The defendants work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina. The beneficiaries of these programs span the country, from Fortune 500 companies to factories and local businesses. Instead, they've turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.
The programs promise freedom from addiction. "In the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry," according to The Center for Investigative Reporting investigation. But they can also be pointless and silly (like Seattle's $900, 10-week course on "toxic masculinity" for men convicted of soliciting prostitution), or much worse. Such alternatives can be very positive step toward reducing prison populations. It's part of what Reveal describes a burgeoning "nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison." Church and Bible study groups are mandatory counseling, skills classes, and group support meetings are not.Ībout 280 men a year get sentenced to time with CAAIR by courts in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri. Its philosophy is that Christianity and hard work can cure addiction. It has only one licensed counselor and no certified treatment or recovery program. But CAAIR's claims of fulfilling a rehabilitative function are dubious. Reveal reporters poured over court documents, tax filings, and workers' compensation claims in addition to talking to court officials, judges, and former CAAIR program participants.ĬAAIR was originally launched in 2007 by food executives having trouble finding employees for low-pay, high-risk, all-hours work at chicken-processing plants. Under the guise of getting addicts treatment, courts are sentencing people to slave labor in the service of corporate interests.Ĭhristian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR), which is supposed to provide people with addiction treatment in a rural setting, has become a court-prescribed worker pipeline for an Oklahoma chicken farm and factory, according to a piece in Reveal, the magazine of The Center for Investigative Reporting.
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