Finalist: Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting

By Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter

One of Arkansas’ top politicians relies on unpaid workers from a local drug rehabilitation center at his plastics company, which makes dock floats sold at Home Depot and Walmart.

Hendren Plastics, owned by Arkansas State Senate Majority Leader Jim Hendren, partners with a rehab program under scrutiny for making participants work grueling jobs for free, under the threat of prison, according to interviews with former workers and a new lawsuit.

Courts from across Oklahoma and Arkansas send men to Drug and Alcohol Recovery Program, known as DARP, as part of a growing effort to divert offenders from overcrowded prisons and into treatment. But a recent investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that the rehab and others like it are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry.

Hendren’s involvement shows that the beneficiaries of these programs stretch from Fortune 500 companies to the highest levels of state political power.

At DARP, defendants receive little actual addiction treatment. Instead they work full-time jobs in factories and chicken processing plants. The companies pay a discounted rate to the rehabs for the labor, according to a lawsuit filed in Arkansas last week against DARP and a similar program, Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery, known as CAAIR. The men make nothing.

The unpaid work may violate state labor laws and the 13th Amendment ban on slavery, according to legal experts. Since Reveal’s investigation, CAAIR has become the subject of two other class-action lawsuits and three government investigations. CAAIR is modeled after DARP.

A number of former program participants confirmed that Hendren Plastics uses unpaid labor from DARP. Hendren is the company’s owner and president, a role that’s central to his political identity.

Hendren, a Republican, has called job creation his No. 1 priority in office and has long touted the economic benefit his company provides.

“I’ve been creating jobs for over 20 years,” Hendren says on his campaign website. “A country can not survive if it can not feed itself, and make things.”

Neither Hendren nor his company responded to calls or emails for comment.

In response to the lawsuit, Hendren told the Arkansas Times that he was proud to give  “kids in drug rehab programs a second chance.”

“While they are not employees of our company we pay the program for every hour they work consistent with all state and federal laws just as we do our other employees. We have also hired some to become full time employees upon completion of the program. It has been rewarding to see some of these kids turn their lives around,” he said.

As of 2011, Hendren Plastics employed about 50 people, according to a local news story.  Workers told Reveal that at least 20 men from DARP worked at Hendren Plastics at any given time.

Mark Fochtman was sent to DARP by an Arkansas drug court, according to court filings. At Hendren, he worked along a production line at the factory that melted plastic into dock floats and boat slips, according to an affidavit filed along with the lawsuit.

“The environment was very caustic working around melted plastics,” Fochtman said in the affidavit. “Because of the work environment, the turnover rate during my time was high.”

If DARP workers got hurt on the job and couldn’t work, they were often kicked out of the program and sent to prison, according to interviews with former participants, as well as the lawsuit. Others worked through the pain.

“Because of these threats, myself and other residents worked through sickness and injury to avoid being sent to prison,” Fochtman said.

Dylan Willis also worked at Hendren. He said his face, arms and legs are still covered with burn marks from molten plastic that shot out of a machine. DARP managers shrugged off his blisters as merely “cosmetic,” he said.

“They just gave me some Neosporin and told me I’d be all right,” Willis said.

Hendren comes from a long line of Arkansas politicians. He is Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s nephew and has worked as a Republican lawmaker for more than a decade. Hendren started the company with his father, Kim, who also is a member of the state Legislature.

Hendren Plastics’ website says it is “unashamedly for profit” and is “very proud of our people, our equipment and our culture of hard work.”

DARP has previously gotten in trouble with the state for failing to pay workers, who come from various corners of the criminal justice system.

In 2014, the Arkansas Department of Community Correction revokedDARP’s license to house parolees after discovering the program refused to pay workers minimum wage, a violation of state standards.

Community Correction Director Sheila Sharp said other programs provide the same services as DARP while paying participants.

Arkansas prisons are no longer supposed to send parolees to the program. Courts, however, continue to send defendants there.

In a previous interview with Reveal, DARP President Raymond Jones said his rehab program keeps the money to pay for services. If participants complete six months, they are eligible for a gift of at least $500.

His program is “an opportunity to help people get their lives back on track, that cannot find an open bed at a rehab or a state and federal funded facility,” he said.

By Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter

For years, Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery proudly operated outside of state oversight in Oklahoma. The founders ran their Christian recovery program their way – with church, hard manual labor and little government interference.

In 2013, it looked like that was about to change. After a handful of patientsdied in another unregulated rehab, state lawmakers introduced a bill to crack down on a wide swath of uncertified programs.

Then Republican lawmaker Doug Cox stepped in.

“He said, ‘Look, I have a couple of them in my area. Would you mind exempting them?’ ” recalled former Republican Rep. David Derby, who sponsored the bill.

Cox successfully introduced an amendment to the bill that made regulation optional for recovery centers such as CAAIR. But Cox withheld one important detail from Derby: He sat on CAAIR’s board of directors.

“I wasn’t aware that he was on the board,” Derby said, chuckling. “I wouldn’t have done it.”

Republican Rep. Jason Murphey, another of the bill’s co-sponsors, said he had no idea either. “Are you serious? That’s crazy.”

The Oklahoma Constitution, along with the legislative rules of the House of Representatives, require any lawmaker who has a “personal or private interest” in a bill to disclose that fact to other lawmakers and refrain from voting on it.

Cox did not mention his position on CAAIR’s board during the committee hearing for the amendment or recorded discussions on the House floor, according to a review of hearing archives by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. He also voted on his own amendment, though he refrained from voting on the final bill.

He didn’t bring it up when he wrote an editorial for a local newspaper, promoting his amendment. He said the initial bill would have put CAAIR out of business

“We need more treatment beds in our state, not regulations that would decrease the number of people we can treat,” Cox wrote. “I was able to amend the bill in a manner that would still give some oversight to the program that had the issues, but would not interfere with the others that are doing a good job.”

CAAIR was featured in a recent Reveal investigation that found that judges have been sending defendants to drug recovery programs in Oklahoma and around the nation that are little more than work camps for private industry.

At CAAIR, one of the largest of these programs, men are forced to work without pay in chicken processing plants, often under threat of prison. Some were seriously injured on the job and sent to prison when they could no longer work. CAAIR is now under investigation by multiple government agencies and is the subject of two federal lawsuits alleging violations of labor law, human trafficking and racketeering.

The original 2013 bill would have regulated a variety of drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. Cox’s amendment exempted standalone recovery centers that didn’t already offer some services that required regulation.

Today, because of Cox’s intervention, CAAIR and many other recovery programs in Oklahoma remain uncertified and exempt from oversight. The state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services is not required to regulate the programs or inspect them. It has no power to shut them down.

The bill did not specify what requirements recovery centers would have to follow – it left it up to the department to do that. Other types of facilities under the department’s control face regular inspections and are required to hire licensed counselors and staff.

Cox joined CAAIR as an unpaid board member in 2009. In addition to working as a lawmaker, he also worked as a doctor and administrator at Integris Grove Hospital, near CAAIR’s headquarters. That’s where CAAIR routinely took men from its program who needed emergency medical attention, records show.

Cox, who reached his term limit in 2016, did not respond to requests for comment.

Ryan Gentzler of the Oklahoma Policy Institute said the rules were designed to stop lawmakers from directly profiting organizations with whom they’re affiliated.

“At the very least, it’s very suspicious and very concerning that he wouldn’t disclose that he was on the board of an organization that clearly stood to benefit,” he said.

The bill, along with Cox’s amendment, passed overwhelmingly and was signed into law in May 2013.

UPDATE, Oct. 18, 2017: After publication of this story, Cox spoke with Nomin Ujiyediin at public radio station KGOU. He denied having a conflict. “That would be like saying I couldn’t vote on anything to do with Medicaid because I’m a physician that sees Medicaid patients,” he said.