Giving Compass' Take:

• Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter report that a rehabilitation program sent patients to work for for-profit company and withheld their pay in likely violation of U.S. labor laws. 

• How can funders work to protect vulnerable populations from exploitation? How could a program like grow in popularity and renown? 

• This program was not evidence based, but other rehabilitation efforts are. Learn how recovery schools effectively help teens overcome substance abuse. 

A nationally renowned drug rehab program in Texas and Louisiana has sent patients struggling with addiction to work for free for some of the biggest companies in the United States, likely in violation of federal labour law.

The Cenikor Foundation has dispatched tens of thousands of patients to work without pay at more than 300 for-profit companies over the years. In the name of rehabilitation, patients have moved boxes in a sweltering warehouse for Walmart, built an oil platform for Shell and worked at an Exxon refinery along the Mississippi River.

"It's like the closest thing to slavery," said Logan Tullier, a former Cenikor participant who worked 10 hours a day at oil refineries, laying steel rebar in 46 degrees Celsius heat. "We were making them all the money."

Cenikor's success is built on a simple idea: that work helps people recover from addiction. All participants have to do is surrender their pay to cover the costs of the two-year programme.

But the constant work leaves little time for counselling or treatment, transforming the rehab into little more than a cheap and expendable labour pool for private companies, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Read the full article about The Cenikor Foundation by Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter at Al Jazeera.