The New Peonage

Table of ContentsI. Introduction 1598II. Legal History of Peonage 1609A. The Black Codes 1611B. Bailey v. Alabama and United States v. Reynolds ...1618C. The Complicity of the Judicial System 1623III. The New Peonage 1626A. Constitutional Protections and Limitations 1628B. The Cost of Juvenile Court Involvement 1641C. Collateral Consequences for the Family 1647D. Fiscal Impact on the State 1651E. Parallels Between Old and New 1655IV. Proposals for Reform 1662A. Impact Analysis of Fees 1664B. Legislative Initiatives 1666C. Right to Counsel in Non-Payment Hearings 1670D. Increase Job Training and Placement 1675V. Conclusion 1677I. Introduction"[He] is thus kept chained to an ever-turning wheel of servitude. . . ."United States v. Reynolds1In the 1860s, an African-American man whom I will call Marcus2 was born into slavery on a plantation in Elberton, Georgia.3 Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Marcus was emancipated, and at age ten, he was hired to work picking cotton for the owner of the plantation, known as the Captain.4 Although Marcus had no formal education and rarely left the plantation, the conditions under which he lived during his youth were tolerable.5 When he turned twenty-one, Marcus agreed to enter into a one-year labor contract with the Captain, earning $3.50 each week and living in a one-room log cabin.6 He married one of the Captain's house-servants, Mandy, and they lived in a two-room shanty.7After several years, during which Marcus renewed his contract annually, the Captain died, and his son-called the Senator after entering elected office in Atlanta-took over the plantation.8 At the Senator's suggestion, Marcus signed a ten-year contract, and not long after, the state began leasing out convicted men to work on the plantation.9 The Senator paid the state $200 annually for each man's labor, housed them in stockades, and kept them in shackles as they worked under the supervision of armed guards provided by the state.10 Although Marcus and the other free laborers were frightened by these developments, they understood that they had no choice but to fulfill their ten-year contracts.11 After Marcus's contract expired, however,the Senator told him that he had incurred $165 worth of debt at the plantation commissary, where free laborers were compelled to buy all their necessities, including food and clothing.12 Marcus then learned that his contract required that his debt-and that of the other free laborers-had to be paid off by hard labor; he was placed in the stockade with the leased prisoners and forced to work from sunrise to sunset with little food or rest, under the constant threat of physical punishment.13 Meanwhile, Mandy became a slave "mistress"14 for one of the white male supervisors at the camp, and Marcus's nine-year-old son was given away to a black family across the river in South Carolina.15 After three years, the white man who was now living with Mandy told Marcus that he was being released; he drove Marcus into South Carolina and told him to "git," leaving him penniless, with a pair of overalls as his only possession.16 Eventually Marcus made his way to Birmingham, Alabama, where he worked in coal mines and smelted iron.17By 1904, when Marcus published his autobiography in a New York magazine, the Captain's convict or "peon" camp was one of six or seven that leased prisoners from the state. …