Racial Conflict Among Prisoners

The South

Historical studies suggest that penal policy in the South emerged in response to changes in the political, economic, and social status of African Americans. In turn, prison policies (both formal and informal) shaped relationships among inmates and contributed to a system of racial divisions and alliances that endures today. For example, the end of the Civil War ushered in a new penal regime in most Southern states known as the “convict lease [Page 808]system.” Scholars point to this system as one of the first to formally legitimate differential treatment on the basis of race. It also set the stage for racial conflict and violence among inmates. Under the convict lease system, former slaves found guilty of violating the Black Codes (a restrictive set of laws that applied only to African Americans) were sentenced to a form of penal servitude. Instead of serving time in a penitentiary like inmates in most Northern jurisdictions, convicts in the South became forced laborers on public works projects or were hired out to private employers, in some cases serving their sentences on the same plantations they had previously worked as slaves. In Southern states, where 85% to 95% of the convict population was black, convict leasing preserved the labor arrangements and racial caste system of slavery.