On the evening of December 10, at least 30 tornadoes were struck in many parts of the central United States, which had killed more than 80 people as of the 13th, and the list of missing persons was constantly changing, with more than 100 people.
Screenshot of the new video.
In Mayfield, Kentucky, the hardest hit area of the storm, a number of companies that did not stop work before the tornado and organized employees to evacuate were unanimously attacked by public opinion. U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon was attacked at a local warehouse, killing at least six employees. Amazon was accused of "forced labor" and was investigated by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Another candle factory that was "almost completely tornado destroyed" was exposed to the use of prison inmates as laborers, accidentally unveiling the tip of the iceberg of the operation of the "prison printing machine" in the United States.
"Prisoner Leasing" helped survive the black liberation movement on plantations in the South
According to the US Chinese Network, there were more than 100 people working in the candle factory at the time of the incident, and the workers heard a few hours ago that there would be a tornado that night. Fifteen employees pleaded with their managers to allow them to return to their homes for refuge, but their superiors sternly warned that those who left their jobs without permission would be fired. Because of genuine concerns about their own safety, some employees have left their jobs knowing the consequences they may face.
Other workers don't have the right to make such decisions — at the time of the incident, a deputy sheriff from the local Graves County Jail sent seven inmates to lead seven inmates to work in the prison, and the inmates were eventually hit by a tornado along with the other workers who did not leave. Police later confirmed that the deputy sheriff was killed in a tornado.
American culture has always regarded the requirement for inmates to work as a "scandal", and in the 2020 US election, former New York Mayor Bloomberg was exposed to hiring prison inmates to do telephone election work when he was fighting for the Democratic presidential candidacy.
Some civil society groups in the United States have previously criticized the issue of prison labor, believing that it is "the exploitation of prisoners". Although it is legal under U.S. law to hire prison labor, it is not illegal to force prisoners to work. But Bloomberg still publicly apologized and said he was unaware.
An article in Atlantic reviewed that after the American Civil War, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, leaving an exception clause: "Neither slavery nor forced labor may exist, except for punishment for criminals." ”
In the southern states rebuilt after the war, large prisons were generally built, and they were quickly filled by predominantly black prisoners. Prisons have a widespread "prisoner rental scheme", sending inmates to work on nearby plantations. These plantations had previously been the main users of black slaves. For farmers, the Prisoner Rental Program was even more cost-effective than using slaves directly, as they were also not responsible for the health and safety of prisoners, without worrying about the source of labor.
More than a hundred years later, prison labor is still used in many parts of the United States. If the prison doctor allows it, prisoners must work or risk being held in solitary confinement, prohibited use of recreational facilities in prison, and dismembered family visitation rights.
Production is too good, and prisons become "printing machines"
It must be pointed out that putting aside the Americans' own "moral purity" of using prison labor, the use of forced labor as part of punishment and rehabilitation is a common phenomenon in all countries in the world.
But what is special about the United States is that the administrators and businessmen of the prison system are too "talented" to create a successful "business model" that makes the prison a low-key and luxurious "printing machine" - on the one hand, they provide various rights and interests that other countries do not have for the huge "prisoner population" in the United States, and on the other hand, they put a lot of price tags on each right.
Take the candle factory inmate labor in the tornado disaster, for example, according to the prison side, this is to provide prisoners with labor opportunities and prepare them for their return to society. Prisoners' work was rewarded with reasonable remuneration.
But what they fail to mention is that what inmates spend in prison can hardly be said to be "reasonable." In 2013, Pieruzzi, a former executive of French communications giant Alstom, was thrown in jail by the U.S. government for corruption. In his memoirs, he complained that in American prisons, he wanted to drink water and had to pay for plastic cups; in prisons, he was allowed to watch TV, but if he wanted to watch normally, he had to pay a high price for headphones.
In this regard, Pierucci only ridiculed the Americans' grit, but ordinary American prisoners and their families were really "looted" by these expenses. According to buzzfeed, in November, someone posted a bill that triggered a nationwide "big spit": a New Yorker sent a 33-second voice message to his family imprisoned in Ohio and was charged $4.28 (about 27.2 yuan).
U.S. netizens complain about the high cost of prison communications. (Social Media Screenshot)
According to reports, the prison system in the United States has formed a huge "prison telecommunications industry", with an annual output value of up to 1.2 billion US dollars. On the one hand, this is because the "prison population" in the United States is huge and can be "oversold"; on the other hand, it is also because the "unit price" of communications in prisons in the United States is a sky-high price, not a "small profit".
Buzzfeed quoted a price list posted by netizens as saying that prison communications cost $0.13 per 160-character text, $0.25 per email, and $0.39 per minute for video calls. Some people spend thousands of dollars on communications in half a year, and even lawyers come out to complain that they have been charged sky-high communication fees for communicating with their clients about trial strategies. Even more outrageous is that the communication fee must be deposited into the prisoner's "communication account" in advance, and each time, regardless of how much is deposited, a fee of $8.95 will be charged. This means that the more poor people who can't come up with too much money at a time, the more miserable they will be "slaughtered".
"Are you serious about letting the prisoners carry chainsaw axes to work?"
In addition, in recent years, the "scope of operation" of prison laborers in the United States has become larger and larger, which has brought a lot of controversy.
In recent years, wildfires in California have made international headlines, but few people know that on the front line of the fire, there are many prisoners who are used as firefighters to fight wildfires.
In her new book Breathing the Flames, American documentary writer Jaime Lowe points out that California's fire season gets hotter, longer, and more extreme every year, all year round. Of the thousands of firefighters who fight California fires each year, about 30 percent of field rescuers are inmates who earn $1 an hour. About 200 of these firefighters are women serving in women's prisons.
Cover of Breathe in Flames. (Image from the e-commerce website page)
California launched a "fire camp" program as early as 1946, deploying thousands of prisoners to fight wildfires, the book said. According to the California Department of Corrections, the program could save California taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
The head of the prison program of the American Civil Liberties Union, a well-known civil society organization in the United States, complained: "We let these people (prisoners) go out every day with chainsaws and axes and walk into the mountains." If we think it's safe to do so, then why are we throwing these people in jail? ”
There are also book reviews that point out the absurdity of the whole thing: While the U.S. "Prisoner Work Program" widely claims to be a build-up of skills and experience for prisoners to return to society, California's fire agencies and municipal agencies explicitly require that no one with a criminal record be hired. In fact, these prisoners served their sentences as firefighters on the front line to extinguish fires, but after their release, they were no longer eligible to do the job — unless they were re-imprisoned.