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Convict Lease System

The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, while effectively ending slavery, eventually authorized the use of freed slaves for involuntary servitude with the following clause: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (italics added). Under the convict lease system implemented in the U.S. South after the Civil War, the state took advantage of this clause by leasing prison inmates to private companies that used them as forced laborers. This system of enforced labor ran from 1865 to 1920. This entry examines the convict lease system in the United States that emerged after the abolition of legal slavery. A brief history of the convict lease system is discussed, as is the social context surrounding its development.

Controlling Slaves in the Post-Civil War South

Scholars have suggested that after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, there was a concerted effort to control the labor of the new underclass of freed African Americans. Many laws—such as the Jim Crow statutes as well as numerous vagrancy laws targeted specifically at Blacks— were put into place to make sure former slaves were controlled. As a result of these acts, the close of the 19th century saw the population in southern prisons becoming primarily African American. These inmates provided a source of agricultural workers who could be used to alleviate the labor shortage while also lessening the pressure on the states to house prisoners.

Many former slaves found themselves with few options at the end of the Civil War and the subsequent aftermath; their former lives as slaves offered little in the way of survival skills beyond the confines of a plantation. As a result, many freed slaves were enticed by the agrarian labor system as a source of at least some form of sustenance, and many of them returned to work at the same plantations they had recently left. Under the convict lease system, other former slaves, often convicted for petty crimes, were leased out to private vendors to promote and undertake forced labor to drive White-owned businesses. Thus, many former slaves found themselves working in the same areas where they were once held captive. While some had chosen to return to the plantations for the sake of economic survival, others were compelled to work there as forced laborers under the convict lease system.

Differences from Slavery

Although similar to each other, the forced servitude conditions differed from slavery in several important respects. Those now forced to work under enforced servitude were mostly African American prisoners put behind bars due to their own actions, whereas slavery had simply branded many of them inferior and therefore fit to toil away. Moreover, it was possible for those forced to labor under the convict lease system to live free lives upon being released from confinement; escape from slavery was punished with physical torture or death in most cases. More than anything else, the convict lease system exemplified the dependence of the South on enforced labor in one form or another, usually involving the subjugation of minorities.

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