Herschel Walker-linked ‘work camp’ linked to unpaid labor by drug offenders

BYBILL BARROW AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESSHerschel Walker.JOHN BAZEMORE—AP IMAGES

Herschel Walker campaigns for the U.S. Senate as a champion of free enterprise and advocate for the mentally ill, felons and others at the margins of society. And the Georgia Republican has called for policies that blend those priorities.

“If someone comes out of prison, they should have incentives set up that the person has learned a trade, and you give an incentive for a company to hire him so he can make a living for himself,” Walker said Aug. 17 in Kennesaw, Georgia.

Walker, who founded Renaissance Man Food Services in 1999 as part of America’s sprawling food processing industry, then nodded to his business experience. “It’s my responsibility now to help,” Walker declared.

The argument blends several threads of Walker’s bid to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in a marquee midterm election matchup that could determine control of the Senate. A former college and professional football star, Walker styles himself as a businessman, unapologetic Christian and someone who has overcome mental health challenges with others’ help.

“We have to become a society that want to help, not hurt anyone,” he said in Kennesaw.

Yet an Associated Press review of federal court cases, alongside other public records and statements, offers a more complicated reality. One instance at the heart of Walker’s business portfolio suggests he has benefited, through a firm he touts as a principal partner and supplier, from the unpaid labor of drug offenders routed from state courts to residential rehabilitation programs in lieu of prison.

It’s not possible to quantify any financial gains Walker might have gleaned over the years from undervalued labor. But some lawyers have derided the operation in question, Oklahoma-based Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery Inc., as a residential “work camp” that profits from a “vulnerable workforce under the guise of providing alcohol and drug counseling and rehabilitation services.”

CAAIR, as it is commonly known, began more than a decade ago sending residents to work at Simmons Foods Inc., a processing giant that Walker touts as a principal partner and supplier to his distributorship, Renaissance Man Food Services. State judges assigned convicted offenders to CAAIR, giving them a choice between the residential program and its requirements or serving time in conventional jails or prisons. Simmons would then contract with CAAIR for labor at its plants; CAAIR program participants were not paid………more here

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