Chain Gangs & Convict Leasing

After the Civil War, the 13th amendment was passed which abolished slavery for all people except those convicted of a crime. As the South sought to financially recuperate after the war, they took advantage of this loophole to maintain the racial and economic relationship of slavery.

Black codes emerged which criminalized African American for concocted crimes including loitering, breaking curfew, or being unemployed. With large amounts of African Americans now incarcerated, the South turned to the system of convict leasing. Southern prisons began leasing convicts to plantations and factories as a form of cheap labor previously provided by slavery. Bidders paid an average of $25,000 a year to the state in exchange for the prisoners, and both the state and plantation owners were left with a large profit.

Prisoners in the convict leasing system were used for railroad construction, cutting timber, and even for picking cotton on plantations. These were dangerous jobs and prisoners often died due to the physical punishment and severe deprivation of basic resources. Publicity, often through trials and newspapers, regarding these horrible realities led to public strike and states began abolishing the convict leasing system. However, still using prison labor, county-run chain gangs conducting public projects replaced convict leasing at the beginning of the 1900s.

Chain gangs were groups of convicts forced to labor at tasks for the state including road construction, ditch digging, or farming while chained together. Any individual’s misstep could imperil the whole group and often the chains caused shackle poisoning from the constant rubbing of iron on the skin. It was championed at the time as an “efficient and progressive way to both build roads and control criminals,” although these “criminals” were subjected to sleep in cages, suffered a myriad of illnesses, and were deprived of food and sleep.

Both systems were eventually abolished by all states from 1930 to 1950, but note that prison labor and novel forms of slavery are still legal under the 13th amendment. Shifts in the US economy and growing rates of unemployment and poverty in minority communities is leading to a new wave of mass incarceration and prison labor exploitation.