A class-action lawsuit in Arkansas challenges as unconstitutional two drug- and alcohol-rehabilitation programs that require participants to work for free at chicken processing plants and a plastic manufacturing plant, reports Reveal, from the Center from Investigative Reporting. The programs are populated by defendants who are sent to rehab as an alternative to imprisonment.
The lawsuit says practices at the rehab facilities, Christian Alcoholics and Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR) and the Drug and Alcohol Recovery Program (DARP), violate a state constitutional ban on forced labor and state labor laws. “It is the third in a series of similar lawsuits filed in recent weeks” following a Reveal investigation into so-called diversion programs in which courts send defendants “to rehabs that are little more than work camps for private companies.”
The operators of CAAIR and DARP dispute the lawsuit. CAAIR says it will “testify to the good work CAAIR has accomplished in changing lives.” The lawsuit alleges that Simmons Foods and Hendren Plastics paid a discounted wage for labor supplied by the rehab. “The rehabs keep the money. The men are paid nothing,” says Reveal. If they are injured, workers face a choice of reporting to work anyway or going to prison for not working.