Let me just summarize what Reveal‘s report shows: in rural Oklahoma, a program called Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR) supposedly operates as a diversionary treatment program for drug offenders, that judges can sentence defendants to as an alternative to prison. In reality, CAAIR operates a labor camp, in which residents work long hours in slaughterhouses for large food companies. There is no real “treatment” to speak of, and CAAIR pockets the workers’ wages. Sometimes those sent there haven’t even committed drug offenses; it appears to exist simply to provide convict labor for large corporations.
Sounds like a version of the for profit prison system. Sick! Someone is getting big payoffs to make this possible. It should at least be a scandal in OK, if not nationally. But with Senators like Inhofe it's no wonder, he probably has a financial interest in it somehow.
Should be a national scandal. Is someone suppressing these stories. Are we going backwards in time? Sweatshops? Where are the safety people?
There have been cases where judges have sent people to mandatory AA meetings. Alcoholics Anonymous is a religious organization. Thus far there have not even been repremands for judges that have forced non-believers to go to these meetings.
Notify the washington post and the new york times (and the local TV stations). If there is blood in the water, the sharks will come.
Capitalism will slave every each one they can. Why the "criminal" will be the exception? Crime = Profit is not only for organized crime anymore.