Convict leasing

Convict leasing in the United States was widespread in the South during the Reconstruction Period (1865–1877) after the end of the Civil War, when many Southern legislatures were ruled by majority coalitions of African Americans and Radical Republicans, If convicted of vagrancy, black people could be imprisoned, and they also received sentences for a variety of petty offenses. States began to lease convicted labor to the plantations and other facilities seeking labor, as the freed men were trying to withdraw and work for themselves. This provided the states with a new source of revenue during years when their finances were largely depleted, and lessees profited by the use of forced labor at less than market rates. at Parchman in 1911. When Mississippi ended convict leasing in 1906, all incarcerated people were sent to Parchman. Black Codes, pig laws, and vagrancy laws, intended to restrict the movement and freedom of Black people across the South, criminalising unemployment, homelessness, and changes in employment. These laws were coupled with increasing sentencing, and harsher penalties for minor offences across the South. In doing so, statutes created a new criminal class made up of newly freed people, rapidly expanding the numbers of people subject to imprisonment. As this happened, states across the South would begin to codify convict leasing within statute books. Alabama, as one example, did so in 1875 by amending several aspects of the Revised Code "to employ or hire out the convicts, to be used without the walls of the penitentiary, either upon public or private work, within the State". Whist prison labour had existed prior to the Civil War, the rapid expansion of incarcerated populations gave way for a reorganisation of carceral labour systems from internal state motivations to external economic and racial motivations. The criminal justice system worked closely with private planters and industrialists to supply prison laborers, the overwhelming majority of whom were Black. The constitutional basis for convict leasing lay in the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, which ostensibly abolished slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime". In several states, such as Alabama, the practice would be implemented following fiscal crises, with the purpose of the practice to provide financial profits to the lessees, and to the government agencies that sold convicted labor to the lessees. Although convict leasing became most widespread throughout the post-Civil War South, similar systems of contract prison labour had existed earlier in Northern states as well. For example, the New York State prison at Auburn, Auburn Prison, implemented a system of silent prison labor which resulted in profits generated for the prison as early as 1823. Although prison manufacturing had initially focused on manufacturing goods intended for use within the prison, such as uniforms and buckets, that practice changed in 1821 when principal keeper, Elam Lynds, took over prison administration, and used incarcerated laborers to produce goods to sell on the market. Lynds' approach, known as the Auburn system, or "silent system", expanded across the United States becoming the dominant model of prison discipline by the 1830s. Initially conceived as a "regime of moral discipline", rather than explicitly driven by a profit motive, == Economic motivations ==

Following emancipation and the Civil War, Southern states were economically devastated with many state treasuries facing fiscal crises and insolvency. Additionally, with the loss of enslaved labourers, private enterprise would also struggle to sustain Southern economies without a rapid evolution. This economic motivation to keep economies built on forced labour afloat, led states and businesses to turn toward incarceration, and incarcerated people, to support both government spending and private sector profits. like Angola Plantation which operate to this day. The state would, in effect, become the lessee. The economic rationale of convict leasing was inseparable from its racial motivations and roots. Following slavery, incarceration and carceral labour were utilised to rebuild economies with the newly criminalised Black citizens. Contemporary sociologist Frank Tannenbaum observed that incarceration was not solely an economic alternative to slavery, but a reorganisation to preserve racial hierarchy and provide a flow of cheap labour for industry. == Lived experiences and gender ==

By the 1880s, Black people made up between 80 and 90% of those incarcerated in the South. The lived experience of two Black men—Ezekiel Archey and Ambrose Haskins—who were leased to the Pratt Mines by the state, was documented in their petition to Reginald Dawson, the then president of the Alabama Board of Inspectors of Convicts. At no point do they plea for freedom, but they write to show the harsh treatment of incarcerated Black people as compared to incarcerated white people, as delays and missed quotas were out of their control. Whilst the majority of people subjected to convict leasing were Black men, Black women were also incarcerated and forced into labour within the system. Women’s experiences were both gendered and racialised, reflecting an intersection of punishment, exploitation, and social control. In the post-Emancipation South, Black women were also criminalised through the same mechanisms that men were with charges of vagrancy, petty theft, and "crimes against morality." These charges often masked efforts to regulate behaviour, enforce economic dependence, and maintain social control over Black women. One example of the intersection of race and gender with convict leasing is the life of Ella Gamble who, whilst pregnant, was incarcerated for murder in 1884 by an all white male jury, based on circumstantial evidence. Whilst incarcerated she spent two decades leased out to many private companies, performing a range of industrial, agricultural, and domestic labor tasks ranging from brick-making to cooking, "under the sting of the lash." Toward the end of her incarceration she had physically deteriorated under the cumulative strain of forced work, repeated floggings, sexual abuse, childbirth injuries, and untreated medical conditions. Another example is that of Carrie Massie, a teenaged incarcerated victim of extreme physical and sexual violence in Georgia. Leased to the Rising Fawn furnace, upon arrival she was subject to cruel and unusual punishments known as "water cure" and "blind mule", before sexual violence and repeated rape at the hands of the whipping boss. Though camp operator Joseph Brown had built the female barracks separately from the male barracks ostensibly to prevent sexual assaults, women were routinely victimised by guards. Black women were not only perceived as promiscuous and "unrapeable", but their labour was considered the "property" of camp officials. Officials acted as though they "owned" sexual access to incarcerated Black women. Sexual abuse and harsh punishments acted as functions of prison hierarchy, exploited to maintain control over Black women. ==The system in various states==

In Georgia convict leasing began in April 1868, when Union General and newly appointed provisional governor Thomas H. Ruger issued a convict lease for incarcerated people to William Fort for work on the Georgia and Alabama Railroad. The contract specified "one hundred able bodied and healthy Negro convicts" in return for a fee to the state of $2,500. In May, the state entered into a second agreement with Fort and his business partner Joseph Printup for another 100 convicted people, this time for $1,000, to work on the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad, also in north Georgia. Texas began convict leasing by 1883 and abolished it officially in 1910. A cemetery containing what are believed to be the remains of 95 slave convicts has recently (2018) been discovered in Sugar Land, now a suburb of Houston. Alabama began convict leasing in 1846 and outlawed it in 1928. It was the last state to formally outlaw it. The revenues derived from convict leasing were substantial, accounting for about 10% of total state revenues during 1883, surging to nearly 73% by 1898. This lucrative practice created incentives for states and counties to convict African Americans, and helped increase the prison population in the South to become predominantly African American after the Civil War. In Florida, convicts, most of whom were African American males, were sent to work in phosphate mines, turpentine camps, and lumber camps, although from 1910 onward all Florida state incarcerated people labored in turpentine and lumber camps. The convict labor system in Florida was described as being "severe" in comparison to that in other states. Florida was one of the last states to end convict leasing. The state convict leasing program was ended by Chapter 7833 of the Legislature effective December 31, 1919. County convicted people continued to be leased to private interests until 1923. Following the abolition of convict leasing in 1919, the number and proportion of white males sentenced to state prison increased quickly; many incarcerated people labored in public road construction while others were sent to Union Correctional Institution, then known as Raiford Prison. ==End of the system==

Although opposition to the system increased during the beginning of the twentieth century, state politicians resisted its elimination. In states where the convict lease system was used, revenues from the program generated income nearly four times the cost (372%) of prison administration. The convict lease system was gradually phased out during the early 20th century due to negative publicity and other factors. A notable case of negative publicity for the system was the case of Martin Tabert, a young white man from Munich, North Dakota. Arrested in late 1921 in Tallahassee, Florida on a charge of vagrancy for being on a train without a ticket, Tabert was convicted and fined $25. Although his parents sent $25 for the fine, plus $25 for Tabert to return home to North Dakota, the money disappeared while Tabert was held in the Leon County Jail. Tabert was then leased to the Putnam Lumber Company in Clara, a town in the Florida Panhandle approximately south of Tallahassee in Dixie County. Coverage of Tabert's killing by the New York World newspaper in 1924 earned it the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Governor Cary A. Hardee ended convict leasing in 1923, due in part to the Tabert case and the resulting publicity. North Carolina, while without a system comparable to the other states, did not prohibit the practice until 1933. Alabama was the last to end the practice of official convict leasing in 1928 by the State, but many counties in the South continued the practice for years. == Continuity and erasure ==

While some believe the demise of the system can be attributed to exposure of the inhumane treatment suffered by the convicts, others indicate causes ranging from comprehensive legislative reforms to political retribution. Though the convict lease system, as such, disappeared, other types of convict labor continued (and still exist presently). These other systems include plantations, industrial prisons and chain gangs. The attitudes and hierarchies of both slavery and convict leasing can be seen within the modern day carceral setting. They are rationalised by people that work within, and maintain control of, prisons. This was evidenced in 2024 as part of an anthropological study wherein an ethnographic methodology of "intentional forgetting" was employed to prompt corrections officers to explain and rationalise their practices, documenting how they sustain institutional control over incarcerated people. The practice of intentional forgetting was developed and inspired by the observed tendency of correctional officers to forget or downplay their own participation in carceral violence. The Lone Rock Stockade Project approached the same phenomenon from the opposite direction, by excavating what has been buried. In doing so they assess the documented "dark heritage" of abuse, and re-established a narrative that had been "largely forgotten by American society". The project set out to, through community archaeology and public engagement, show that local prosperity was built on racialised carceral labour, as well as how the legal framework that had enabled it continues to shape prison labour today. ==See also==