Along with sharecropping, a substitute for the labor pool lost when enslavement was ended.
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Origins
Prison Labor Post-13th Amendment (1865–1866)
Immediately following the abolition of slavery in the United States (and ratification of the 13th amendment), the slave labor-dependent economy of the South faced widespread poverty and market collapse.[15] Southern lawmakers began to exploit the so-called "loophole" written in the 13th amendment and turned to prison labor as a means of restoring the pre-abolition free labor force. Black Codes were enacted by politicians in the South to maintain white control over former slaves, namely by restricting African Americans’ labor activity.[16] Common codes included vagrancy laws that criminalized African Americans’ lack of employment or permanent residence. Inability to pay fees for vagrancy crimes resulted in imprisonment, during which prisoners labored in the very same wage-free positions held by slaves less than two years prior.[17] Other "crimes" punishable by imprisonment (and subsequent slave labor) as per Black Codes included unlawful assembly, interracial relationships, violation of slave-like labor contracts, possession of firearms, making or selling liquor, selling agricultural produce without written permission from an employer, and practicing any occupation other than servant or farmer without holding a judge-ordered license.[18][17] Additionally, orphaned minors and minors removed from their homes by the state were apprenticed by courts to employers until the age of 21.[18] Minors apprenticed under Black Codes were authorized to be forced into labor against their will, and apprentice relationships closely resembled those of master and slave in terms of discipline and involuntary labor.[18] By 1866, nearly all southern states had enacted individual sets of Black Codes.[16] The widespread enforcement of Black Code laws effectively used the 13th amendment's exception of penal labor to reinvent the chattel slavery economy and society to comply with federal law.
Prison Labor in the Reconstruction Era (1866–1877)
Between 1866 and 1869, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida became the first states in the U.S. to lease out convicts.[19][20] Previously responsible for the housing and feeding of the new prison labor force, the states developed a convict leasing system as a means to rid penitentiaries of the responsibility to care for the incarcerated population.[21] State governments maximized profits by putting the responsibility on the lessee to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical care for the prisoners. Convict labor strayed from small-scale plantation and share crop harvesting and moved toward work in the private sector. States leased out convicts to private businesses that utilized the low-cost labor to run enterprises such as coal mines, railroads, and logging companies.[22] Private lessees were permitted to use prisoner labor with very little oversight. The result was extremely poor conditions. Inadequacy of necessities like food, water, and shelter, was often exacerbated by unsafe labor practices and inhuman discipline.[23] Nevertheless, the convict lease system prompted the southern economy's return from devastation as the (cheap) labor supply returned to southern capitalism.
While incarceration rates continued to rise during Reconstruction, feeding the convict lease system, Union occupation in the South and national pressure began to change the laws by which African Americans were arbitrarily imprisoned. By 1868, the last official laws of Black Code were repealed in most states.[18] As Reconstruction lost its vigor, however, the Democratic party recovered and de-stigmatized casual racism in the Union-washed South.[18] This end to the reconstruction era set the stage for future reinvention of Black Code laws. States configured legislation to more precisely target the poor, further criminalizing the vast majority of former slaves who had not yet adapted to a free market or accrued wealth. Mississippi’s "pig law" followed this trend of hyper criminalization and fed the penal labor force simultaneously by tacking on outrageous sentences to violations. The "pig law" classified theft of any property worth $10 or more as grand larceny. Violation carried a sentence of incarceration up to five years. Following enactment of the "pig law," the incarcerated population quadrupled overnight.[24]
