Convict Labor. Alabama. Leasing Program

Like many slaveholding states of the former Confederacy, Alabama operated a convict leasing system between 1875–1928. Under convict leasing systems, states leased imprisoned people to perform unfree labor for companies and individuals in exchange for a fee. State and county laws and racially selective prosecutions funneled large, overrepresented populations of African Americans into the prison system, and in Alabama African Americans comprised more than 95% of the county and 90% of the state's prison population. Therefore, Alabama's convict leasing system replaced the state's former system of race-based chattel slavery and laborers encountered harsh conditions, violent punishments, and high death tolls. Those who were not leased (and all imprisoned women after 1888) were imprisoned in the Alabama State Penitentiary in Wetumpka in Elmore County. (Encyclopedia of Alabama)