is the desire to hide the use of inmates. Even when we fussed at the Chinese, the practice was common in the U. S. We really think slave labor is okay, but we are a little embarrassed when there is publicity. I believe that the Federal prison system is the biggest user of this sort of behavior: lending inmates to corporations.

Why if i didn't know any better...better being that this is the freest, bestest damned country ever...i'd be tempted to steal a phrase like Gulag Archipelago. But i do know better.

Using prisoners is not the same thing as the slave trade.

But it is cheap labor exploitation.

The article does concede the point that most locals don't want (or physically just can't do) the work. They don't want the toxic exposure, the grueling, toiling nature of the work. One source states that sometimes half of a recruited work team will quit after just one day.

For the inmates the choice is different. Do they want to get out of the prison complex for the day? Do they want time chopped off their sentences? Do they want to be able to save a little money before they get out? Do they want a successful work-release program listed on their record?

So the inmates are a lot more likely to stick with the work.

It's not an equal situation by a long shot; the prisoners are definitely an underclass, and treated as such by their state-employee overlords.

But they are not in the same situation as the traditional slaves of the South were before the Civil War. They are not humans owned by other humans, traded or sold in the marketplace, and subject to any abuses their owners heap on them.

We sell convicts' organs to wealthy people.