Southern convict-leasing camps killed convicts at catastrophic rates

Evidence

The dry statistical evidence suggests a system of almost unbelievable brutality. The prisoners were overwhelmingly young, healthy men when they were leased out; yet in 1888, when the death rate in Virginia’s prison was 1.5 percent, in contractors’ camps on the Richmond and Allegheny Railroad the death rate was an alarming 11 percent. But this was positively mild compared to the situation in other southern states. In 1870, 41 percent of 180 convicts in Alabama, leased out for railroad work, died during the year; in the prior two years, there had been death rates of 18 and 17 percent; the death rate in Mississippi in the 1880s was nine times as great as in the prisons of the northern states. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3468

Categorization

• SEED: Death rates of 41 percent in a year make a stark, data-driven angle on convict leasing as state-sanctioned death.
• XREF: connects to: Armed labor revolts, not reform sentiment, ended convict leasing in the South — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3473; Convict leasing killed at higher rates than slavery because prisoners were replaceable — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 848; The convict lease system rationally accelerated Southern industrialization. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 85 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Convict leasing killed at higher rates than slavery because prisoners were replaceable #corroborates (0.95) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 848
• Camp inmates are socially superfluous, unlike slaves who had defined value #corroborates (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 994
• The convict lease system rationally accelerated Southern industrialization. #expands (0.78) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 85