Tennessee inmates forced to build cornhole boards for jail employees' private business

Stand Firm Designs called itself a “Christian Construction Business.” On its website—which is now down—the company claimed that its labor came from “retired contractors.” But according to the Associated Press report, Stand Firm Designs—owned by two jail officials—also commissioned free labor from prisoners at the Corrections Corporation of America in Nashville, including the construction of “cornhole” boards. Shockingly, this isn’t legal.

“All I can tell you is it’s really just a bogus thing. There’s not really any slave labor going on over there,” Roy Napper, one owner of Stand Firm Designs, told the AP. “Since it’s under investigation, I can’t really tell you anything else.”

Despite Napper’s assertion that there isn’t really any slave labor going on over there—is he implying that there is maybe a little slave labor going on over there?—two former inmates and alleged “employees” of Stand Firm Designs say otherwise. Here’s this from the AP on those former inmates, Larry Stephney and Charles Brew:

To prove the items being sold by Stand Firm Designs were made by inmates, Stephney and Brew concealed their names under pieces of wood nailed to the backs of items. They also wrote the number 412148, which refers to a section of Tennessee code that makes it illegal for jail officials to require an inmate to perform labor that results in the official’s personal gain. The AP was shown some of the items with the concealed names and numbers.

It sounded like Stephney and Brew didn’t have much of a choice in helping out Napper, Rob Hill (a building trade instructor) and Steven Binkley (a computer instructor), the three owners of Stand Firm Designs. The AP reports that both Stephney and Brew were afraid of filing a complaint.

“You do anything there as an inmate, you get put in the hole,” Stephney told the AP. “If they do something wrong, they should get in trouble too.”