Unpaid or virtually unpaid labor in its various, ugly forms has been used for millennia to build empires and commerce, but most people assume that now, in the 21st century, it's a thing of the past. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Although mostly out of sight, criminally cheap workforces are still exploited today to generate over US$11 billion of goods and services per year in the United States alone. How is this possible? The federal government and cooperating subcontractor companies put America's prison population to work for mere cents per hour if anything at all.
Want to know if some of your everyday commodities are made with prison labor? Read on to find out.