Convict Leasing in the American South

[Russell Grinker]

One of the less known facts of the apartheid era in South Africa was the use
made of convict labour as a form of subsidy to white farming capital.  Tens
of thousands of black people were routinely jailed for being in the wrong
place at the wrong time under the pass laws.  Many of then then spent their
prison terms "rented out" to white farmers who did not have to concern
themselves with the housing and subsistence needs of these workers and got
their labour for almost nothing.  Of course it was quite acceptable for
these convict workers to be regularly brutalised as well.

Russell