enough. That implies he had the option to stop work and, instead, go to prison.
louwrentius 5y ago
As I see it slavery in the USA is still as legal as it was a few centuries ago. This is just about ‘rehab’. Prison labour is also still a thing. And most of all, it’s so ironic to me that those organizations are ‘Christian’. Whatever that means, it’s clearly not about basic morality and ethics. Land of the free. Sure Jan! You HN reader from the USA may be ‘free’. But try not to be ‘poor’…
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TheFreim 5y ago
  I wonder what the recidivism rates are of places like this.
57844743385 5y ago
But U.S. companies and government doesn’t like Chinese forced labor camps. Sheesh.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Proven 5y ago
  And who "likes" CCP gulags? Does Xiaomi like them? I'd like to know! Sorry to break it to you, but this doesn't come even close. At most these criminals should get better working conditions and some pay (after reasonable cost of food, boarding and medical care are deducted). Some of them are lucky that the justice system doesn't work, so they don't have to compensate their victims.
rootsudo 5y ago
Damn, wow. Meanwhile, the propaganda we hear about China and Qatar. Edit: The propaganda we hear, and how the USA is somehow, almighty better. We're exactly the same.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  > propaganda ??? How is stating facts about labour abuse in china or qatar a propaganda? Just because it happens in your country too doesn't change the facts or make both acceptable.
  - pestaa 5y ago
    I think he meant exactly that in contrast of all the anti-China rhetoric, every country is doing the same crap. The implied superiority is the propaganda.
    - rootsudo 5y ago
      This.
    - qsort 5y ago
      > every country is doing the same crap That's exactly the problem. No, not every country is doing the same crap, not by a long shot. I have no particular axe to grind and I'm not even American, but pretending that the US and China are somehow equivalent on human rights is so dishonest that if anything here is propaganda then that rhetoric is.
      - lucian1900 5y ago
        The US is definitely much worse, yes. Even just looking at the biggest prison system and all of the invaded countries.
- tgv 5y ago
  1. Taking away many or even all liberties from millions just because they live in the wrong place (Hong Kong) or belong to to the wrong ethnic-religious group is of a different order. 2. The USA is a federal state, not top-down ruled, unlike China. 3. He Without Sin, Cast the First Stone is a call for compassion, not to stick your head in the sand.
Peckingjay 5y ago
> There wasn’t much substance abuse treatment at CAAIR. It was mostly factory work for one of America’s 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. > Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime. It's somewhat incredible (in a bad way) how far capitalism can go in terms of monetizing everything in people's lives when left unchecked.
- luckylion 5y ago
  > It's somewhat incredible (in a bad way) how far capitalism can go in terms of monetizing everything in people's lives when left unchecked. Slavery/indentured servitude/prison labor predates capitalism by forever, that really has nothing to do with it. Similar (but much worse) labor camps existed in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
  - harimau777 5y ago
    I think that the point is that while it is widely agreed that these sorts of issues exist under systems like slavery, many people do not believe that they exist under capitalism.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- umanwizard 5y ago
  What does this have to do with capitalism?
  - rocqua 5y ago
    less capitalism, but the concept of having everything handeled by private enterprise that is for-profit. With prices set 'by thr market' is sorta what happened here.
SkipperCat 5y ago
They should change the name from "Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" to "Biblical Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" because there is nothing Christian about what they are doing. Not an expert on Jesus but from what I've read he was a pretty forgiving guy. I did read the old testament and most of the stories are about cruelty, punishment and obedience.
- tr33house 5y ago
  Nothing biblical about this either
  - cabalamat 5y ago
    On the contrary, slavery is quite biblical.
    - tr33house 5y ago
      The whole bible is about liberation from slavery (of sin) and quite clear about being against slavery (physical). Read of Israel's salvation from Egyptian slavery? Joseph? Limits on slavery (7 year max) because people were too stubborn to accept not having slaves. The year of Jubilee?
      - SkipperCat 5y ago
        The bible has multiple verses codifying how to treat slaves. All sorts of rules and protocols. The old testament does not say "slavery is a sin" or "slavery is forbidden". It clearly says "slavery should be done this way". An as soon as you do that, slavery becomes accepted.
        cabalamat 5y ago
        My point exactly.
        TheFreim 5y ago
roschdal 5y ago
It's a gulag system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
- ant6n 5y ago
  I was born in East Berlin, under what the West likes to call the "horrific Soviet dictatorship". But what I know of the country back then, it was often naive, ineffective at being horrible. People's lives were actyally kind of simple, with fewer pressures. Like if you worked against the state and it's ideals you could get into real trouble, or if you were born to the wrong kind of intellectuals, life could be difficult. But being poor in the US seems so much more horrible. Having the wrong skin color, or being involved with the wrong herb, the State may treat you so much worse.
adenozine 5y ago
This is one of the most horrific articles I've read in recent times. This is absolutely disgraceful. We have to be better than this, there has got to be more tools for people to liberate themselves away from this. I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity. I went through a residential treatment program in Nashville, and there were jobs galore back then, so I went right to work and I've been sober for 22 years, and actually my 22nd year started just a few days ago. This guy didn't even have an addiction problem, I'm almost certain the judge is getting some sort of incentive to punish these people with this program. I honestly think private rehabs are just destined for abuse, it doesn't make sense to treat a public health problem as a private industry product. Ugh.
- rubyfan 5y ago
  Congratulations on 22 years!
- dimeatree 5y ago
  > I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity. Sometimes you just don't know any better, or you're stuck for what ever other reason. I am 100% certain if it was easier to walk away from situations, anyone really would. Regardless, congratulations on being sober for 22 years.
- sneak 5y ago
  > I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity. Friends, family, fear.
  - adenozine 5y ago
    I mean, of course. A lot of the men in the program I went through felt the same way, they would leave after the program back to little hillside towns in TN even and they might make it a few weeks or months before relapsing and doing it all over again. It's just that element of having to stay in one place is what breaks a lot of people down in recovery. You end up back in the same situation as before, with the same places and faces, and there's this insidious thing your brain does that puts your progress out the window and reminds you exactly how you felt and thought when you were last in that situation. It's the same reason residential programs work so well, because you learn to associate the place and faces with the learned behavior and learned coping skills. Programs could improve by teaching the skills necessary to recreate the behavior in new places, that's really what sobriety is all about. How can I make it through today, no matter what happens, without walking into the liquor store? If you KNOW that you can answer that question for yourself, regardless of the place, then you're sober. Otherwise, you're on borrowed time.
verytrivial 5y ago
Arbeit macht frei.
iSnow 5y ago
How is keeping the money on top of forced labor legal? Doesn't the USA have anti-slavery legislation and why doesn't it apply?
- kadoban 5y ago
  When you're convicted of a crime, you lose a lot of freedoms. The 13th amendment (the one that abolished slavery) explicitly contains the wording "...except as punishment for crime..."
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  The US has not ratified C029 - Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), together with: Afghanistan Brunei Darussalam China Marshall Islands Palau Tonga Tuvalu See https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11310:0::NO:11310:P11310_INSTRUMENT_ID:312174:NO https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11310:0::N...
  - iSnow 5y ago
    Wow, TIL, thanks.
_cs2017_ 5y ago
From the title, I thought it's a horror story about how people got ground into a powder, mixed with some plants, and fed to the chickens. So the actual events didn't sound too bad by comparison.
amelius 5y ago
Wasn't there a study of addicted mice that renormalized completely in an environment with lots of social activity, lots of play, lots of good food, lots of exercise, i.e. essentially "mouse heaven"? This seems like the opposite of that.
- Maximus9000 5y ago
  Yes. There was a TED talk on it: https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...
- scns 5y ago
  It is called Rat Park. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
- retrac 5y ago
  The data isn't quite as compelling since you can't lock humans up in cages for this kind of experiment (unless you're an Arkansas judge) but most of the evidence suggests the same thing in humans too. The instinct for "shock treatment" and to hope they hit "rock bottom" is completely misguided. While there is probably no one-size-fits-all treatment for addiction, in most cases they need resocialization, routine, exercise structured around activities that reward without the drug. In the case of serious addicts prone to relapsing or who can't get through withdrawal successfully, a slow medically supervised taper off is probably ideal. Basically, you want to minimize the stress on the addict, avoid withdrawal, make the transition off the drug a gradual one, and stabilize them socially and economically so they have deeper ties so they build up coping strategies besides resorting to drugs. Unfortunately this is the very opposite of what we usually do. Criminal intervention often destroys social relations, results in repeated cyclical withdrawals (often with risk of overdose each time), results in job losses and housing losses, and generally just adds a great deal of chaos that makes getting stable harder.
- Wohlf 5y ago
  >lots of social activity, lots of play, lots of good food, lots of exercise This sounds exactly like a rehab program to me.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dimeatree 5y ago
What a horrific article. This is showing me that I am naive in a lot of ways - how much suffering is our society built on?
- sneak 5y ago
  A huge amount of western industrialized life is built upon wage slavery, the constant threat of being made homeless at gunpoint if one does not work long hours at a completely shitty job. It takes a LOT of garbage haulers, floor sweepers, line cooks, dishwashers, and the like to keep our society humming along. It's ostensibly voluntary, so not the same thing as in TFA, but close. There is also a huge amount of slave labor used in the US's world-leading prison population. Slavery was never really abolished in the US, just limited to prisoners. Correspondingly, the number of black people in prison skyrocketed.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Well, men were excluded from the UN (or rather ILO) convention against forced labour in 1930, and until the new one in 1957. The lengths people go at, to prove that women were under duress during 2000 years, even though there isn’t a single time when men were healthier than women or even had easier jobs, or a single time when men didn’t take better care of women than of themselves, is astonishing. It would be innocuous if men TODAY didn’t kill themselves at 3-5x the rate of women, were 38% of uni students and descending, and systematically more exposed to violence, while the budgets against sexism are systematically, astonishingly, allocated to women’s betterment, despite them already being most of the tertiary jobs, whereas men are at the bottom, and competing with their life at stake to earn the little bucks that will make them seen by the girls. In the end, men die 13x more at work, whether from work exhaustion, cardiac crisis, or blunt force trauma, and that’s excluding drug dealing and criminality as a form of work that is the only trick some of them find to get some female recognition. But you will see all sorts of strategies to miss that point, some of them being: - Missing the point, - Laughing at the point and claiming the writer is frustrated or a bogan, - Claiming the subset: Taking a set where women are generally vastly healthier with longer lives, and finding a subset problem where women are overrepresented. - Claiming they were oppressed for 2000 years and it justifies a few dead homeless today, - Claiming that being [place any extremely worrysome event lived by women] is worse than being dead, or tortured then killed, or legified, etc. - Tilting the newspapers and turning them upside down to avoid talking about the thousands more problems that men face as a result of their gender, for example being the majority of beaten children and deaths under beatings. - Aggressively excluding men who point it out. We do not care about men. I have seen it everywhere, you can point out a pile of a thousand male bodies while hitting no emotional string at all. Were you under the impression that we lived in a kind world? No. It was all an illusion. An adult-life illusion. It’s just been cleverly hidden from you. Welcome to the second part of your life, kind fellow human with a big heart. It’s tough once you see it, but I would prefer a thousand times living burdened by the blunt truth and by the guilt of the horrors we do to each other, than living in the normal illusion.
apexalpha 5y ago
Does anyone know if https://revealnews.org/ https://revealnews.org/ is credible? Those who were hurt and could no longer work often were kicked out of CAAIR and sent to prison, court records show. Most men worked through the pain, fearing the same fate. This reads like a Gulag or Uyghur Camp. It's 100% unpaid, force labor. What the hell? Instead of paychecks, the men get bunk beds, meals and Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. If there’s time between work shifts, they can meet with a counselor or attend classes on anger management and parenting. Weekly Bible study is mandatory. For the first four months, so is church. Most days revolve around the work. 100% reads like a Chinese "re-education" camp. Dear god.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  They seem pretty legit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Center_for_Investigative_Reporting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Center_for_Investigative_R...
- therealdrag0 5y ago
  I personally know someone who's parents sent him into similar programs as a teenager. One program got shut down by the government, then he was sent to another one that IIRC was nearly as bad (in Montana). Lots of forced labor, forced education, solitary confinement, etc.
inopinatus 5y ago
Evidently someone read Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly and thought it contained some good ideas for a business, rather than a dire warning of a ghastly dystopia
mikepurvis 5y ago
Horrifying. Sounds like the camp from the book Holes. It’s insane that this is legal.
endymi0n 5y ago
I understood Americans much better once I understood Calvinism. The very belief that a core group of the first settlers brought to America which is that there exist not just fundamentally good and bad people, but that God would reward good people with success and money and bad people with poverty. From which follows that rich people must have been good and poor people must have been bad. From which follows, that good people need to be rewarded further and bad people punished more. If you look through every single aspect of the U.S. judicial, education, legislation [,...] systems — even Hollywood movies — you will find clues that point back to this core belief. Not judging, just noticing since someone told me "in order to understand Americans, you need to understand Calvinism".
- dicknuckle 5y ago
  You're spot on, although many of us are actively rejecting that idea. It's going to be a majority for many decades to come.
- rdevsrex 5y ago
  I totally agree. You get your more charismatic varieties of this same thinking. For example, the name-it-and-claim-it churches basically teach if you are God's favorite you will be blessed, and if you aren't, you just don't have enough faith. That's not predestination, but it comes down to the same kind of thing. In general, I think all forms of justice in the west are based on free will being true. If some form of determinism is true, then "punishment" doesn't make sense.
  - pharke 5y ago
    > In general, I think all forms of justice in the west are based on free will being true. If some form of determinism is true, then "punishment" doesn't make sense. Isn't that backwards? Believing that someone is inherently bad is effectively equal to them having no free will and their fate being determined. You can swap out "born with an evil soul" for "genetic predisposition and early environmental factors". If you really did replace the judicial system with one based on the view that free will does not exist, would the solution to habitual criminals be to simply separate them from the rest of society for life since they have no ability to determine their own actions? If instead you think they can be externally influenced by rehabilitation then how is this different from having a compassionate view of criminal behaviour that could include free will? Having free will doesn't mean that a person will always make the correct choice or even the moral choice, we're limited and imperfect after all.
twic 5y ago
> “If working 40 hours a week is a slave camp, then all of America is a slave camp,” he said. he just ... he tweeted it out. > Other judges said they were unaware of the law or have found ways around it. This article is full of amazing lines.
mattowen_uk 5y ago
How is this any different to the standard US Prison Labour system ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
- gregallan 5y ago
  For one, it requires the inmates to have been convicted of a crime. (Not that I consider that to be just either, for the record.) What the article describes is likely a violation of the US constitution in at least some of the cases.
hermannj314 5y ago
Cui bono? The state of Oklahoma could have easily offered these men the option of doing volunteer work for a non-profit of their choosing while they attended periodic counseling. Instead they chose a system with forced labor camps where prisoners are sold off to local businesses. We can build a system to enrich the life of the incarcerated or we can enrich the capitalists. Time after time our local governments choose the latter path - does anyone know why?
tyingq 5y ago
Lots of other stuff in there, but the forced Christianity thing caught my eye. "Weekly Bible study is mandatory. For the first four months, so is church." So you can be sentenced into being a practicing "Christian".
- rocqua 5y ago
  The same goes for Alcoholics Anonymous which is Christian, and often court mandated.
  - cool_dude85 5y ago
    AA is at least not explicitly Christian - everything is phrased in terms of a nonspecific "higher power".
    - tyingq 5y ago
      It varies. There's not a lot of top-down mandate on how any particular meeting/group is run.
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      Most AA meetings end with the Lord's Prayer. ;-)
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Well they have to do something religion related to keep their tax exempt status.
TecoAndJix 5y ago
I considered writing this with a throwaway account but decided against it. Enough time has past that I feel sharing won't impact my future. I dropped out of an art college a little over a year after high school due to poor grades and just getting stoned all the time. I ended up moving into a house my parents rented for my sister and I where I just partied, played video games, and did not work. My parents, fed up with the direction I was headed in life, gave me an ultimatum. At the advice of their pastor they said I needed to either move into a "faith based rehabilitation facility" or be cut off from them completely. Having zero resources or practical skills I agreed. They dropped me off at a house in the city and said their goodbyes. This house was a waiting/feeding facility to enter the program. I slept in a large room with a dozen or so bunk beds that held some very colorful characters. In the daytime, we sat and did bible study or cleaned the house. Compared to the rest of the program this was very tame and I was only there for two weeks. After those two weeks a van took a lot of us to a facility several hours away. This was a "satellite compound". I would spend roughly five months here. The days varied - somedays you would spend all day doing bible workbooks and listening to sermons. Other days they would send you out to work. I weed whacked catholic cemeteries in the hot sun all day. You were not paid for this as it "covered your stay in the program". They also solicited donations by taking us all to different churches on the weekend. They would have us all stand up in front of the congregation and one or two people would share about how jesus saved their life. On one occasion, I spent the day standing in front of a Wal-Mart with a bucket asking for money. Secular materials were not allowed and I took great joy in the National Geographic's my sister smuggled in on a visit. There was no internet, phones, and you were not allowed to leave the compound (unless it was for work, church, or solicitation). I will say that the people that worked there did seem to actually care - it was just an insane bubble of existence. After my months there I "graduated" and a van took a lot of us to the main compound several hours away. There were over a hundred people that lived here (compared to the 20 or so at the previous compound). I cannot express adequately how INSANE this place was. Some highlights: - I worked nights in an egg factory for 8 hours doing the monotonous work of stacking cooked egg paddies. You were not paid as this "covered your stay in the program" - Due to good penmanship, I had to make the wedding placeholders for 100+ guests for the program directors daughter. At the time, I thought this was a privilege because they let me hang out in a room alone - Bed bugs hit the compound HARD so they moved everyone to the gymnasium on cots. Imagine an entire gym floor covered in cots and a hundred + people. We had to sleep like that for over a month. I was "lucky" and had one of the gym closets that I shared with only 4 people. - Your standing with the administration and the community depended entirely on your outward expression of love for jesus and the program. At services people would shout in tongues and roll on the floor. - The program received a LOT of donations. While the facility we lived at was in disrepair, the administration building was brand new and well designed. I remember the program director having many nice watches and cars. I ended up getting to leave the program early after pleading with my parents that I was "cured". Honestly, spending almost a year isolated gave me enough time to think about what I wanted in life and motivate me to do something with my future. As far as the program goes - the content was nonsense and predatory.
Red_Tarsius 5y ago
> Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime. I read this reportage years ago and it made my blood boil. For some reason, of all stories of everyday injustice, this stuck with me. My mind often goes back to this case like some sort of mental titinnus. These judges and factory owners have NAMES and ADDRESSES. They need to be REMINDED that all of this can be taken away.
- noasaservice 5y ago
  And I'd argue that this "reminder" needs to be harsh, direct, and not easy to forget. Not that I would ever publicly advocate for assault, arson, etc. But it'd be <cough> a real shame if it would happen.
- pjbeam 5y ago
  I'm with you 100%. That said when I read something like this and get angry about it I really don't know what I can practically do about it. I have disposable income but I'm not the type to feel righteous and self-assured because I dropped a couple hundred dollar donation on a criminal justice reform NGO. As far as actions to take, what immediately comes to my mind are ideas that involve becoming a federal felon for violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. Does anyone have any concrete ideas on what to do as a technical, moderately affluent person when you come across such insidious bullshit?
  - exikyut 5y ago
    The other day I found an interesting webpage linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232716 that outlines the practical accessibility of hiring researchers for things. There are a lot of possibilities here: a domain expert could autonomously take the subject further, or they could provide targeted insights that factor in your strengths/areas of expertise, or they could even work with the original reporters (who likely have private access to a tonne more info, and might be willing to follow up with it further if independent funding is possible, etc). (The thread the above comment is from was also very interesting too.)
nla 5y ago
Reminds me of the PA judge that was getting kickbacks to send juveniles to a private run facility. He's in jail for life now.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  There were two judges convicted.[1] One of them was recently released because of the pandemic. There were also two others involved, a lawyer and real estate guy, who have both long been released. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
ajay-b 5y ago
(2017)
literallyaduck 5y ago
We should outlaw all slavery and refuse to trade with countries who allow it.
tamaharbor 5y ago
If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
- vnchr 5y ago
  Once you’ve made a mistake, plucked chickens you’ll make. You’ll be beat with a rake. You won’t get a fair shake. Your dignity they’ll take. You’ve no idea what’s at stake.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  A trite phrase like that bespeaks thoughtlessness. Suppose you got the time, but didn't do any crime? Suppose your crime never hurt anyone? [e.g. third-strike cannabis possession]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
scns 5y ago
Those reporters are modern heroes. These "christians" should be sued into oblivion, stripped of their illegally obtained assets and rot in prison.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Heros for sensationalizing rehab facilities? The only thing disturbing is the reality of managing addicts. Can we put you in charge of one addict and see how it goes?
kwhitefoot 5y ago
That was almost physically painful to read. How can such things exist in a civilized country. Where I come from and where I live I think what is described would qualify as modern slavery. See: - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/993172/Modern_Slavery_Statutory_Guidance__EW__Non-Statutory_Guidance__SNI__v2.3.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... - UN Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29): https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/blog/document/forced-labour-convention-1930-no-29/ https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/blog/document/forced-labour-con... - See Article 4, European Convention on Human Rights: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf
- jandrese 5y ago
  Slavery as punishment for a crime is specifically allowed in the Constitution. The high incarceration rate for former slaves is not a coincidence. Former slaveowners retained their positions of power after the civil war and have worked tirelessly to bring back what they see as the natural order of things.
  - e40 5y ago
    What is amazing to me is that this comment 20 years ago would have seemed like an unhinged rant, but today, with all that has happened in the last decade, rings as painfully true.
dougmwne 5y ago
A good exercise is to ask where the failure or fault was in this system. There will always be businesses looking for ways to cut costs. There will always be people with flexible ethics willing to exploit others for their own gain. There will ways be vulnerable people without options and unable to advocate for themselves. We must take that all as a given and still find a way to prevent these abuses. It comes down to what we as a society permit via our laws and courts. If we do not do the hard work of building and maintaining a just society, it will not exist.
r3trohack3r 5y ago
I feel like you could make a Stephen King esq horror movie from this. Got caught buying a stolen horse trailer, no record of drug abuse. Get sent to the gulag “rehab,” center. Hand pulled into the machinery. Block you from getting medical treatment. Force you to keep working. Steal your workers comp. Meanwhile the warden is walking up and down the halls singing hymns and menacingly dragging a chain. Sit through the whole 1h30min movie and it turns out it’s just a Tyson nuggets commercial.
- basq 5y ago
  Philip K Dick already did it in 1977 with A Scanner Darkly.
- saganus 5y ago
  You should read the comic at http://elan.school http://elan.school It's unbelievable and if they ever make a movie or HBO-type series of it, it will need to be seriously toned down, lest it ends up being too horrirific.
refracture 5y ago
This is horrifying. I'm not opposed to using prison labor to get work done, but these are still people and they deserve to be treated as such. I bet these people running this camp think they're going to heaven because of all the Jesus juice they are shoving into these poor men.
nobodyandproud 5y ago
A large segment of the business class is all about slavery, all while eeking past the technical definition. The some courts and CAAIR are fighting this every step of the way. On a positive note, Oklahoma is apparently past skin color when looking for slaves.
cupcake-unicorn 5y ago
This is so horrifying in so many ways. Slave labor, forced religion, and further contribution to pain and suffering in the meat industry. It reminds me of a recent article where meat companies in the UK are also trying to get prisoners for their own slave labor. I thought that stuff only happened here. Needs to be a serious overhaul of this loophole which allows slave labor from incarcerated or as an alternative to incarceration. Hillary Clinton's household staff was from such a prison labor program at one point.

339 points by speeder 5y ago

There are so many terrible conditions like this in our food supply, forced labor, 80 hour weeks at frito lay, and so on. So the question I am left with is, what can I eat to avoid this, if anything?

hi41 5y ago

What did I just read. This is so sad. How come no Christian pastor or Christian leader is speaking about this evil since it all done in the name of christianity but subverted for gaining profits. I hope the men find freedom and peace. But above all, how is the judge sentencing people to such horror.

Yaggo 5y ago

This is a kind of story I would expect to read from certain authoritarian countries.

Filligree 5y ago
Welcome to the USA. This sort is story is common there.
umanwizard 5y ago
The US is not quite an authoritarian country, but its justice system is reminiscent of one in many ways.
literallyaduck 5y ago
You are absolutely right. America is a gilded cage and the paint is peeling.

charbonneau 5y ago

Welcome to Gulag!

thanatos519 5y ago

Coming soon to everywhere! https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/23/uk-food-firms-beg-ministers-to-let-them-use-prisoners-to-ease-labour-shortages https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/aug/23/uk-food-fir...

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danpalmer 5y ago
Good to mention, but the UK prison release programme is paid, albeit often at minimum wage and subject to a 40% additional tax. As far as I understand it, it is optional for prisoners to engage with though.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > As far as I understand it, it is optional for prisoners to engage with though. I think we often use “optional” in the wrong way when we’re talking about choices we give to prisoners. When the other option is a dangerous prison it really starts to feel more coercive. The California inmates fighting wildfires for $1.45/day also comes to mind.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    $1.45? A day? Really? That's pretty shocking.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      As of 2018, yep. https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/prisoners-are-getting-paid-145-day-fight-california-wildfires https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/prisoners-are-get... (I saw an earlier one in 2015 that was 1$/day to boot!)
    - namelessoracle 5y ago
      Even at 1.45 they fight and compete over slots to participate. They'd have prisoners volunteer to do it for free even. You have to realize how draining and soul destroying prison is. By doing the fire fighting they get to leave the prison occasionally, and do something with their life that people compete to do outside the prison system. Also parts of fire fighting training is pretty cool to be honest. People want something/anything to give their life meaning and purpose, and fire fighting does that in a very prestigious way. Ideally they'd get full wages, (at least minimum wage, sense their food and housing is taken care of) and be able to use their fire fighting certification to immediately enter the work force on release. But I believe they are barred from becoming fire fighters afterwords.

bluerival 5y ago

If people are choosing to be in this "rehab" over prison, is it worse than prison?

notahacker 5y ago
The article says 1 in 4 complete the programme. Sounds like the majority of people eventually choose prison. After providing a few weeks or months of free labour for an organization apparently breaking far more laws than they ever did...
bmj 5y ago
People are not "choosing" this sort of rehab -- judges are choosing for them. Even if given the choice at a sentencing hearing ("would you prefer prison, or a rehabilitation center?"), I suspect many of those convicted have no idea that these rehab centers are really corporate labor camps.
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  The article doesn't mention if they did any research in this case but it is also quite common for judges to receive kickbacks from for-profits to get them inmates. A judge assigning a non-user to a rehab could be the result of that kind of conflict of interest.
  - scns 5y ago
    Two american judges went to prison for sending hundreds of minors to private, for profit detention facilities and receiving kickbacks. They made over 100k doing it. Don't have a link at hand, but since i read this on HN, someone else might supply it. Sorry, too lazy to google it for you, on mobile and realizing i'm procrastinating on important stuff. (edit) Someone supplied a link elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28288252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28288252
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  The article specifically mentions that he was threatened with prison if he didn't work fast enough. That implies he had the option to stop work and, instead, go to prison.

louwrentius 5y ago

As I see it slavery in the USA is still as legal as it was a few centuries ago. This is just about ‘rehab’. Prison labour is also still a thing. And most of all, it’s so ironic to me that those organizations are ‘Christian’. Whatever that means, it’s clearly not about basic morality and ethics. Land of the free. Sure Jan! You HN reader from the USA may be ‘free’. But try not to be ‘poor’…

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TheFreim 5y ago
I wonder what the recidivism rates are of places like this.

57844743385 5y ago

But U.S. companies and government doesn’t like Chinese forced labor camps. Sheesh.

deleted 5y ago
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Proven 5y ago
And who "likes" CCP gulags? Does Xiaomi like them? I'd like to know! Sorry to break it to you, but this doesn't come even close. At most these criminals should get better working conditions and some pay (after reasonable cost of food, boarding and medical care are deducted). Some of them are lucky that the justice system doesn't work, so they don't have to compensate their victims.

rootsudo 5y ago

Damn, wow. Meanwhile, the propaganda we hear about China and Qatar. Edit: The propaganda we hear, and how the USA is somehow, almighty better. We're exactly the same.

me_me_me 5y ago
> propaganda ??? How is stating facts about labour abuse in china or qatar a propaganda? Just because it happens in your country too doesn't change the facts or make both acceptable.
- pestaa 5y ago
  I think he meant exactly that in contrast of all the anti-China rhetoric, every country is doing the same crap. The implied superiority is the propaganda.
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    This.
  - qsort 5y ago
    > every country is doing the same crap That's exactly the problem. No, not every country is doing the same crap, not by a long shot. I have no particular axe to grind and I'm not even American, but pretending that the US and China are somehow equivalent on human rights is so dishonest that if anything here is propaganda then that rhetoric is.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      The US is definitely much worse, yes. Even just looking at the biggest prison system and all of the invaded countries.
tgv 5y ago
1. Taking away many or even all liberties from millions just because they live in the wrong place (Hong Kong) or belong to to the wrong ethnic-religious group is of a different order. 2. The USA is a federal state, not top-down ruled, unlike China. 3. He Without Sin, Cast the First Stone is a call for compassion, not to stick your head in the sand.

Peckingjay 5y ago

> There wasn’t much substance abuse treatment at CAAIR. It was mostly factory work for one of America’s 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. > Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime. It's somewhat incredible (in a bad way) how far capitalism can go in terms of monetizing everything in people's lives when left unchecked.

luckylion 5y ago
> It's somewhat incredible (in a bad way) how far capitalism can go in terms of monetizing everything in people's lives when left unchecked. Slavery/indentured servitude/prison labor predates capitalism by forever, that really has nothing to do with it. Similar (but much worse) labor camps existed in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
- harimau777 5y ago
  I think that the point is that while it is widely agreed that these sorts of issues exist under systems like slavery, many people do not believe that they exist under capitalism.
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umanwizard 5y ago
What does this have to do with capitalism?
- rocqua 5y ago
  less capitalism, but the concept of having everything handeled by private enterprise that is for-profit. With prices set 'by thr market' is sorta what happened here.

SkipperCat 5y ago

They should change the name from "Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" to "Biblical Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery" because there is nothing Christian about what they are doing. Not an expert on Jesus but from what I've read he was a pretty forgiving guy. I did read the old testament and most of the stories are about cruelty, punishment and obedience.

tr33house 5y ago
Nothing biblical about this either
- cabalamat 5y ago
  On the contrary, slavery is quite biblical.
  - tr33house 5y ago
    The whole bible is about liberation from slavery (of sin) and quite clear about being against slavery (physical). Read of Israel's salvation from Egyptian slavery? Joseph? Limits on slavery (7 year max) because people were too stubborn to accept not having slaves. The year of Jubilee?
    - SkipperCat 5y ago
      The bible has multiple verses codifying how to treat slaves. All sorts of rules and protocols. The old testament does not say "slavery is a sin" or "slavery is forbidden". It clearly says "slavery should be done this way". An as soon as you do that, slavery becomes accepted.
      - cabalamat 5y ago
        My point exactly.
      - TheFreim 5y ago

roschdal 5y ago

It's a gulag system: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

ant6n 5y ago
I was born in East Berlin, under what the West likes to call the "horrific Soviet dictatorship". But what I know of the country back then, it was often naive, ineffective at being horrible. People's lives were actyally kind of simple, with fewer pressures. Like if you worked against the state and it's ideals you could get into real trouble, or if you were born to the wrong kind of intellectuals, life could be difficult. But being poor in the US seems so much more horrible. Having the wrong skin color, or being involved with the wrong herb, the State may treat you so much worse.

adenozine 5y ago

This is one of the most horrific articles I've read in recent times. This is absolutely disgraceful. We have to be better than this, there has got to be more tools for people to liberate themselves away from this. I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity. I went through a residential treatment program in Nashville, and there were jobs galore back then, so I went right to work and I've been sober for 22 years, and actually my 22nd year started just a few days ago. This guy didn't even have an addiction problem, I'm almost certain the judge is getting some sort of incentive to punish these people with this program. I honestly think private rehabs are just destined for abuse, it doesn't make sense to treat a public health problem as a private industry product. Ugh.

rubyfan 5y ago
Congratulations on 22 years!
dimeatree 5y ago
> I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity. Sometimes you just don't know any better, or you're stuck for what ever other reason. I am 100% certain if it was easier to walk away from situations, anyone really would. Regardless, congratulations on being sober for 22 years.
sneak 5y ago
> I want to know why these folks won't LEAVE shitty redneck states and head to places with more opportunity. Friends, family, fear.
- adenozine 5y ago
  I mean, of course. A lot of the men in the program I went through felt the same way, they would leave after the program back to little hillside towns in TN even and they might make it a few weeks or months before relapsing and doing it all over again. It's just that element of having to stay in one place is what breaks a lot of people down in recovery. You end up back in the same situation as before, with the same places and faces, and there's this insidious thing your brain does that puts your progress out the window and reminds you exactly how you felt and thought when you were last in that situation. It's the same reason residential programs work so well, because you learn to associate the place and faces with the learned behavior and learned coping skills. Programs could improve by teaching the skills necessary to recreate the behavior in new places, that's really what sobriety is all about. How can I make it through today, no matter what happens, without walking into the liquor store? If you KNOW that you can answer that question for yourself, regardless of the place, then you're sober. Otherwise, you're on borrowed time.

verytrivial 5y ago

Arbeit macht frei.

iSnow 5y ago

How is keeping the money on top of forced labor legal? Doesn't the USA have anti-slavery legislation and why doesn't it apply?

kadoban 5y ago
When you're convicted of a crime, you lose a lot of freedoms. The 13th amendment (the one that abolished slavery) explicitly contains the wording "...except as punishment for crime..."
kwhitefoot 5y ago
The US has not ratified C029 - Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), together with: Afghanistan Brunei Darussalam China Marshall Islands Palau Tonga Tuvalu See https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11310:0::NO:11310:P11310_INSTRUMENT_ID:312174:NO https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11310:0::N...
- iSnow 5y ago
  Wow, TIL, thanks.

_cs2017_ 5y ago

From the title, I thought it's a horror story about how people got ground into a powder, mixed with some plants, and fed to the chickens. So the actual events didn't sound too bad by comparison.

amelius 5y ago

Wasn't there a study of addicted mice that renormalized completely in an environment with lots of social activity, lots of play, lots of good food, lots of exercise, i.e. essentially "mouse heaven"? This seems like the opposite of that.

Maximus9000 5y ago
Yes. There was a TED talk on it: https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...
scns 5y ago
It is called Rat Park. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
retrac 5y ago
The data isn't quite as compelling since you can't lock humans up in cages for this kind of experiment (unless you're an Arkansas judge) but most of the evidence suggests the same thing in humans too. The instinct for "shock treatment" and to hope they hit "rock bottom" is completely misguided. While there is probably no one-size-fits-all treatment for addiction, in most cases they need resocialization, routine, exercise structured around activities that reward without the drug. In the case of serious addicts prone to relapsing or who can't get through withdrawal successfully, a slow medically supervised taper off is probably ideal. Basically, you want to minimize the stress on the addict, avoid withdrawal, make the transition off the drug a gradual one, and stabilize them socially and economically so they have deeper ties so they build up coping strategies besides resorting to drugs. Unfortunately this is the very opposite of what we usually do. Criminal intervention often destroys social relations, results in repeated cyclical withdrawals (often with risk of overdose each time), results in job losses and housing losses, and generally just adds a great deal of chaos that makes getting stable harder.
Wohlf 5y ago
>lots of social activity, lots of play, lots of good food, lots of exercise This sounds exactly like a rehab program to me.

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dimeatree 5y ago

What a horrific article. This is showing me that I am naive in a lot of ways - how much suffering is our society built on?

sneak 5y ago
A huge amount of western industrialized life is built upon wage slavery, the constant threat of being made homeless at gunpoint if one does not work long hours at a completely shitty job. It takes a LOT of garbage haulers, floor sweepers, line cooks, dishwashers, and the like to keep our society humming along. It's ostensibly voluntary, so not the same thing as in TFA, but close. There is also a huge amount of slave labor used in the US's world-leading prison population. Slavery was never really abolished in the US, just limited to prisoners. Correspondingly, the number of black people in prison skyrocketed.
laurent92 5y ago
Well, men were excluded from the UN (or rather ILO) convention against forced labour in 1930, and until the new one in 1957. The lengths people go at, to prove that women were under duress during 2000 years, even though there isn’t a single time when men were healthier than women or even had easier jobs, or a single time when men didn’t take better care of women than of themselves, is astonishing. It would be innocuous if men TODAY didn’t kill themselves at 3-5x the rate of women, were 38% of uni students and descending, and systematically more exposed to violence, while the budgets against sexism are systematically, astonishingly, allocated to women’s betterment, despite them already being most of the tertiary jobs, whereas men are at the bottom, and competing with their life at stake to earn the little bucks that will make them seen by the girls. In the end, men die 13x more at work, whether from work exhaustion, cardiac crisis, or blunt force trauma, and that’s excluding drug dealing and criminality as a form of work that is the only trick some of them find to get some female recognition. But you will see all sorts of strategies to miss that point, some of them being: - Missing the point, - Laughing at the point and claiming the writer is frustrated or a bogan, - Claiming the subset: Taking a set where women are generally vastly healthier with longer lives, and finding a subset problem where women are overrepresented. - Claiming they were oppressed for 2000 years and it justifies a few dead homeless today, - Claiming that being [place any extremely worrysome event lived by women] is worse than being dead, or tortured then killed, or legified, etc. - Tilting the newspapers and turning them upside down to avoid talking about the thousands more problems that men face as a result of their gender, for example being the majority of beaten children and deaths under beatings. - Aggressively excluding men who point it out. We do not care about men. I have seen it everywhere, you can point out a pile of a thousand male bodies while hitting no emotional string at all. Were you under the impression that we lived in a kind world? No. It was all an illusion. An adult-life illusion. It’s just been cleverly hidden from you. Welcome to the second part of your life, kind fellow human with a big heart. It’s tough once you see it, but I would prefer a thousand times living burdened by the blunt truth and by the guilt of the horrors we do to each other, than living in the normal illusion.

apexalpha 5y ago

Does anyone know if https://revealnews.org/ https://revealnews.org/ is credible? Those who were hurt and could no longer work often were kicked out of CAAIR and sent to prison, court records show. Most men worked through the pain, fearing the same fate. This reads like a Gulag or Uyghur Camp. It's 100% unpaid, force labor. What the hell? Instead of paychecks, the men get bunk beds, meals and Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. If there’s time between work shifts, they can meet with a counselor or attend classes on anger management and parenting. Weekly Bible study is mandatory. For the first four months, so is church. Most days revolve around the work. 100% reads like a Chinese "re-education" camp. Dear god.

teh_klev 5y ago
They seem pretty legit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Center_for_Investigative_Reporting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Center_for_Investigative_R...
therealdrag0 5y ago
I personally know someone who's parents sent him into similar programs as a teenager. One program got shut down by the government, then he was sent to another one that IIRC was nearly as bad (in Montana). Lots of forced labor, forced education, solitary confinement, etc.

inopinatus 5y ago

Evidently someone read Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly and thought it contained some good ideas for a business, rather than a dire warning of a ghastly dystopia

mikepurvis 5y ago

Horrifying. Sounds like the camp from the book Holes. It’s insane that this is legal.

endymi0n 5y ago

I understood Americans much better once I understood Calvinism. The very belief that a core group of the first settlers brought to America which is that there exist not just fundamentally good and bad people, but that God would reward good people with success and money and bad people with poverty. From which follows that rich people must have been good and poor people must have been bad. From which follows, that good people need to be rewarded further and bad people punished more. If you look through every single aspect of the U.S. judicial, education, legislation [,...] systems — even Hollywood movies — you will find clues that point back to this core belief. Not judging, just noticing since someone told me "in order to understand Americans, you need to understand Calvinism".

dicknuckle 5y ago
You're spot on, although many of us are actively rejecting that idea. It's going to be a majority for many decades to come.
rdevsrex 5y ago
I totally agree. You get your more charismatic varieties of this same thinking. For example, the name-it-and-claim-it churches basically teach if you are God's favorite you will be blessed, and if you aren't, you just don't have enough faith. That's not predestination, but it comes down to the same kind of thing. In general, I think all forms of justice in the west are based on free will being true. If some form of determinism is true, then "punishment" doesn't make sense.
- pharke 5y ago
  > In general, I think all forms of justice in the west are based on free will being true. If some form of determinism is true, then "punishment" doesn't make sense. Isn't that backwards? Believing that someone is inherently bad is effectively equal to them having no free will and their fate being determined. You can swap out "born with an evil soul" for "genetic predisposition and early environmental factors". If you really did replace the judicial system with one based on the view that free will does not exist, would the solution to habitual criminals be to simply separate them from the rest of society for life since they have no ability to determine their own actions? If instead you think they can be externally influenced by rehabilitation then how is this different from having a compassionate view of criminal behaviour that could include free will? Having free will doesn't mean that a person will always make the correct choice or even the moral choice, we're limited and imperfect after all.

twic 5y ago

> “If working 40 hours a week is a slave camp, then all of America is a slave camp,” he said. he just ... he tweeted it out. > Other judges said they were unaware of the law or have found ways around it. This article is full of amazing lines.

mattowen_uk 5y ago

How is this any different to the standard US Prison Labour system ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

gregallan 5y ago
For one, it requires the inmates to have been convicted of a crime. (Not that I consider that to be just either, for the record.) What the article describes is likely a violation of the US constitution in at least some of the cases.

hermannj314 5y ago

Cui bono? The state of Oklahoma could have easily offered these men the option of doing volunteer work for a non-profit of their choosing while they attended periodic counseling. Instead they chose a system with forced labor camps where prisoners are sold off to local businesses. We can build a system to enrich the life of the incarcerated or we can enrich the capitalists. Time after time our local governments choose the latter path - does anyone know why?

tyingq 5y ago

Lots of other stuff in there, but the forced Christianity thing caught my eye. "Weekly Bible study is mandatory. For the first four months, so is church." So you can be sentenced into being a practicing "Christian".

rocqua 5y ago
The same goes for Alcoholics Anonymous which is Christian, and often court mandated.
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  AA is at least not explicitly Christian - everything is phrased in terms of a nonspecific "higher power".
  - tyingq 5y ago
    It varies. There's not a lot of top-down mandate on how any particular meeting/group is run.
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Most AA meetings end with the Lord's Prayer. ;-)
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Well they have to do something religion related to keep their tax exempt status.

TecoAndJix 5y ago

I considered writing this with a throwaway account but decided against it. Enough time has past that I feel sharing won't impact my future. I dropped out of an art college a little over a year after high school due to poor grades and just getting stoned all the time. I ended up moving into a house my parents rented for my sister and I where I just partied, played video games, and did not work. My parents, fed up with the direction I was headed in life, gave me an ultimatum. At the advice of their pastor they said I needed to either move into a "faith based rehabilitation facility" or be cut off from them completely. Having zero resources or practical skills I agreed. They dropped me off at a house in the city and said their goodbyes. This house was a waiting/feeding facility to enter the program. I slept in a large room with a dozen or so bunk beds that held some very colorful characters. In the daytime, we sat and did bible study or cleaned the house. Compared to the rest of the program this was very tame and I was only there for two weeks. After those two weeks a van took a lot of us to a facility several hours away. This was a "satellite compound". I would spend roughly five months here. The days varied - somedays you would spend all day doing bible workbooks and listening to sermons. Other days they would send you out to work. I weed whacked catholic cemeteries in the hot sun all day. You were not paid for this as it "covered your stay in the program". They also solicited donations by taking us all to different churches on the weekend. They would have us all stand up in front of the congregation and one or two people would share about how jesus saved their life. On one occasion, I spent the day standing in front of a Wal-Mart with a bucket asking for money. Secular materials were not allowed and I took great joy in the National Geographic's my sister smuggled in on a visit. There was no internet, phones, and you were not allowed to leave the compound (unless it was for work, church, or solicitation). I will say that the people that worked there did seem to actually care - it was just an insane bubble of existence. After my months there I "graduated" and a van took a lot of us to the main compound several hours away. There were over a hundred people that lived here (compared to the 20 or so at the previous compound). I cannot express adequately how INSANE this place was. Some highlights: - I worked nights in an egg factory for 8 hours doing the monotonous work of stacking cooked egg paddies. You were not paid as this "covered your stay in the program" - Due to good penmanship, I had to make the wedding placeholders for 100+ guests for the program directors daughter. At the time, I thought this was a privilege because they let me hang out in a room alone - Bed bugs hit the compound HARD so they moved everyone to the gymnasium on cots. Imagine an entire gym floor covered in cots and a hundred + people. We had to sleep like that for over a month. I was "lucky" and had one of the gym closets that I shared with only 4 people. - Your standing with the administration and the community depended entirely on your outward expression of love for jesus and the program. At services people would shout in tongues and roll on the floor. - The program received a LOT of donations. While the facility we lived at was in disrepair, the administration building was brand new and well designed. I remember the program director having many nice watches and cars. I ended up getting to leave the program early after pleading with my parents that I was "cured". Honestly, spending almost a year isolated gave me enough time to think about what I wanted in life and motivate me to do something with my future. As far as the program goes - the content was nonsense and predatory.

Red_Tarsius 5y ago

> Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime. I read this reportage years ago and it made my blood boil. For some reason, of all stories of everyday injustice, this stuck with me. My mind often goes back to this case like some sort of mental titinnus. These judges and factory owners have NAMES and ADDRESSES. They need to be REMINDED that all of this can be taken away.

noasaservice 5y ago
And I'd argue that this "reminder" needs to be harsh, direct, and not easy to forget. Not that I would ever publicly advocate for assault, arson, etc. But it'd be <cough> a real shame if it would happen.
pjbeam 5y ago
I'm with you 100%. That said when I read something like this and get angry about it I really don't know what I can practically do about it. I have disposable income but I'm not the type to feel righteous and self-assured because I dropped a couple hundred dollar donation on a criminal justice reform NGO. As far as actions to take, what immediately comes to my mind are ideas that involve becoming a federal felon for violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. Does anyone have any concrete ideas on what to do as a technical, moderately affluent person when you come across such insidious bullshit?
- exikyut 5y ago
  The other day I found an interesting webpage linked from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28232716 that outlines the practical accessibility of hiring researchers for things. There are a lot of possibilities here: a domain expert could autonomously take the subject further, or they could provide targeted insights that factor in your strengths/areas of expertise, or they could even work with the original reporters (who likely have private access to a tonne more info, and might be willing to follow up with it further if independent funding is possible, etc). (The thread the above comment is from was also very interesting too.)

nla 5y ago

Reminds me of the PA judge that was getting kickbacks to send juveniles to a private run facility. He's in jail for life now.

elliekelly 5y ago
There were two judges convicted.[1] One of them was recently released because of the pandemic. There were also two others involved, a lawyer and real estate guy, who have both long been released. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

ajay-b 5y ago

(2017)

literallyaduck 5y ago

We should outlaw all slavery and refuse to trade with countries who allow it.

tamaharbor 5y ago

If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

vnchr 5y ago
Once you’ve made a mistake, plucked chickens you’ll make. You’ll be beat with a rake. You won’t get a fair shake. Your dignity they’ll take. You’ve no idea what’s at stake.
denton-scratch 5y ago
A trite phrase like that bespeaks thoughtlessness. Suppose you got the time, but didn't do any crime? Suppose your crime never hurt anyone? [e.g. third-strike cannabis possession]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

scns 5y ago

Those reporters are modern heroes. These "christians" should be sued into oblivion, stripped of their illegally obtained assets and rot in prison.

datavirtue 5y ago
Heros for sensationalizing rehab facilities? The only thing disturbing is the reality of managing addicts. Can we put you in charge of one addict and see how it goes?

kwhitefoot 5y ago

That was almost physically painful to read. How can such things exist in a civilized country. Where I come from and where I live I think what is described would qualify as modern slavery. See: - https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/993172/Modern_Slavery_Statutory_Guidance__EW__Non-Statutory_Guidance__SNI__v2.3.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... - UN Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29): https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/blog/document/forced-labour-convention-1930-no-29/ https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/blog/document/forced-labour-con... - See Article 4, European Convention on Human Rights: https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf

jandrese 5y ago
Slavery as punishment for a crime is specifically allowed in the Constitution. The high incarceration rate for former slaves is not a coincidence. Former slaveowners retained their positions of power after the civil war and have worked tirelessly to bring back what they see as the natural order of things.
- e40 5y ago
  What is amazing to me is that this comment 20 years ago would have seemed like an unhinged rant, but today, with all that has happened in the last decade, rings as painfully true.

dougmwne 5y ago

A good exercise is to ask where the failure or fault was in this system. There will always be businesses looking for ways to cut costs. There will always be people with flexible ethics willing to exploit others for their own gain. There will ways be vulnerable people without options and unable to advocate for themselves. We must take that all as a given and still find a way to prevent these abuses. It comes down to what we as a society permit via our laws and courts. If we do not do the hard work of building and maintaining a just society, it will not exist.

r3trohack3r 5y ago

I feel like you could make a Stephen King esq horror movie from this. Got caught buying a stolen horse trailer, no record of drug abuse. Get sent to the gulag “rehab,” center. Hand pulled into the machinery. Block you from getting medical treatment. Force you to keep working. Steal your workers comp. Meanwhile the warden is walking up and down the halls singing hymns and menacingly dragging a chain. Sit through the whole 1h30min movie and it turns out it’s just a Tyson nuggets commercial.

basq 5y ago
Philip K Dick already did it in 1977 with A Scanner Darkly.
saganus 5y ago
You should read the comic at http://elan.school http://elan.school It's unbelievable and if they ever make a movie or HBO-type series of it, it will need to be seriously toned down, lest it ends up being too horrirific.

refracture 5y ago

This is horrifying. I'm not opposed to using prison labor to get work done, but these are still people and they deserve to be treated as such. I bet these people running this camp think they're going to heaven because of all the Jesus juice they are shoving into these poor men.

nobodyandproud 5y ago

A large segment of the business class is all about slavery, all while eeking past the technical definition. The some courts and CAAIR are fighting this every step of the way. On a positive note, Oklahoma is apparently past skin color when looking for slaves.

cupcake-unicorn 5y ago

This is so horrifying in so many ways. Slave labor, forced religion, and further contribution to pain and suffering in the meat industry. It reminds me of a recent article where meat companies in the UK are also trying to get prisoners for their own slave labor. I thought that stuff only happened here. Needs to be a serious overhaul of this loophole which allows slave labor from incarcerated or as an alternative to incarceration. Hillary Clinton's household staff was from such a prison labor program at one point.