Origins
Convict leasing in the United States began during the Reconstruction Period (1865–1877) after the end of the Civil War. Farmers and businessmen needed to find replacements for the labor force once their slaves had been freed. Some southern legislatures passed Black Codes, to restrict free movement of blacks and force them into employment with whites. If convicted of vagrancy, they could be imprisoned. States began to lease convict labor to the plantations and other facilities seeking labor, as the freedmen were trying to withdraw and work for themselves. This provided the states with a new source of revenue during years when they were financially strapped, and lessees profited by the use of forced labor at below market rates. Essentially whites in the criminal justice system colluded with private planters and other business owners to entrap, convict and lease African Americans as prison laborers. The constitutional basis for convict leasing is that the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, while abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude generally, permits it as a punishment for crime.
The criminologist Thorsten Sellin, in his book Slavery and the Penal System (1976), wrote that the sole aim of convict leasing “was financial profit to the lessees who exploited the labor of the prisoners to the fullest, and to the government which sold the convicts to the lessees.”
The practice became widespread and was used to supply labor to farming, railroad, mining, and logging operations throughout the South.
Read more about this topic: Convict Lease
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