From Washington Monthly:
n the late 1960s, a group of Arkansas prison inmates sued the state Commissioner of Corrections over conditions in what was then called the Cummins Farm, a 16,500-acre Old South-style plantation staffed by gangs of prisoners. Among their claims was one that life on the Farm was slavery, and thus a violation of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits “slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.”
In a 1970 opinion, Federal District Judge J. Smith Henley summarized the evidence before him. The inmates at the Farm worked ten hours a day, six days a week. (The guards and trustees had until 1967 forced this labor by beating the inmates with a four-foot leather strap; a court order blocked the “strappings” in 1967, however, and now inmates were free to refuse to work—and be punished by solitary confinement.) Inmates worked on labor-intensive Southern crops– cotton, soybeans, and rice, among others—and raised chickens, pigs, and cattle. Work in the fields went on rain or shine—in summer no matter how hot it got, in winter on any day above freezing. The prisoners were not issued rainwear or cold-weather jackets. Some were required to work without shoes.
The prison farm operation generated well over $1 million a year for the state. The inmates received no pay. If they needed money, prison authorities explained, they could make $5 a week as blood donors. Continue reading >>>
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