In the back of a nondescript industrial park on the outskirts of Montgomery, Alabama, past the corner of Eastern Boulevard and Plantation Way, there is a manufacturing plant run by Ju-Young, a car-part supplier for Hyundai Motors. On a Tuesday in May, about half of the workers there — roughly 20 — were prisoners.
They were contracted to the company by the Alabama Department of Corrections as part of a “work release” day labor program for inmates who, according to the state, have shown enough trustworthiness to work outside prison walls, alongside free citizens.
The inmates, bused there by the state, make up just one crop of the thousands of imprisoned people sent to work for private businesses — who risk disciplinary action if they refuse.
Sitting against a chain-link fence under the shade of a tree in the company parking lot, commiserating over small talk and cigarettes with fellow assembly workers, one of the imprisoned men, Carlos Anderson, argued that his predicament was simple. He could work a 40-hour week at $12 an hour — and keep a small fraction of that after the state charges transportation and laundry fees, and takes a 40% cut of pretax wages — or he could face working for nothing at the prison.