In the South, prison slavery is indistinguishable from the chattel slavery of the past: men and women bending over to pick cotton in the heat, supervised by overseers on horseback with shotguns. In Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi mostly Black and Brown men are forced to work for meager compensation in outdated and often dangerous conditions.

Meanwhile, families go without breadwinners, children go without child support, and families on the outside must subsidize the needs of their incarcerated loved ones. They bear the burden of costly trips to the prison, exorbitant phones rates, and high costs of commissary. Relationships between incarcerated people and their families are impaired, despite the importance of these relationships for successful reentry and public safety. The communities most impacted by mass incarceration are forced to further deplete their resources.