Plantation Prisons

History and Development

Southern imprisonment practices did not follow the same pattern as those in the North. Antebellum Southern states did not embrace the penitentiary idea that imprisonment could change or reform the convict as enthusiastically as did their Northern counterparts. With few exceptions, the small number of Southern prewar penitentiaries were reserved for white men; slaves or women were rarely found in these institutions. Slavery controlled the South's lower classes.

Most Southern penitentiaries were damaged during the Civil War and, in any case, were not equipped to house the swelling numbers of prisoners, most of whom were freed slaves. Instead, Southern states soon leased out their prisoners to entrepreneurs and businesses. Some states required the lessee to pay a certain per capita amount to the state. Others gave away complete control of the convicts for nothing; others even paid the lessees to take the prisoners off their hands. Contrary to Northern leasing practices that limited leasing operations to the penitentiaries' sites, Southern states contracted out both male and female convicts to build railroads, levees, and roads and to work in mines and on former plantations. Free from state supervision, some lessees literally worked the prisoners to death. Unlike the previous system of slavery, they did not own the convicts and, consequently, often did not care about their welfare. When one died, they got another.

Emphasis on Economy

Many Southern entrepreneurs who leased convicts became very wealthy from their leasing enterprises. State legislators reasoned that such lease profits rightfully belonged to the state. Simultaneously, leasing ended in the early 1900s as railroad building subsided and road building was designated to local governments. Resuming control of the prisoners, Southern states turned to penal farms as a temporary solution to convict employment problems and “as a supplement which furnished work to certain unproductive classes” (Zimmerman, 1951, p. 466): women, children, the old and infirm. In Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, the temporary penal farms developed into penal plantations that became the hub from which the entire system radiated. Consequently, the plantation model of imprisonment emerged in its most pure form in these four states.

State Prison Plantations

Southern states purchased thousands of acres of property, often from the descendants of slave plantation owners. Louisiana and Mississippi eventually restricted their farm operations to one remote geographical location each. Louisiana's Angola is now 18,000 acres, while Mississippi's Parchman was [Page 702]20,000 acres at one time. Arkansas established two farms: Tucker for white convicts and Cummins for black women and men. Cummins also housed a death row. By 1960, Tucker encompassed 4,500 acres, while Cummins was 16,600 acres. Texas differed from the other states in that it developed multiple penal farms.

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