Convict Lease System

History

Convicts have been used as a source of cheap and profitable labor for centuries. The ancient Greeks and Romans both put convicted criminals to work on state-operated public works. In the Middle Ages, convicts were routinely sold into slavery, especially galley slavery. By the late 15th and 16th centuries, workhouses were established to confine beggars and vagabonds, to put them to work grinding corn, making nails, spinning fabric, or other labors.

This same trend occurred in the American colonies. In 1699, Massachusetts “declared that rogues and vagabonds were to be punished and set to work in the house of correction” (Rothman, 1971, p. 26). Other colonies followed suit. Inmates of the first American prisons were forced to labor as part of their incarceration. The Walnut Street Jail, which began to accept prisoners in 1790, set its inmates to work under what we now call the piece-price system. With the rise of the penitentiary system in the early 1800s, convict labor was a central focus of reform.

The American Context

The early debate over the merits of the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems focused on the uses of convict labor and, ultimately, on profitability. The Pennsylvania system reflected a plan for solitary confinement of inmates. Each inmate worked alone in his cell without contact with other inmates. Work was mostly menial and unprofitable for the institution. The Auburn system combined separate confinement with silent, collective work. This system became the model for most prisons in the United States.

A few years after the first prison opened in Auburn, New York, in 1817, a local citizen was given a contract to operate a factory within the prison walls. Prisoners were also leased out to private bidders to be housed, fed, and worked for profit. This practice provided the beginnings of the lease system.

Eventually, three systems of convict labor emerged in the 19th century: the contract system, the state use system, and the convict lease system. The contract system dominated prisons in the northern part of the country. Under this system, the state feeds, clothes, houses, and guards the convict. To do this, the state maintains an institution and a force of guards and other employees. The contractor pays the state a stipulated amount per capita for the services of the convict and sells the final product on the open market. In the lease system, the state enters into a contract with a lessee who agrees to receive the convict; to feed, clothe, house, and guard him; to keep him at work; and to pay the state a specified amount for his labor. The state does not maintain an institution to house prisoners. In the state use system, the state conducts a business of manufacture or production but the sale of the goods produced is limited to state agencies. Today, the state use system is the most commonly used of the systems.

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