Chuck

Like, they just don't know.

And the company painting the furniture might be using leased convict labor.

Or their franchisees can use leased convict labor and the corporate office can't do anything about it because they don't own those stores.

So it still does happen, even though large corporations in the U.S.

tend to have policies against that.

And in fact, have policies that they put in place to hire felons, like preferential hiring of felons.

still it washes out to where there's plenty of least convict labor today in private businesses.

Exactly.

So like even if you're off making federal minimum wage at KFC as, you know, as a prisoner, as part of your prison labor, you're ending up with pennies on the dollar per hour after they deduct all that stuff from you.

So that's why that average for all prison workers is 52 cents an hour, because they deduct so many things.

That's why it's essentially convict leasing.

That person goes out, works, they get paid, and the prison says, we're taking this X amount of your pay for our own use.

Private prisons are able to do that.

They probably deduct way more.

But the other problem with it, too, is that they're at the same time getting tax breaks for leasing out their convicts to use in the outside world.

So they're getting like fees and tax breaks.

It's quite a racket from what I can tell.

One of the other things too is that, I mean, people point to this and say like, okay, yes, we agree that prison labor is in and of itself a good thing.

Like Thomas Moore was right.

Like you can, there is redemption in labor.