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Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States. This beginning with the emancipation of slaves at the end of the American Civil War in 1865, peaking around 1880, and officially ending in the last state, Alabama, in 1928. Private prisons have a long history. In the 1880s private correctional organizations created the Convict Lease System, perhaps the first privatized prison system in America. Convict leasing provided prisoner labor to private parties, such as plantation owners and corporations such as the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. The lessee was responsible for feeding, clothing, and housing the prisoners. I never knew that about convict leasing and it crazy how people was treated back in the day.