12 Dez 1941 Jahr - Convict leasing Abolished

Beschreibung:

Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States and overwhelmingly targeting African American men. Convict leasing provided prisoner labor to private parties, such as plantation owners and corporations (e.g. Tennessee Coal and Iron Company). The lessee was responsible for feeding, clothing, and housing the prisoners. The state of Louisiana leased out convicts as early as 1844, but the system expanded all through the South with the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, as It could be lucrative for the states: in 1898, some 73% of Alabama's entire annual state revenue came from convict leasing.

While Northern states sometimes contracted for prison labor, the historian Alex Lichtenstein notes that, "only in the South did the state entirely give up its control to the contractor; and only in the South did the physical "penitentiary" become virtually synonymous with the various private enterprises in which convicts labored."

Although the beginning of the 20th century brought increasing opposition to the system, state politicians resisted calls for its elimination. In states where the convict lease system was used, revenues from the program generated income nearly four times the cost (372%) of prison administration. The practice was extremely profitable for the governments, as well as for those business owners who used convict labor.

The practice peaked around 1880, was formally outlawed by the last state (Alabama) in 1928, and persisted in various forms until it was abolished by President Franklin D. Roosevelt via Francis Biddle's "Circular 3591" of December 12, 1941. Circular No. 3591 was a directive from Attorney General Francis Biddle to all United States attorneys concerning the procedure for handling cases relating to involuntary servitude, slavery and peonage.

Though the convict lease system, as such, disappeared, other forms of convict labor continued (and still exist today) in various forms. These other systems include plantations, industrial prisons, and the infamous “chain gang”.

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