by MICHAEL SAINATO
Curtis Ray Davis II was wrongly convicted of murder. He served nearly 26 years in Louisiana’s Angola State Prison before his conviction was overturned and he was released in 2015.
While in prison, he worked for various corporations in the private sector, making just two cents an hour. Despite the overturning of his conviction, Davis has received no additional monetary compensation for the time he spent in prison or for the thousands of hours he spent producing agricultural products, making car license plates, and working in metal fabrication.
“It was like being in slavery again. I was working 40 hours a week to make enough to maybe buy a bar of soap.” Curtis Ray Davis II, who served nearly 26 years in Angola State Prison after being wrongfully convicted
“I spent 25 years in prison and left with $1,200, and I was innocent of the crime I was convicted for,” said Davis. “It was like being in slavery again. I was working 40 hours a week to make enough to maybe buy a bar of soap.”
Davis is now the executive director of the ReEntry Mediation Institute of Louisiana, an organization that provides mediators to develop plans with incarcerated individuals and their loved ones on re-entry—plans that include mental health services, apprenticeships, and job training opportunities.
According to statistics obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, over 600 prisoners currently work in the private sector in Louisiana. Hundreds more inmates in Louisiana prisons work for state, local, or internal departments. In fiscal year 2021, private corporations spent $2,997,984.68 on contracts leasing prison labor, and the state prison labor system reports more than $29 million in operational sales (for example, the sale of agricultural products or livestock raised by state prisoners).
Around the US, people incarcerated in state and federal prisons are forced to work for private employers or government agencies for little to no pay with virtually no labor protections. All the while, the companies and public agencies involved reap the benefits of a cheap, reliable source of labor that produces millions of dollars in revenue.
Typical wages for prisoners working in private industry in Louisiana range from as low as $0.02 an hour to $0.40 an hour. Many of these workers supply labor for the private agricultural industry, primarily in livestock, soybeans, and corn.
Agricultural corporations that rely on prison labor in Louisiana include the Louis Dreyfus Company, a global corporation based in the Netherlands, which reported $33.6 billion in net sales in 2020.
Prison labor is used by multiple livestock auction corporations such as Tiger Lake Livestock, Red River Livestock, Dominique Stockyard, and the Amite Livestock Company. The lack of transparency in corporate supply chains and reliance on subcontractors makes it difficult to uncover the extent to which US corporations are benefiting from prison labor.
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