Convict leasing

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Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor that was practiced in the Southern United States, where private individuals and corporations could lease labor from the state in the form of incarcerated people, nearly all of whom were Black. The state of Louisiana leased out convicted people as early as 1844. The system expanded throughout most of the South with the emancipation of enslaved people at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The practice peaked about 1880 and persisted in various forms until gradually phased out following Francis Biddle's "Circular No. 3591" of December 12, 1941. Whilst not having been explicitly abolished, the practice became politically untenable. As a result other forms of prison labour remain legal in the United States, under the Thirteenth Amendment's penal exemption clause. The system was highly lucrative for both the lessees and state governments. For example, in 1898, 73 percent of Alabama's annual state revenue came from convict leasing, whilst...

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