Two-year AP investigation found that incarcerated people have grown, harvested or produced everything for big brands. They are among the most vulnerable workers in the U.S., and some receive pennies an hour or nothing at all.
The goods these inmates produce end up in the supply chains of a huge variety of products found in most American kitchens. Many companies that buy directly from prisons violate their own policies against using that type of labor. But it is completely legal and is largely explained by the need for labor to help rebuild the South's exhausted economy after the Civil War.