NEW YORK, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- No U.S. state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama, reported The Associated Press, adding that with a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years, it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.

"Best Western, Bama Budweiser and Burger King are among the more than 500 businesses to lease incarcerated workers from one of the most violent, overcrowded and unruly prison systems in the United States in the past five years alone," noted the report on the basis of a two-year investigation into prison labor.

Most jobs are inside facilities, where the state's inmates, who are disproportionately Black - can be sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for free doing everything from mopping floors to laundry.

More than 10,000 inmates have logged a combined 17 million work hours outside Alabama's prison walls since 2018, for entities like city and county governments and businesses that range from major car-part manufacturers and meat-processing plants to distribution centers for major retailers like Walmart, said the report.

While those working at private companies can at least earn a little money, they face possible punishment if they refuse, from being denied family visits to being sent to higher-security prisons, which are so dangerous that the federal government filed a lawsuit four years ago that remains pending, calling the treatment of prisoners unconstitutional, it added. Enditem

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