Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker's chicken company has benefited from unpaid laborers for years even though he has advocated for helping those in need, according to a new report.
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Walker's company, Renaissance Man Food Services, is in business with a firm that used "unpaid labor of drug offenders routed from state courts to residential rehabilitation programs in lieu of prison."
The report concluded that it was "not possible to quantify any financial gains Walker might have gleaned."
The laborers are supplied by Oklahoma-based Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery Inc., which maintains residential "work camps." Some lawyers claim the organization profits from a "vulnerable workforce under the guise of providing alcohol and drug counseling and rehabilitation services."
The Associated Press explained the connection between Walker's company and the unpaid laborers.
CAAIR, as it is commonly known, began more than a decade ago sending residents to work at Simmons Foods Inc., a processing giant that Walker touts as a principal partner and supplier to his distributorship, Renaissance Man Food Services. State judges assigned convicted offenders to CAAIR, giving them a choice between the residential program and its requirements or serving time in conventional jails or prisons. Simmons would then contract with CAAIR for labor at its plants; CAAIR program participants were not paid.
U.S. courts have declared that type of arrangement legal, finding it akin to work programs for fully incarcerated inmates who fall outside the 13th Amendment’s ban on involuntary servitude “except as punishment for crime.” But many criminal justice experts are critical of such programs.
