From this month's issue of Prison Legal News:

The worst day of Brad McGahey’s life was the day a judge decided to spare him from prison.

McGahey was 23 with dreams of making it big in rodeo, maybe starring in his own reality TV show. With a 1.5 GPA, he’d barely graduated from high school. He had two kids and mounting child support debt. Then he got busted for buying a stolen horse trailer, fell behind on court fines and blew off his probation officer.

Standing in a tiny wood-paneled courtroom in rural Oklahoma in 2010, he faced one year in state prison. The judge had another plan.

“You need to learn a work ethic,” the judge told him. “I’m sending you to CAAIR.”

What could be worse than prison? How about a Christian Rehab?

McGahey had heard of Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery. People called it “the Chicken Farm,” a rural retreat where defendants stayed for a year, got addiction treatment and learned to live more productive lives. Most were sent there by courts from across Oklahoma and neighboring states, part of the nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.

Aside from daily cans of Dr Pepper, McGahey wasn’t addicted to anything. The judge knew that. But the Chicken Farm sounded better than prison.

Rehab sure seems like a humane alternative to prison:

But in the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they’ve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.

The Chicken Farm:

At CAAIR, about 200 men live on a sprawling, grassy compound in northeastern Oklahoma, and most work full time at Simmons Foods, Inc., a company with annual revenue of $1.4 billion. They slaughter and process chickens for some of America’s largest retailers and restaurants, including Walmart, KFC and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. They also make pet food for PetSmart and Rachael Ray’s Nutrish brand.

Chicken processing plants are notoriously dangerous and understaffed. The hours are long, the pay is low and the conditions are brutal.

The article contains multiple examples of inhuman and crippling work conditions for which the inmates receive no pay. Fortunately, help is on the way. The ACLU is considering legal action:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma now is considering legal action in response to Reveal’s reporting.

I'm sure there are lots of complex legal technicalities to "consider".

Inmates also improve their work ethic by performing community service for CAAIR:

During the one-year program, the men can’t have cell phones or money. If they relapse or break the rules, they can be kicked out or punished with extra time. In 2014, CAAIR reported that about 1 in 4 men completed the program.

Former employees said work takes priority over everything. If counseling or classes interfered with the job, the decision was clear. “It’s work,” said Aaron Snyder, who participated in the program and later worked as a dorm manager. “You’re going to work.”

The men also perform free labor for CAAIR’s founders, family and friends. A group of men said they helped remodel the Wilkersons’ master bedroom. Another said he helped one of their daughters pack boxes and move. Still others worked on an egg farm owned by the Wilkersons’ other daughter. The program told the courts that it was community service, according to employees.

And the inmates are covered by workers' comp:

Brandon Spurgin was working in the chicken plants one night in 2014 when a metal door crashed down on his head, damaging his spine and leaving him with chronic pain, according to medical records. CAAIR filed for workers’ compensation on his behalf and took the $4,500 in insurance payments. Spurgin said he got nothing.

Janet Wilkerson acknowledged that’s standard practice.

“That’s fraudulent behavior,” said Eddie Walker, a former judge with the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission. He said workers’ comp payments are required to go to the injured worker. “What’s being done is clearly inappropriate.”

Three years later, Spurgin’s still in pain and can no longer hold a full-time job.

While the ACLU is considering legal action CAAIR has a few plans of their own:

Courts still send defendants to CAAIR, and the program is expanding. Simmons Foods even donated funds for a third dormitory to house dozens more men.

“I was walking in the parking lot of the Simmons plant, and [Chairman] Mark Simmons told me he needed more men,” Wilkerson told a local reporter at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2015. “I told him to build me another dorm.”

CAAIR is now planning a fourth dormitory. It’s supposed to be the biggest yet.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/jan/8/they-thought-they-were-g...

Here's a follow up article about multiple lawsuits against another Oklahoma forced slave labor camp:

In a follow-up article, Reveal reported on December 4, 2017 that a drug court started by former Oklahoma Judge Thomas Landrith sent defendants to work at a Coca-Cola bottling factory, among other companies, through a rehab program known as Southern Oklahoma Addiction Recovery (SOAR). The defendants in the court-ordered program also allegedly performed yard work at Landrith’s home, and were required to obtain food stamps and turn them over to SOAR.

Landrith, who retired in 2014, serves as an unpaid board member with SOAR while volunteering as the judge over the drug court in Pontotoc County. According to state ethics rules, judges should not serve as officers of organizations that may be involved in proceedings before them, and those rules apply to retired judges.

And another one in Arkansas:

Another company that employed defendants from a court-ordered rehab program in Arkansas, the Drug and Alcohol Recovery Program (DARP), said it would end that relationship after news reports of the slave-labor nature of the arrangement. Hendren Plastics, owned by Arkansas Senate majority leader Jim Hendren, manufactures dock floats sold at Wal-Mart and Home Depot; the company paid wages to DARP rather than to workers in the program.

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2018/jan/8/multiple-lawsuits-allege...

Don't stories like this just give you a warm fuzzy feeling for the land of the free and American Exceptionalism? I'm sure that Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris and Atty. Gen. Sessions will get this problem cleared up in no time at all.