A prison farm (also known as a penal farm) is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are forced to work on a

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is use ...

legally and illegally (in the wide sense of a productive unit), usually for manual labor, largely in the open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, and mining as well as many others. All of this forced labor has been given the right from the thirteenth amendment in the United States, however other parts of the world have made penal labor illegal. The concepts of prison farm and

labor camp A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (espec ...

overlap with the idea that they are forced to work. The historical equivalent on a very large scale was called a

penal colony A penal colony or exile colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. Although the term can be used to refer to ...

. The agricultural goods produced by prison farms are generally used primarily to feed the prisoners themselves and other wards of the state (residents of orphanages, asylums, etc.), and secondarily, to be sold for whatever profit the state may be able to obtain. In addition to being forced to labor directly for the government on a prison farm or in a penal colony, inmates may be forced to do farm work for private enterprises by being farmed out through the practice of convict leasing to work on private agricultural lands or related industries (fishing, lumbering, etc.). The party purchasing their labor from the government generally does so at a steep discount from the cost of free labor. 13th Amendment signed by Abraham Lincoln

13th Amendment signed by Abraham Lincoln

Louisiana State Penitentiary is the largest prison farm covering , and is bordered on three sides by the Mississippi River. Canada has six large prison farms that are currently closed with the possibility of being reopened.

Convict leasing

''For more information, see Convict Leasing'' Convict leasing was a system of penal labor that was primarily practiced in the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

, and widely involved the use of

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

men which was prominently used after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

. In this system southern states leased prisoners to large plantations and private mines or railways. This system led to the states earning a profit, while the prisoners earned no pay and faced dangerous working conditions. The 13th Amendment to the

United States Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...

, prohibited the use of

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

and involuntary servitude but explicitly exempts those who have been convicted of a crime. In response to this, the southern state legislatures implemented "

Black Codes The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans (free and freed blacks). In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political p ...

" which were laws that explicitly applied to African-Americans and subjected them to criminal prosecution for more minor offenses like breaking curfew, loitering, and not carrying proof of employment. These new laws led to more prisoners for the penal system that could all be leased by the state so that they can use their labor for profit. Widespread convict leasing ended by

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, but the loopholes in the 13th Amendment still permit the use of prisoners to work without pay.

Other work programs

Convicts may also be leased for non-agricultural work, either directly to state entities, or to private industry. For example, prisoners may make license plates under contract to the state Department of Motor Vehicles, work in textile or other state-run factories, or may perform data processing for outside firms. Other types of work include food service or groundskeeping. These laborers are typically considered to be a part of prison industries and not prison farms.

In the United States (partial list)

Canadian Prison Farm System

In 2009,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

shut down six of their major prison farms. Canada had used their prison farms as a way to generate revenue, as well as to give prisoners skills post-release. In 2009, the House of Commons in Canada announced that the skills that prison farms had been giving inmates were outdated, and that prison labor should focus on work related to more modern skills. Although the Canadian prison farm system has been shut down since 2009,the debate of whether or not the farms should reopen has continued. The group called Save our Prison Farms (SOPF) has been trying to revive the prison farm concept, since they did not want to pay for farm labor. When active, the prison farms highlighted many inherent inequalities within Canadian society. For example, the incarceration rate of the indigenous " First Nations" people of Canada was ten times greater than that of non-aboriginal Canadians. When the Prison farm Program in Canada was about to shut down in 2009, the

Government of Canada The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-i ...

gave three reasons to cut the program: *The first reason cited was how dangerous the conditions were for the people that worked on the farm. *The second reason was that they thought the program was an out of date and ineffective type of correction giving non-modern skills to inmates for their post release. *The third reason was because it was losing money. The six prisons revenue was CA$7.5 million, while the expenses were CA$11.5 million, with a net loss to the government of about four million dollars on a useless program. Since the Canadian Prison Farm Program was found to not be effective, along with its inherent inequalities, it seemed to make sense to just shut it down altogether.

Legal framework

The 13th Amendment to the

, which ended slavery, specifically carved out the concept of penal servitude (i.e., forced and unpaid labor as a punishment for a crime). This exemption only affected those who have been convicted of crimes, not those who were still awaiting trial. Britain had a long history of penal servitude even before passage of the

Penal Servitude Act Penal Servitude Act is a stock short title which was used in the United Kingdom for legislation relating to penal servitude. The abolition of penal servitude has rendered this short title obsolete in that country. List :The Penal Servitude Act ...

of 1853, and routinely used convict labor to settle its conquests, either through penal colonies or by selling convicts to settlers to serve as slaves for a term of years as indentured servants.

Scope

This type of penal institution has mainly been implanted in rural regions of vast countries. For example, the following passage describes the prison system of the U.S. state of North Carolina in the early twentieth century:

"The state prison is at Raleigh, although most of the convicts are distributed upon farms owned and operated by the state. The lease system does not prevail, but the farming out of convict labor is permitted by the constitution; such labor is used chiefly for the building of railways, the convicts so employed being at all times cared for and guarded by state officials. A reformatory for white youth between the ages of seven and sixteen, under the name of the Stonewall Jackson Manual Training and Industrial School, was opened at Concord in 1909, and in March 1909 the Foulk Reformatory and Manual Training School for negro youth was provided for. Charitable and penal institutions are under the supervision of a Board of Public Charities, appointed by the governor for a period of six years, the terms of the different members expiring in different years. Private institutions for the care of the insane, idiots, feeble-minded, and inebriates may be established, but must be licensed and regulated by the state board and become legally a part of the system of public charities."

In 21st-century Illinois, several prisons continue to run farms to produce food for wards of the state, including the prisoners themselves. The 1911 Britannica also reported that the state of Rhode Island had a farm of in the southern part of Cranston City housing (and presumably taking labor from):

"the state prison, the Providence county jail, the state workhouse and the house of correction, the state almshouse, the state hospital for the insane, the Sockanosset school for boys, and the Oaklawn school for girls, the last two being departments of the state reform school."

There are prison farms in other countries. Canada had six prison farms, where up to 800 inmates did everything from tending pigs to milking cows until they were closed in 2010 by the Conservative government. In 2015, the Liberal government began conducting feasibility studies to determine if the program can be restarted. In 2018, the Liberal government announced plans to reopen 2 of the prison farms previously closed by the end of 2019.

In fiction

Films and television shows featuring prison farms and forced prison labor: * '' I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang'' is a movie released in 1932, which depicted the degrading and inhumane treatment on

chain gang A chain gang or road gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. The system was not ...

s in the post–

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

era. * '' Hell's Highway'' (1932) * '' Prison Farm'' (1938) * '' Gone with the Wind'' (1939) scenes of Scarlett O'Hara's leased convicts at work in her lumber mills * '' Sullivan's Travels'' (1941) * '' City Without Men'' (1943) * ''Chain Gang'' (1950) starred Douglas Kennedy (actor) as a reporter working as a guard to expose corruption and brutality. * ''

Cool Hand Luke ''Cool Hand Luke'' is a 1967 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, starring Paul Newman and featuring George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning performance. Newman stars in the title role as Luke, a prisoner in a Florida prison ca ...

'' (1967) * '' Sounder'' (1972) * '' Papillon'' (1973) * ''

Scarecrow A scarecrow is a decoy or mannequin, often in the shape of a human. Humanoid scarecrows are usually dressed in old clothes and placed in open fields to discourage birds from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.Lesle ...

'' (1973) * '' Nightmare in Badham County'' (1976) * '' Buckstone County Prison'' (1978) * ''

They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way ''They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way'' is a 1978 slapstick comedy film co-directed by Stuart E. McGowan and Edward Montagne and written by and starring Tim Conway. Premise Dewey and Wallace are small-town lawmen who are ordered by the governor t ...

'' (1978) * '' Brubaker'' (1980) * '' MacGyver'' (1988), "Jack of Spies", Season 3. Mac's friend Jack Dalton tricks him to be arrested by a corrupt police officer to be incarcerated in a prison farm that uses the inmates to work in an underground gold mine to find a stash of hidden money. * ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

'' (1999) * '' O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' (2000) * '' Civil Brand'' (2002) * In "

Les Misérables ''Les Misérables'' ( , ) is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its origin ...

" by

Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...

, which has had several movie adaptations, the character

Jean Valjean Jean Valjean () is the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel ''Les Misérables''. The story depicts the character's struggle to lead a normal life and redeem himself after serving a 19-year-long prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his ...

is part of a chain gang ("le bagne", which is usually translated as "the galleys" or "the prison hulks") as part of his punishment for stealing bread.

References

External links

{{Incarceration Types of farms Prisons Imprisonment and detention Penal labour