The Alabama Solution is Modern-Day Slavery

Enslaved Black people were the labor force that fueled Alabama’s original agriculture-based economy, cultivating the cotton cash crop in the 18th and 19th centuries before it was exported around the globe.

When Alabama seceded from the Union in January 1861, its population was just shy of one million, and 44% of that population was enslaved.

ROBERT EARL COUNCIL
AKA “KINETIK JUSTICE”

“When did slavery end in Alabama? And that’s not a rhetorical question. Alabama is still partaking in slavery today. … People, right now, are being forced to work for free while someone else reaps the benefit from their profits.”

—Plaintiff Robert Earl Council, aka “Kinetik Justice”

At the end of the Civil War in 1865, lawmakers ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing the practice of slavery—“except as a punishment for crime.” This left a loophole that former enslavers and slave states exploited with abandon, immediately arresting former slaves en masse and thereby replacing slavery with debt peonage and convict-leasing.

The Reconstruction-era convict-lease system, a precursor to what is seen today in Alabama’s carceral system, let private companies and individuals pay the state in exchange for incarcerated people’s labor. The system formally lasted from 1875 to 1928, and powered the state financially.

Like slavery before it, the present-day forced labor scheme in Alabama is rooted in systemic racism and power, but greed is the engine that drives it forward.

Alabama enjoys an estimated $450 million, minimum, in annual benefit from exploiting incarcerated workers under the forced labor scheme. In FY2024, the ADOC reported a $12.2 million profit from its “work release programs” alone, made up of the 40% cut it took from the gross wages of every incarcerated worker, which operates as Alabama’s human trafficking fee.

ARTHUR CHARLES PTOMEY

Like slavery before it, the present-day forced labor scheme in Alabama is rooted in systemic racism and power, but greed is the engine that drives it forward.Across its own system, ADOC relies on unpaid incarcerated labor to maintain its facilities, filling roles like guards, drug counselors, medical assistants, and other staff.

Public employers, including the City of Montgomery and the Alabama Department of Transportation (ADOT) secure far greater wage savings than private employers, as they’re required to pay “leased” incarcerated ADOC laborers at most only 25 cents an hour and a maximum of $2 per day.

Each corporation, each fast food company, anybody who participates and has their hand in the cookie jar with the Alabama Department of Corrections, is guilty of slavery.

—Plaintiff Robert Earl Council, aka “Kinetik Justice”

Private employers who lease laborers from the ADOC’s “work release” system technically are obliged to pay the community’s prevailing wage for that job. Though many actually pay far less, the illegally low wage is not what attracts private employers—they’re drawn to the financial gain that comes with all forced labor: Through leasing workers from the ADOC, private employers secure a fully coerced workforce—people who cannot speak up, defend, or bargain for themselves to secure wage, safety, or other rights that protect free workers from workplace abuses.

Over 10,000 individuals have been put into ADOC’s work release program since 2018, according to an AP report, collectively logging over 17 million work hours. Under that program, about 575 private corporations in industries including automobile manufacturing, poultry processing, and fast food chains, like McDonald’s and Burger King, have used incarcerated labor. About 100 public entities at the city, county, and state level have also relied on incarcerated workers. In February 2025, nearly 1,500 incarcerated people were in the work release program, an additional 1,800 were working for public entities through the ADOC’s work centers, and tens of thousands of incarcerated people are working directly for ADOC, propping up the prison itself with unpaid labor coerced with threats of violence.

In the mid-2010s, Alabama’s prison system was reaching a boiling point. The state had the most crowded prison system in the U.S., operating at 195% capacity.

These numbers spurred criminal justice reform. In May 2015, Alabama enacted Senate Bill 67, or the Justice Reinvestment Act (JRA), designed to address overcrowding by reducing recidivism rates and implementing evidence-based standards for the state’s Bureau of Pardons and Paroles.

MICHAEL CAMPBELL

From FY2015 to FY2018, parole grants rose from 38% to over 53%, and the prison population dropped from 24,191—nearly hitting a 4,200 reduction goal set by the state. In addition, near racial parity was reached in parole rates between Black and white applicants.

But progress was short-lived. The newly-inaugurated Governor Kay Ivey championed new legislation in 2019 that increased the governor’s power over the Board, allowing her to shut down the parole system and capture the labor force she needed to keep ADOC running.

Under Ivey’s leadership and direction, parole hearings slowed dramatically. From FY2019 to FY2020, only 2,704 parole hearings were held—down from 4,270 in the previous year—and only about 20% of applicants were granted parole. The parole grant rate for those convicted of violent crimes dropped from 44.7% in FY2018 to just 3.5% in FY2022.

Alabama’s parole grant rates for Black incarcerated people plummeted from around 50% in 2018 to just 6% in 2022. By that year, white incarcerated people were more than two times more likely than Black incarcerated people to be granted parole. Data from that time also shows that Black incarcerated people convicted of a “violent” crime were also less likely to be granted parole than white incarcerated people, with the former standing at a 2.2% parole grant rate in FY2022, and the latter at 4.9%.

“They gotta keep me for another year until they can find somebody else on the street that they can pull back in and take my place,” Alimireo English said in an interview with In These Times. “If they can’t replace you, they don’t let you go.”

The Parole Board’s anti-parole standards, framed under the pretext of “public safety,” effectively kept its incarcerated labor pool trapped in the system.Those most eligible to receive parole found that their clean disciplinary records and good behavior only served to identify them as an ideal candidate for the prison system’s forced labor scheme.

Council v. Ivey seeks to send people home, putting the money they earn from their labors back into supporting their kids, families, and communities, and end an illegal practice once and for all.

The class action lawsuit filed in December 2023, Council, et al. v. Ivey, et al., aims to take down Alabama’s “modern-day form of slavery.” Filed by Justice Catalyst Law, the suit’s unprecedented scope includes current and former incarcerated Alabamians, two major labor unions, and a civil rights organization and takes a broad, federal-level approach to end the state’s carceral forced labor and human leasing scheme.

LEE EDWARD MOORE, JR.

The suit alleges that Alabama runs a modern-day, racially-biased “convict leasing” system—especially targeting Black incarcerated people—that coerces cheap or free labor from the prison population through threat of violence in the state’s notoriously deadly prison system, and through systematic parole denial.

The conspiracy, the suit alleges, includes local governments like the City of Montgomery and Jefferson County and private enterprises like Burger King, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Bama Budweiser as defendants, but also Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, Attorney General Steve Marshall, and the powerholders on the Parole Board. These defendants, the suit argues, have knowingly perpetuated the scheme in order to fill private and public coffers. Since 2018, according to the complaint, about 575 private enterprises and over 100 public entities have exploited incarcerated workers, with Alabama alone enjoying an estimated $450 million in annual benefit.

It seeks to demonstrate that racially discriminatory parole delay and denial, in addition to endemic violence within the prison system, have been essential to maintaining the labor pool for the scheme. As the complaint explains, the Parole Board “effectively and systematically altered sentences … substantially increasing the risk that incarcerated people, particularly Black people, eligible for parole would be subjected to extended confinement … with the foreseeable and intended effect of maintaining a large, incarcerated, and disproportionately Black workforce.”

The case charges that the defendants have not only violated the Alabama Constitution—which was amended in 2022 to officially ban all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude—but also the U.S. Constitution and a number of federal statutes, including those that prohibit racketeering (under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, “RICO”), trafficking (under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, “TVPA”), and race discrimination (under the KKK Act).

The suit seeks to have the scheme dismantled. It also calls for Alabama to set free thousands of people long eligible and qualified for release back to their communities and families. Further, it demands that defendants cease compelling and participating in forced labor and asks that they disgorge their profits from the convict leasing scheme.

Two major labor unions in the U.S.—the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Mid-South Council (RWDSU) and the Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW)—joined Council v. Ivey as plaintiffs, demonstrating the impact that the forced labor scheme had not just on incarcerated individuals, but also on Alabama’s labor market as a whole. The result is a race to the bottom in the market’s wages and conditions, particularly for Black workers. Free Alabamian workers must compete with trafficked, incarcerated laborers paid the lowest-possible wages.

Members of the RWDSU and USSW work alongside incarcerated workers at various private companies in Alabama, including in the poultry processing and fast food industries. Both unions argue that the use of coerced labor has a downward effect on wages, benefits, and working conditions for their members. Given the danger of retaliation and discipline, incarcerated workers are unable to freely advocate for better wages and conditions, undermining the process for unionized workers. That, in turn, weakens the leverage their members have to organize and bargain for fair contracts.

JERAME APPRENTICE COLE

Across the South, we know that when racism exists anywhere, it hurts workers everywhere.

—ERIC WINSTON, USSW MEMEBER

USSW member Eric Winston, a cook in North Carolina, said to In These Times: “We’re proud to join this lawsuit because we are horrified and outraged by the system of forced labor in Alabama state prisons that has kept Black incarcerated people trapped in prison. Across the South, we know that when racism exists anywhere, it hurts workers everywhere.”

Since Council v. Ivey was filed in December 2023, The New York Times has covered the lawsuit, in addition to The Washington Post, NPR, and Bloomberg. In 2024, the Associated Press published an independent investigation and longform report on Alabama’s prison system and use of forced labor.

Some of the abuses detailed in the lawsuit have also made their way to the big screen. The Alabama Solution, a 2025 HBO documentary film, shines new light on the realities of Alabama’s prison conditions from the perspective of those incarcerated. Co-directed by Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director Andrew Jarecki and documentary filmmaker Charlotte Kaufman, The Alabama Solution premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and won critical and audience acclaim. It is scheduled for general release in October 2025.

Why would the slavemaster, by his own free will, release men on parole who aid and assist them at making their paid jobs easier and carefree?

—Plaintiff ALIMIREO ENGLISH

Though Council v. Ivey has yet to go to trial, the case has already had an impact in Alabama. Immediately after the lawsuit’s filing, the Parole Board admitted that there were systemic errors as to parole reset dates for a number of plaintiffs; then in June 2025, Parole Board chair Leigh Gwathney’s term ended without renewal. Her tenure had been rife with criticism—most of which tracked the complaints and data made public by plaintiffs in the Council v. Ivey filings. Governor Ivey replaced Gwathney with law enforcement officer Hal Nash, and parole rates have risen by close to 67% as of August 2025—the highest rate since 2019, according to Parole Board statistics.

The case is still in the early litigation phase, pending before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. Plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in May 2025, expanding the named plaintiffs from 10 to 20 and providing extensive additional details regarding the systemwide violence the plaintiffs endured as part of the scheme to compel their labor. Currently, the parties are litigating pleading motions raised by defendants which, once resolved, would allow the case to move forward to the discovery phase, where crucial information on the ADOC’s forced labor scheme, previously unavailable to the public, can be brought to the court’s scrutiny.

“This system is pervasive, and it is tragic,” said Benjamin Elga, founding executive director of Justice Catalyst Law. “But here’s the thing: Systems like this are built in the dark. They grow and take hold when they’re left in the dark. But when we shine a light on them, we expose them and we can defeat them.”

It won’t be easy work. As plaintiff Alimireo English, previously incarcerated in Alabama’s prison system for 13 years, said: “Why would the slavemaster, by his own free will, release men on parole who aid and assist them at making their paid jobs easier and carefree?”