Why Incarcerated Poultry Workers Deserve Better
Hazardous conditions undermine the benefits of early work release.
Last summer, 33-year-old Frank Ellington went to work at a poultry processing plant in rural Alabama. He had been in prison for almost eight years and completed half a dozen therapy courses.
If he did well in the state’s work release program, parole seemed attainable.
Five months later, though, Ellington was dead. A machine in the poultry plant caught his arm and pulled him inside. He was killed instantly.
Ellington was of Ellington’s death revealed that at least seven other states regularly send prisoners to work in poultry plants.
