Takeaways from the AP's investigation into how US prison labor supports many popular food brands

In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to prisoners wind up in the supply chains of everything from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola

In a sweeping two-year investigation, The Associated Press found goods linked to U.S. prisoners wind up in the supply chains of a dizzying array of products from Frosted Flakes cereal and Ball Park hot dogs to Gold Medal flour and Coca-Cola. They are on the shelves of most supermarkets, including Kroger, Target, Aldi and Whole Foods.

Here are takeaways from the AP’s investigation:

The U.S. has a history of locking up more people than any other country – currently around 2 million – and goods tied to prison labor have morphed into a massive multibillion-dollar empire, extending far beyond the classic images of people stamping license plates or working on road crews.

The prisoners who help produce these goods are disproportionately people of color. Some are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work – or face punishment – and are sometimes paid pennies an hour or nothing at all. They are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job. And it can be almost impossible for them to sue.

And it’s all legal, dating back largely to labor demands as the South struggled to rebuild its shattered economy after the Civil War. In 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery and involuntary labor– except as punishment for a crime. That clause is being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen states this year.