"C" is for Convict Leasing

"C" is for Convict Leasing. Convict leasing represents a specific type of prison labor that emerged in the post-Civil War South. Typically, leasing was an arrangement by which individuals convicted of felonies were hired out to private companies who worked inmates as they chose beyond the walls of the state prison. In 1877 the General Assembly passed a bill authorizing convict leasing. Larger companies hired between 50 and 100 inmates to work on railroads, phosphate mines, or labor as farm hands—but some contractors hired as few as ten. The lease proved lucrative to the state and in the early 1880s prison officials did not ask for any appropriations. By 1897 South Carolina had abandoned the lease system, choosing instead to work convicts on state-run prison farms or in industrial shops within the penitentiary.