Convict lease

s leased to cut timber in Florida, around 1900]]

**Convict leasing** was a form of forced labor used by prisons in the Southern United States.  ("Convict" is a rude word for "prisoner"; leasing is like renting something.)  Under the system, prisons leased prisoners out as free workers to corporations, business owners, and plantation owners.  Basically, the prisons were selling prisoners like slaves, except that they were not sold forever.

This system made a lot of money for prisons and the contractors.  The contractors got workers who they did not have to pay, and who they could treat however they wanted.  The prisons got payments from the contractors.  Also, they no longer had to pay for food, clothing, or housing for the prisoners who they leased out; the contractors did.

In 1898, for example, about 73% of Alabama's entire yearly state revenue came from convict leasing.  For this reason, convict leasing lasted almost 100 years in the South.

## Beginnings
The state of Louisiana leased out convicts as early as 1844.  However, convict leasing began to spread throughout the South during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877).  This was just after the end of the American Civil War, which ended slavery.  With no more slaves to work for them, Southern farmers and businessmen needed to find new workers. Southern legislatures passed laws called Black Codes to keep blacks from moving freely and to force them to work for whites. As historian Douglas Blackmon explains:

At this time, the Southern states did not have much money, and they found that convict labor gave them a big source of revenue.  Contractors also made money off the system because they did not have to pay the prisoners the wages they would have to pay to white workers.  The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had made slavery illegal  except as punishment for a crime.  So the states passed laws that would make it easy to convict innocent black people of crimes.  Once they were prisoners, they could be treated like slaves.  The states basically used this process as a way to continue slavery in the South.

Also, according to historian Matthew Mancini, the Southern convict labor system was "one of the  and most  labor systems known in American history."  'If one [prisoner] dies, get another' was the attitude of many contractors, Mancini writes.  He says this was caused by corruption, racism, racial violence, and the fact that contractors could do whatever they wanted without getting into trouble.  Prisoners could be beaten or whipped if their bosses did not think they were working hard enough.

U.S. Steel is one of the American companies which have admitted using African-American leased convict labor.

Convict leasing was most common around 1880.  It was formally outlawed by the last state (Alabama) in 1928.  However, it continued in different forms until President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it illegal on December 12, 1941.

## The system in different states
Here are some examples of different states' convict leasing systems.

Once they stopped using the convict labor system, many states switched to the trusty system.  This was also a way to save money, but it caused abuses just like the convict labor system did.  Finally, in a landmark case called *Gates v. Collier*, 501 F.2d 1291 (5th Cir. 1974), a federal court forced the states using the trusty system to stop.

## Effects on the prison population
Scholar Randall Shelden argues that the convict lease system created an  to convict black people.   Because the convict lease system brought in so much money, the states and counties had a reason to want to convict African-Americans.)
* On November 29, 1867, African-Americans had increased to 58.3% of the prison's population
* By 1869 they made up 64%
* Between 1877 and 1879, they made up 67%

During the times when Southern states used the convict leasing system, their prison populations grew across the South.  For example:

## Photo gallery

File:Convicts (1903).jpg|Child "convicts" at work in the fields (1903)

File:Chain Gang Street Sweepers, 1909.jpg|A photo postcard of prisoners  the streets (1909)

File:Parchman prison convict labor 1911.jpeg|Prisoners working at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman in 1911.

File:Prisonlabor1.jpg|Prisoners cut wood in South Carolina

## Notes
## Related pages
* Slavery
* Reconstruction Era
* Trusty system

## References