They thought they were going to rehab. They ended up in chicken plants.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.revealnews.org/article/they-thought-they-were-going-to-rehab-they-ended-up-in-chicken-plants/?utm_source=Reveal&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=twitter

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.”

Long read looking at the intersection of addiction, the way our "justice" system is built on punishment, the fetishization of "hard work," and economic exploitation

[MineralMan]

1. All the things we don't know...

[Scurrilous]

2. K&R

[cyclonefence]

3. This was standard treatment of African Americans after Emancipation

Black men convicted of misdemeanors were routinely rented out or even sold to industries in the South, including coal mines, iron works, lumbering concerns and railroads where they served out their prison sentences enduring subhuman living conditions, often shackled day and night, living in filthy barracks with no toilets and no medical attention. U.S. Steel and the Georgia Pacific Railroad are only two of the titans of American industry built on the backs of "freed" slaves. Unpaid labor not subject to limits on working hours or conditions gave these industries immeasurable economic advantages over union-shop industries. Seems like nothing ever changes.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. Yep. It hasn't ended.

[Major Nikon]

4. AKA Modern Slavery

[ffr]

6. As a felon, at least he's not able to support Dotard any more than by his words

But otherwise, would be a perfect rube candidate in Dotard's voter demographic.

[Auggie]

7. "You need to learn a work ethic" -- says who? A crooked judge???

Let's leave those assessments to social worker and physiologists. I loathe judges who appoint themselves as healers.

[Maggiemayhem]

8. A woman who used to work for me

Was formerly in a program for some sort of offense in Maryland and had to work in a chicken processing plant. She said it was gross and something affected her lungs and she gets coughing fits and has to hospitalized. This was in Salisbury on the Eastern Shore where there are lots of chicken farms. If I run into her, I will inquire about the details.