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Records show that courts send about 280 men to Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery each year, coming from throughout Oklahoma, along with some from Arkansas, Texas and Missouri. Credit: Shoshana Walter/Reveal

Judges across the country are ordering defendants into recovery centers that are little more than work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they’ve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants, exploiting a nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.

In our investigation, we focused on one program in particular: Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery, which provides workers to poultry plants from its headquarters in the northeast corner of Oklahoma.

CAAIR is just one of many work-based programs across the country.  We want your help tracking them. Using the form below, tell us what you know about work-based rehabs and share your experience. We’ll collect your stories and use them to inform our future reporting on the subject. We won’t share your information without your permission.

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