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Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States. Convict leasing provided prisoner labor to private parties, such as plantation owners and corporations such as the 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,〔Punishment in America: A Reference Handbook, by Cyndi Banks, page 58〕 but the system expanded all through the south with the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. 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 laboured.〔Alex Lichtenstein, ''Twice the Work of Free Labour: The Political Economy of Convict Labour in the New South', Verso Press, 1996, p. 3〕 Corruption, lack of accountability, and racial violence resulted in "one of the harshest and most exploitative labour systems known in American history."〔Matthew J. Mancini, '' 'One Dies, Get Another': Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928'', p. 1〕 African Americans, mostly adult males, due to “vigorous and selective enforcement of laws and discriminatory sentencing,” made up the vast majority—but not all—of the convicts leased.〔Litwack, Leon F. ''Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow'', (1998) ISBN 0-394-52778-X, p. 271〕 The writer Douglas A. Blackmon described the system: It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for most men, and the relatively few women drawn in, this slavery did not last a lifetime and did not automatically extend from one generation to the next. But it was nonetheless slavery – a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labour without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion.〔Blackmon, Douglas A. ''Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II'', (2008) ISBN 978-0-385-50625-0, p. 4〕 U.S. Steel is among American companies who have acknowledged using African-American leased convict labor.〔http://www.newsweek.com/book-american-slavery-continued-until-1941-93231〕 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. == Origins == Convict leasing in the United States began during the Reconstruction Period (1865–1877) after the end of the Civil War, when many southern legislatures were ruled by majority coalitions of blacks and Radical Republicans, and Union generals acted as military governors. Farmers and businessmen needed to find replacements for the labor force once their slaves had been freed. Some southern legislatures passed Black Codes to restrict free movement of blacks and force them into employment with whites. If convicted of vagrancy, blacks could be imprisoned, and they also received sentences for a variety of petty offenses. States began to lease convict labour to the plantations and other facilities seeking labor, as the freedmen were trying to withdraw and work for themselves. This provided the states with a new source of revenue during years when they were financially strapped, and lessees profited by the use of forced labor at below market rates.〔 Essentially, both black legislators and whites in the criminal justice system colluded with private planters and other business owners to entrap, convict, and lease blacks as prison laborers. The constitutional basis for convict leasing is that the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, while abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude generally, permits it as a punishment for crime. The criminologist Thorsten Sellin, in his book ''Slavery and the Penal System'' (1976), wrote that the sole aim of convict leasing “was financial profit to the lessees who exploited the labor of the prisoners to the fullest, and to the government which sold the convicts to the lessees.”〔(Randall G. Shelden, "Slavery in the Third Millennium, Part II" )〕 The practice became widespread and was used to supply labour to farming, rail road, mining, and logging operations throughout the South. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「convict lease」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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