Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor practiced in the Southern United States, in which private individuals and corporations could lease labor from the state in the form of incarcerated people, nearly all of whom were Black.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Convict leasing and the corvee labor system both compel labor from people under a government legal authority rather than by voluntary contract.
Convict leasing and debt bondage both extract labor to satisfy an obligation owed to another party rather than through a freely renegotiable labor contract.
Convict leasing and sharecropping emerged together in the post-emancipation American South as parallel systems maintaining coerced black labor after the formal abolition of slavery.
Convict leasing paid the state rather than the convict laborer, inverting the ordinary wage-labor relationship even though the leased convicts performed the same kind of work as free wage laborers.
Sources
Convict Leasing (Wikipedia)
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Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor that was practiced in the Southern United States, where private individuals and corporations could lease labor from the state in the form of incarcerated people, nearly all of whom were Black.
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